He's 6'3" and 225 pounds of muscle. He's broken his nose five times, fractured both shoulders and lost eight teeth. He's drunk his mates under the table and brawled by their side. He's been named to the Welsh national rugby team more times than any other man. And, among active players in major professional team sports, he's ...
Wot, butt?You come to this tiny village in this tiny country and tell me that I'm the only gay man in a major team sport who's out of the closet?
The man was missing eight teeth. Sometimes he would slip out his false teeth when you weren't looking and deposit them in your pint of ale.
All the diversity in America, and no one there has done this?
His blue eyes twinkled and his laughter was infectious and his body was a riot of muscles and he'd been known, if he suspected someone in the pub was talking about him, to rise from his table and drop him.
America's the pioneer, butt! Am I right?
He plays professional rugby. No, he has dominated it, been selected to play for his national team more times than anyone else in his country's history.
America's at the top of the table in everything! So why...?
His sport has broken his nose five times, fractured both of his shoulders and his hip and his forearm and his palate and his thumb, and concussed him, on average, three times a year.
A rugby team ... in Wales. A country of coal miners. I thought THAT would be the harshest environment for a man to come out in, but no....
Rugby for pussies: That's what he and his teammates call American football.
Why has America created an environment that's not open to gay sportsmen, butt?
No helmets, no pads, just balls: That's how he describes his own sport.
So tell me, butt. I really want to f---in' know what's going on in America!
Sometimes you have to go far away to see yourself. Sometimes you have to go to a land where people use different words and have different rituals and sing different songs. Sometimes you have to watch people play an unfamiliar game to see your games.
So how do we answer Gareth Thomas? Where is our pioneer? Why hasn't one gay male athlete in a major professional team sport in our country—one who's still playing, not one retired—ever come out?
Even the U.S. military is preparing to cross the line that 25 other countries' armies already have. Will team sports be the last place in the U.S. where a gay man feels he must hide and lie? [...]
Yes. Yes, it probably will. For quite some time to come, too.
[...] Finally, as 2009 drew to a close, a now-or-never feeling gripped his chest. He was 35, his international career finished, and he trusted his Cardiff Blues teammates and coaches. He could wait until he retired to come clean and salvage some shred of authenticity for the rest of his life, but if he did it now, its impact would multiply tenfold, and if just one young man could be saved from what he'd endured, wouldn't his long horror suddenly have worth?
He got his parents' blessing. He went to his grandparents' graves and talked it out with them. He vowed to spill the secret, chickened out, vowed again. At last he took a deep breath and told his agent to contact London's conservative Daily Mail, his father's newspaper, and he made his declaration. On Dec. 18—two months after an Irish hurler named Dónal Óg Cusack had outed himself—Alf warned teammates as they flew to a game in France that the story was going to break the next day, and he barely slept that night.
By chance they were playing his old team, Toulouse. He waited till the last possible moment to take the field, but when his name was announced, the roar that went up overwhelmed him. When the team's plane returned to Cardiff that night, he headed straight to his parents' house, and they popped a bottle of champagne.
"What are we toasting?" he asked.
"The start of the rest of your life," said his mother.
Alf lifted his glass, drank ... and awaited the anvil. On the street he pulled his wool beanie low or his hood up. At home he Googled feverishly, scouring every thread of the Web to see what happened when millions of people came into collision with their conception of what a man is.
The brotherhood, of course, counted most in the public trial of Alfie Thomas. His cellphone blazed with congratulatory texts from old teammates. His current mates rejoiced that Alf's preferences finally were fodder. They teased him about the pink jerseys that Cardiff wore against Toulouse: "Oh, they knew you were coming out today, Alf?" They pointed to the music video on the team bus—Freddie Mercury of Queen, dressed as a miniskirted maid, vacuuming a house and singing I Want to Break Free—and hooted, "Oh, look, Alf's on the telly!" Coach David Young growled, "C'mon, boys, you're playing like a bunch of fairies!" and started to cringe at his word choice, only to see Alf giggling hardest of all. Now Alf could take the mick on his hotel roommates, claiming that Gareth Cooper had spent the whole night in Toulouse sleeping with one eye open and his back to the wall.
"We probably love him even more now because of how hard we know it's been for him," says Lee Byrne, a former national teammate.
"For me, he was the most ungay person who ever was," says Trevor Brennan, a former Toulouse teammate. "Our coach would point to him and say, 'There's an example of a real man.' I don't make gay jokes anymore since I found out about Alf." [...]
Well ... that might happen. Might. Judging from what Esera Tuaolo was told after he'd retired and come out ... probably not.
by Esera Tuaolo
[...] The National Football League is the number one entertainment in the world, and the Super Bowl is its showcase event. Media from all over — places like Japan and Lebanon, where they don't even play football — report on the spectacle. The Super Bowl is the biggest event that happens every year in the United States.
What if one of those billion people watching recognized me as the stranger he had picked up in a gay bar? All he had to do was out me to the press and the story would be all over the headlines: "Gay Man Makes Final Tackle in Super Bowl." My football career would be finished.
No more Super Bowls, no more Sundays playing ball. No more paychecks, no more financial security. No more locker-room banter, no more camaraderie with the guys. I would be banished from the NFL fraternity.
During my nine years in the NFL, I lived that close to the edge of destruction. My success tormented me. The better I did, the more exposure I received. The more exposure, the greater the chance of someone discovering my secret. A secret that a man who plays the most macho of team sports is not supposed to have. The stress nearly killed me...
[...] The dream to succeed in the NFL and achieve all that football had to offer was at times a nightmare. I struggled to survive the combative, macho world dominated by a culture that despised who I really am. Had opponents and teammates known I was gay, they would have mocked me the way I heard them ridicule others with sexual slurs. More than likely — as several former teammates admitted — they would have tried to injure me so that they would not have been viewed as guilty by association.
In other words, they would have taken me out so that their own masculinity would not be questioned for playing alongside a sissy. It's rough down in the trenches, where linemen weighing more than three-hundred pounds hurl themselves at one another in brutal hand-to-hand combat, but it is nothing compared to the pain I kept buried inside so I could play out my dream....
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there are only a couple of ways that a male athlete in a major sport in this country will come out.
First, there might be someone who comes out in high school or early in college, who is so spectacular a player that a pro team will finally decide, "Oh, what the hell" and take a risk on them. And, yes, he will get the crap beaten out of him on a regular basis by his pro teammates and competitors for a while. But if it's someone who's always been open coming out of college, then they'll have a history. There'll be less to react to, and it may last a shorter time, especially if they can survive the hazing to gain some professional respect.
Either that, or it will be someone caught doing something terribly ordinary -- like living with a male partner -- or something so mindbendingly stupid and desperate that they can't deny it -- like almost anything George Michael (granted, neither an athlete nor closeted) seems to do in public these days. And they will be so wildly successful and talented -- something like maybe winning the Super Bowl three times in a row, or being the star player on a team that wins a few World Series or NBA titles -- that the idea that the team would or could get rid of them for something like that will be utterly inconceivable, because you don't give away titles that easily. It is possible, although not probable, that if it happens while David Stern is head of the NBA, that he might issue some sort of brief, supportive statement, based on his reaction to Tim Hardaway's "I hate gay people" remark. More likely, it would be something extremely brief and noncommittal. The NFL and MLB would officially take a position of studied silence, while probably condemning -- and possibly disciplining -- the vociferously anti-gay remarks that would come from their players and coaches and some of the owners.
And then, of course, opposing players and several of his teammates would come up with inventive ways to humiliate and physically maul him.
Thing is, it's not just team sports, although it's probably going to be more difficult there. According to the Outsports.com Out Athletes list, there have been five openly gay golfers, all women -- and one of those so designated may not have been. There are seven tennis players, five women and two men. Of the two men, one is dead and wasn't known to be gay during his active time as a player -- and being discovered to be such by getting arrested for propositioning a couple of teenagers has resulted in Bill Tilden getting as thoroughly erased from tennis history as they can manage while still acknowledging that he existed -- and the other a coach, and not active on the pro tour. While most of the five women were out while they were active, Navratilova has said, repeatedly, that being out cost her quite a lot of income and major sponsorships. Given that even today, there's less prize money and less lucrative sponsorships on the women's tour than on the men's, imagine what could be at stake for the man who dares to come out? He'd pretty much need to be independently wealthy, because unless he was a top flight player, making semi-finals and finals and winning all the time, he'd find it very difficult just to get to and enter tournaments, let alone train, maintain form, and win. A journeyman player -- which, really, is most of the players on tour outside the top 20 or so -- would have an unspeakably difficult time. And tennis and golf, let us remember, are international sports, not something as parochial as the NFL or NBA or MLB.
It might have happened sometime soon in the National Hockey League. But then...
'We love you, this won't change a thing'
By John Buccigross
ESPN.com
Updated: December 2, 2009, 6:42 PM ET
"I hope the day comes, and soon, when this is not a story." -- Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke
[...] "I had a million good reasons to love and admire Brendan. This news didn't alter any of them.
I would prefer Brendan hadn't decided to discuss this issue in this very public manner. There will be a great deal of reaction, and I fear a large portion will be negative. But this takes guts, and I admire Brendan greatly, and happily march arm in arm with him on this.
There are gay men in professional hockey. We would be fools to think otherwise. And it's sad that they feel the need to conceal this. I understand why they do so, however.
Can a gay man advance in professional hockey? He can if he works for the Toronto Maple Leafs! Or for Miami University Hockey. God bless Rico Blasi! And I am certain these two organizations are not alone here.
I wish this burden would fall on someone else's shoulders, not Brendan's. Pioneers are often misunderstood and mistrusted. But since he wishes to blaze this trail, I stand beside him with an axe! I simply could not be more proud of Brendan than I am, and I love him as much as I admire him." -- Brian Burke...
[...] "Brendan is a great guy, personable and caring. As student manager, he is involved in a lot of things for us -- video, stats and community service, to name a few of his duties.
To my knowledge, there has been nothing negative [since he came out to us]. I think it goes along the lines that Brendan is part of our family. Everyone respects Brendan, and that's all that really matters.
The players are awesome. They are very sensitive to language and how we talk in the locker room. Again, it goes back to our culture and working on relationships and behaviors.
[As far as whether a player could come out and be able to function like a normal college player], that's a tough one and I don't want to speak for any other program. As far as Miami is concerned, we are about the person. I believe we would be accepting and honestly not even think twice about it.
I think having Brendan as part of our program has been a blessing. We are much more aware of what you say and how we say it. I am guilty as anyone. We need to be reminded that respect is not a label, but something you earn by the way you live your life." -- Miami University hockey coach Enrico Blasi...
[...] "He's incredibly brave. He went back to our all-boys high school and gave a speech about the struggles gay teenagers go through and got a standing ovation from 200 kids who spend half their time insulting anyone different than them.
In so many ways, I look up to him for who he is and what he does.
Obviously, there are gay players in hockey right now, just no openly gay ones. And there are gay people in management, whether they're scouts or front-office people or coaches. We just don't have any openly gay ones right now. I think it will be a challenge for the first person that comes out, because they'll be putting themselves under a microscope.
The scary thing for me is that it might be Brendan, if he chooses to go into hockey. I don't think it's fair the face of homosexuality in hockey should be a 20-year-old college kid, but Brendan is more than willing to be the guy, which awes me. I think it's a matter of when, not if, players and management start coming out." -- Patrick Burke...
[...] "Imagine if I was in the opposite situation, with a family that wouldn't accept me, working for a sports team where I knew I couldn't come out because I'd be fired or ostracized. People in that situation deserve to know that they can feel safe, that sports isn't all homophobic and that there are plenty of people in sports who accept people for who they are." -- Brendan Burke.
Brendan Burke, 21; raised awareness by coming out as young, gay athlete
By Emma Stickgold
Globe Correspondent / February 8, 2010
He grew up on the ice, wore skates at 3, and hung out in the locker rooms of National Hockey League teams. Brendan Burke’s life revolved around hockey, the sport of his father, Brian.
Mr. Burke was considering following in his father’s footsteps in sports team management but had also toyed with the idea of becoming a politician, and interned last summer for US Representative William D. Delahunt.
Mr. Burke’s name was well known in hockey circles after he came out as a gay man. In an ESPN.com column written by John Buccigross last year, Mr. Burke described what it was like to be a young, gay athlete, struggling to come to terms with his sexuality in a culture in which homophobic slurs are common.
He returned each year to Xaverian Brothers High School in Westwood, his alma mater, to talk to students at the all-boys Catholic school about his saga, and how his father, the general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the United States men’s Olympic hockey team, was among his biggest supporters.
Mr. Burke, 21, a senior at Miami University in Ohio, died Friday in a car accident in Indiana. His friend Mark A. Reedy, 18, a first-year student at Michigan State University, also died in the crash, after the 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee Mr. Burke was driving spun out of control and into traffic on US Route 35. They were heading east in Wayne County, and the local sheriff’s department said snowy and icy road conditions were factors in the accident.
“The National Hockey League grieves tonight for the family and friends of Brendan Burke, a young man of courage and character,’’ Gary Bettman, the NHL’s commissioner, said in a statement....
So, yes, it may happen someday. We may see an active gay male player in a major sport.
Just don't expect it in this country any time soon.
Posted by iain at April 28, 2010 02:35 PM
