Baseball's First Out Gay Remembered

[Lucky]

A movie will be shown at the Castro theater in San Francisco about the life of Glenn Burke, the Oakland A's player who was introduced to his new teammates by the manager as a "faggot." Burke only officially came out after he quit baseball, but his status was quite well known to other players, who did not exactly react with warmth. He later died of AIDS.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/09/DD5K1G7C3A.DTL&type=books

[MsGuy]

Thanks for the post, Lucky. I was completely unaware of this man's story. Maybe they will show this documentary on ESPN or Public Television some day. I'd love to see it.

[Lucky]

Feel free to read "Out at Home: The Glenn Burke Story," written by Eric Sherman. It's a paperback original, priced at $14.95, but now only available used at $25.00 through bn.com. Amazon didn't list it as far as I could tell.

[Guest FourAces]

Interesting and sad .. now I have a question. Are there currently any out pro baseball players?

[Lucky]

Shortly after I read your question, I came across this article on a trade that the Oakland A's made today:

"I (writer) spoke to (Coco) Crisp, who was (David)DeJesus' teammate in Kansas City, and he wows about him as a hitter and noted that he very rarely makes an error. Crisp also noted - and then later tweeted - that he believes the A's now have the best-looking outfield in the league.

"David is a handsome man," Crisp told me with a laugh. "You put him out there with Sweeney, me, Conor, Rajai - that should get some ladies to the stadium."

Crisp added later, "David's a pretty boy, a stylish cat. But he's a good baseball player, too. He'd established himself as one of the premier hitters in the game before he got hurt last year."

Other than this, I would say the answer is no.

[MsGuy]

Crisp added later, "David's a pretty boy, a stylish cat."

Of course, one must always take into account that a straight guy's notion of a stylish dressing pretty boy may differ somewhat from your own.