SOME thoughts on the bizarre baseball brouhaha I started with Monday’s column: Mets manager Bobby Valentine’s remarks were not taken out of context. I quoted exactly what he said when asked by Details (a magazine, incidentally, with a significant gay readership) if MLB was ready for an openly gay player. Bobby could have simply said “I don’t know” if he’d wanted to avoid controversy . . . Valentine was being refreshingly frank.
Even taking the low-ball end of statistics on the prevalence of homosexuality, there would be at least 25 gay players currently in the Major Leagues. Mike Piazza made it clear he’d been hearing the gay rumors about himself for ages – well before my piece (which didn’t name him, anyway). Weeks ago, a friend who’s gay and a Mets fan was telling me that he “knew” Mike was gay because “he has those beautiful doe eyes.” “You wish,” I replied. And indeed the rumors, at least in Piazza’s case (there are others), may be based on what the gay community would love to be true.
Without going into past scandals, demonstrably heterosexual Mets GM Steve Phillips is the last guy who should be calling anyone else “reckless.”
Airing it all out
APART from the bitter divorce court proceedings, we haven’t heard much of late from Donna Hanover (right), who used to call herself Mrs. Rudy Giuliani and served for a time as the city’s first lady. Well, Donna’s going to have a forum of her own June 25, when she chairs a panel at the big state broadcasters convention in Lake George. (Other headliners invited to talk to the radio crowd include Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Gov. George Pataki, loose-lipped money-honey Maria Bartiromo and vying Democratic gubernatorial candidates Andrew Cuomo and Carl McCall.) I don’t know what’s happening with Donna’s love life just now, but if she needs an eligible escort for the convention dinner, she could hook up with NBC sports chief Dick Ebersol, who’ll be there to receive a broadcaster of the year award. Dick’s available, having recently split from his wife, Susan St. James.
Pay the butler
I’VE been saying for months that if the British establishment keeps hounding Paul Burrell, princess Diana’s loyal butler, he’ll go ahead with a searing tell-all book. Next week’s Globe has a big front-page story purporting to have the details of what Burrell will say. The supermarket tab claims the butler “spied on Camilla’s sex romps” with Prince Charles, got into a fist fight with the future king of England, and can detail “Diana’s striptease for [her] lover.” And that’s just the start of it. The royal family would seem well-advised to get off Burrell’s back, pay him some money and let him step back into the anonymity he craves.
Baldwin country
MY colleague Richard Johnson would be well advised to avoid the Hamptons this weekend, else he find himself in the middle of the horror film called “Attack of the Baldwins.” All the thespian brothers and various spouses will appear Sunday for their mother Carol’s breast cancer research fund, which is the beneficiary of Bridgehampton’s first Concours d’Elegance, the fancy name for a show featuring some beautifully restored vroom-vrooms which will have been competing in a three-day rally.
Capitol awards
HARLEM’S long-serving Democratic Congressman Charlie Rangel would be the first to admit he can be a bit of a ham if it helps get a political point across. But now Charlie is getting honored by the Directors Guild of America, not for over-emoting but for his sterling work in D.C. to get funds for film and television production in new York. He’ll be at the guild gala at the Waldorf June 9 in the company of Halle Berry, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Tim Robbins and Howard Stringer – a more fun group than Rangel has to hang with on Capitol Hill. Another political refugee will be Tipper Gore, who’s presenting Jane Alexander with an award for the hard time she served as head of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Funny business
WITH the huge grosses for “Spider-Man” and the good reviews his book is getting, CBS newsman Dan Raviv finds that “Comic Wars” is a hot property. He’s had nibbles for screen rights from FX, HBO, TNT and NBC. (“Comic Wars” covers the battle for the Marvel stable of superheroes and the role Ron Perelman played.) Raviv tells me that there is one mystery source also bidding for the movie rights and he suspects it’s someone working for Perelman, who supposedly wants to bury the project. C’mon, Dan, you’re getting paranoid. Tycoons just don’t do things like that, do they?
Shaw dea
lIT’S not great art, but the exhibition opening tonight at Webster Hall has a lot of history going for it. Curator Baird Jones has put together a big selection of the paintings of Artie Shaw, the musician who used his instrument to bed and wed the likes of Ava Gardner and Lana Turner, along with six other slightly lesser lights. Jones says Shaw, who turns 92 today and lives in seclusion in Los Angeles, will soon to be interviewed by Dan Rather for “48 Hours,” and may even tootle a note or two from his golden clarinet.