Of the most popular team sports in the United States–football, baseball, basketball, ice hockey, and soccer–all have now had at least one active openly gay athlete at the highest level, except one.
We’ll give you a moment to guess.
As LGBTQ History Month comes to a close, and with baseball at the top of sports fans’ minds as the Houston Astros battle it out with the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series, we thought it was the perfect time to honor these brave pro players of past and present who have come out.
Notably, a few of them are currently active on minor league teams, helping to change the culture and set the stage for the inevitable: future openly LGBTQ players suiting up for major league games.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
It took a lot of guts for these ten players to speak their truths…
Solomon Bates
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The pitcher was released from the Giants’ minor league Richmond Flying Squirrels this year, but Bates still had cause for celebration—becoming the second active minor league baseball player to publicly come out as gay. “I’m not giving up on what I want to do. I’m still going to open up doors for gay athletes like me. Still will strive to be one of the greatest to do it,” he posted to Instagram.
Bryan Ruby
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Ruby came out as a gay in 2021 while playing for the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, a Mavericks Independent Baseball League team that was formerly a minor-league affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. That made him the first publicly out baseball pro in active play. “Each time somebody comes out in industries where queer people have not been historically represented in the mainstream, it helps to crumble the myth that you can’t be yourself,” Ruby told USA Today at the time. “But we’re in the 2020s. It’s about damn time for this. If I can help just one person from this, then that’s greater than any single hit or home run or win that I ever get on the field.” A man of many talents, Ruby doubles as a country songwriter.
Kieran Lovegrove
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In a 2021 ESPN interview, Lovegrove came out publicly as bisexual while playing for the Los Angeles Angles Double A affiliate Rocket City Trash Pandas in Madison, Alabama. He spoke candidly of the depression, anxiety, and alcoholism he suffered through prior to coming out to those closest to him in 2019, and also alluded to the fact that there are many closeted players out there. “Baseball is a game of statistics,” he said. “And if you want to tell me that I’m the only queer person in baseball, I’m just not going to agree with you.”
Glenn Burke
Burke played outfield for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Oakland A’s between 1976 and 1979, but his promising career in the majors was cut short by antigay ridicule and harassment from legendary figures in the game. He later moved to San Francisco, where he embraced his identity and remained active in sports, winning medals in basketball and sprinting at the first-ever Gay Games in 1982, and playing for many years in the San Francisco Gay Softball League. Burke died in 1995 of complications from AIDS. In 1994, a year before his death, he told the New York Times that, “prejudice drove me out of baseball sooner than I should have. But I wasn’t changing.”
Billy Bean
After playing outfield for the Tigers, Dodgers and Padres in a career that spanned from 1987 to 1995, Billy Bean walked away from baseball to be with the man he loved. Due to the homophobia he observed within the organization, he felt he had no choice but to retire if he wanted to live more openly as a gay man. Four years later he came out publicly, and along with Burke, remains one of only two players to come out who’ve played in Major League Baseball. In a full-circle moment, Bean was appointed MLB’s first Ambassador for Inclusion a decade later. “Baseball is always trying to improve and be a strong example to our fans, not only on the field but with our values away from it. I am very proud to be a part of that process,” he told Queerty in 2019.
Sean Conroy
To mark Pride month in 2015, Conroy became the first pro baseball player to come out publicly while still active. The pitcher for the independent Sonoma Stompers said in a team statement that, “Being gay doesn’t change anything about the way I play or interact with teammates.” His contributions to diversifying the sport are now included in an exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
David Denson
#Brewers @progressive_pro pic.twitter.com/6TNiCe3RK4
— David Denson (@_DavidD_41) September 2, 2013
At the age of 20, Denson became the first active player affiliated with Minor League Baseball to come out as gay in 2015. In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the first baseman for the Milwaukee Brewers’ rookie affiliate in Helena, Mont. said that staying in the closet was starting to “affect my game because I was so caught up in trying to hide it. I was so concerned about how they would feel. I was pushing my feelings aside. Finally, I came to terms with this is who I am and not everybody is going to accept it. Once you do that, it’s a blessing in itself.”
Tyler Dunnington
A pitcher for rookie and Class A teams affiliated with the Cardinals in 2014, Dunnington’s baseball career was unfortunately cut short by the homophobia he witnessed on his team. “I experienced both coaches and players make remarks on killing gay people during my time in baseball, and each comment felt like a knife to my heart,” he revealed to Outsports. “I was miserable in a sport that used to give me life.” He quit after one season and came out shortly after.
Jason Burch
Burch pitched for four different Minor League Baseball franchises from 2003 to 2008. He came out to one teammate during his final season with the Bowie Baysox in 2008, and later expressed regret for not being more open. “Looking back, I wish I had told the whole world that I’m gay from day one,” he told Outsports in 2015. “That feeling of being relied upon, that people must turn to you as a closer to make things right, to have that role – and to have people have that feeling about me in that role – as a gay man, I think that would have been a powerful message. If we are talking about changing people’s opinions, I do think that would have been a powerful message. But I wasn’t really thinking about that at the time.” He’s now a practicing lawyer and LGBT Bar Board Member.
John Dillinger
Dillinger stayed in the closet throughout his 11-year career in the minors, though he’d occasionally sneak out to a bear party from time to time. He came out two years after his 2005 retirement from baseball. Examining his journey, and baseball as a whole, he offered a hopeful outlook to Outsports in 2012: “I 100-percent believe that most of your teammates will respect you even more if you are honest with them. Baseball as well as all major sports have come a long way as far as not tolerating bigoted behavior and homophobic slurs. There have been quite a few examples recently. Successful athletes have one thing in common which helps make them successful: NO FEAR.”
JeffBaker
Yes!
still_onthemark
Minor league teams often have goofy names, like the Toledo Mud Hens (made famous by M*A*S*H bc the cross-dressing Corporal Klinger was from there), but I’d never heard of the Rocket City Trash Pandas (!!). Turns out “trash pandas” is a local term for raccoons. Minor league baseball is great way to see hot guys in action, close up, for not much money! See future stars and even current stars rehabbing from an injury.
“To mark Pride month in 2015, Conroy became the first pro baseball player to come out publicly while still active.” But wasn’t Glenn Burke OUT in the ’70s when he got so much harassment?