Not So Happily Ever After

Imagine this, you are a professional baseball player, you just went to the world series, you are in your twenties with many more years of baseball ahead of you, or so you think. The post " Out: The Glenn Burke story" on Pat Griffins LGBT blog was both touching and extremely disheartening. Before reading this post I had never heard of Glenn Burke much less his story. Glenn Burke was with out a doubt an amazing baseball player with a promising career but more importantly he was a charismatic and kind man who was well liked and respected by his fellow Dodger teammates. Unfortunately his career was prematurely ended at the young age of 2, and why was his promising career abruptly ended? He was gay, although he didn't come out publicly until after he had retired, it was openly known through out the baseball community because he didn’t hide who he was nor did he flaunt it. Mind you he was a black baseball player in the 1970's a time when race was a cause of tremendous turmoil, yet his sexuality triumphed racial discrimination. Burke was so secure of who he was, which made the owner of the Dodgers Tommy Lasorda so insecure that he offered him 75,000 dollars to marry a woman because he couldn't have his star player be gay. As we discussed in class, sport is associated with masculinity, it is where male values are validated and men are confirmed superior to women through the use of andocentric standards. Here was Glenn Burke, a superior athlete whose physical strength and skill exemplified " a male athlete" yet he was gay and other men in his field couldn’t handle it, how could a gay man be such a talented baseball player? To them it was just wrong. Which is truly sad, but what is more tragic is the fact that they had the power and influence in the baseball community to end his career, which is exactly what they did. After retiring early from baseball due to mistreatment and negative environment that took the fun out of the game he was once loved, Burke turned to drugs and alcohol as an escape. He ultimately died of complications related to AIDS in 1995, homeless on the streets of San Francisco. What could have become of his promising career and life? Unfortunately that we will never know because of ignorance and anti-gay discrimination. I can only hope that Glenn Burke’s story will help to educate people and prevent tragedies like this from happening in the future.