Every openly queer person has their coming-out story. Mine began in the fall of 2002, in my parents’ living room in Amarillo, Texas, a small city hundreds of miles northwest of the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area. After I came out to them as gay, my mom’s knee-jerk, red-faced response was swift and stern: “You mean you’re choosing to be gay. Why are you even telling us this?”
When I later told her about my first visit to a Pride parade, she asked me “what the hell is there to be proud of?”
The implication, of course, was that I should feel the exact opposite of pride: shame about my sexual orientation.
I don’t fault my mom for those opinions. She was the product of her surrounding culture. People she knew (or, in the case of out queer folks: people she didn’t know), discriminatory messages emanating from her church’s pulpit, and perhaps most especially: a near-total lack of visibility of gay people in mass media. As with the vast majority of American families, we feasted heavily on sports fandom in our media diet. For my mom, dad, and me, that meant baseball and the Texas Rangers.
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.
In 2001, the Chicago Cubs hosted Major League Baseball’s first public event marketed toward the LGBTQ+ community. Slowly but surely, year after year, more teams began announcing Pride Nights at their ballparks. Take a quick glance at MLB’s 2021 June calendar and, in recognition of their diverse fan bases, you’ll see Pride month promotions on all but one of MLB’s teams’ schedules.
The lone holdout? You guessed it. My beloved Rangers.
Adding a promotional Pride Night to a team’s schedule may seem like a meaningless gesture designed merely to juice ticket sales for a single day, but it’s certainly not meaningless to the gay kids growing up in rural communities. Nor to their parents. To this day, I feel unseen and unvalued by the franchise that I’ve rooted for since Pete Incaviglia’s rookie season.
Some would point to the geography and politics of the state as an excuse for Rangers brass refusing to hold a promotional Pride game. Except the Stars, Wings, FC Dallas, and Mavericks all hold Pride events each season and have for many years. So this isn’t a DFW market thing. This is very clearly a courage thing. Or, to be more precise, a complete lack of courage on the part of team owners (Ray Davis & Bob Simpson) and management (Neil Leibman, John Blake, Jon Daniels, Chris Young, Chuck Morgan, Chris Woodward).
Is this what they want their collective legacy to be, while at the helm of this franchise? If Rangers leadership wants to know what they’re risking by continuing to stand in glaring opposition to a more inclusive social fabric, they need look no further than the infamous legacy of Tom Yawkey and the Red Sox at the tail end of baseball’s integration of Black players.
Standing in stark contrast to the Rangers are the San Francisco Giants. Just last weekend, they blazed a new trail for other franchises to follow when they not only flew trans and pride flags at Oracle Park, but even adorned their hats and jersey sleeves with the rainbow colors of the Progress Pride flag and had the fabulously talented Honey Mahogany sing our National Anthem. The Rangers front office could learn a thing or two about courage from veteran third baseman, Evan Longoria.
Evan Longoria sporting the Pride Day wristbands in addition to the logo and patch. pic.twitter.com/VGMF4Yi6TA
— Jason A. Churchill (@ProspectInsider) June 5, 2021
At this point, it won’t be enough for the Texas baseball franchise to merely add a Pride Game to the 2022 promotional schedule and call it a day. Now that they are the sole glaring exception in the major leagues, the Rangers’ responsibility is even greater than the other 29. They must make meaningful, lasting, sincere outreach to the Metroplex LGBTQ+ community. Dallas-area non-profits that help LGBTQ+ homeless youth, like Outlast Youth, could do an immense amount of life-saving good with a sizable donation from the Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation, for example.
In the ensuing years after coming out, I learned of gay baseball pioneers Glenn Burke (fun fact: he popularized the High Five!), Billy Bean, Kevin McClatchy, Dale Scott. They each have their own stories of courage and tragedy to tell, and in each of them, I see hope for a stronger, more inclusive future for baseball. And each team’s ownership has an outsized role to play in determining how fast that future arrives.
Countless baseball and Rangers memorabilia sat next to my mom and dad on their coffee table and adorned the living room walls during that most difficult of conversations almost two decades ago. I can’t help but think back on that time and wonder how that conversation might have gone differently had my parents witnessed just a modicum of positive representation of LGBTQ+ people in the media. In fact, I *know* it would have gone differently. When we reconciled 10 years later, she told me that when she saw the first gay kiss on Days of Our Lives in 2012, she suddenly realized that there simply wasn’t anything for her to be afraid of.
There are hundreds of thousands of queer kids in Texas right now whose mental health and relationships with their families depend greatly on the example set by our surrounding culture, its media, and–yes–even our communities’ sports teams. So what are the Texas Rangers waiting for? It’s far past time they at least do the bare minimum: make 2021 the final year without an LGBTQ+ Pride Game in Arlington.
Matt Douglass, an avid fan of baseball and the Texas Rangers since the mid-80s, has attended games at 32 Major League ballparks (including a handful of sold-out LGBTQ+ Pride Games). When he’s not watching baseball or reading about baseball or having nightmares about the 2011 World Series, he works in tech.
Jim
This is the 21st century Rangers!!!! I know you’re in Texas but that’s no excuse.
Of course, I live in Austin, TX where the Police Captain marches in Pride and the school district has a HUGE contingent in Pride.
Jim
By the way make your voice heard.
tweet your issue to @Rangers
Cam
“” This is very clearly a courage thing. Or, to be more precise, a complete lack of courage on the part of team owners (Ray Davis & Bob Simpson) and management (Neil Leibman, John Blake, Jon Daniels, Chris Young, Chuck Morgan, Chris Woodward).””
————
Or maybe it’s a bigotry thing.
sfhairy
Find another team to root for. FFS, stop whining.
eidolonnyc
Constructive!
whateverokok
THANK YOU!!!
Dr Bob
Get a clue, it’s TEXAS! They hate the gays, it’s in their party platform. Move or support another team.
DarkZephyr
Did you read the article? He pointed out teams IN Texas that ARE being supportive of the LGBT community. “They’re in Texas” is no excuse.
whateverokok
NO! Texas does not hate gays!!! I am getting more than a little tired of the old south hating gays rhetoric. It just simply isn’t true.
Thad
The Houston Astros are holding a Pride night this month. Last I visited, that was TEXAS.
Some MLB Pride events are actually being held outside June. I plan to attend Pride at the Pittsburgh Pirates Saturday, August 14, 2021.
DomitoJo
thank you matt for sharing your story! hopefully they will notice and take action!
leo1008
“a near-total lack of visibility of gay people in mass media.”
Fair point. But, you’re talking about the early 2000s … ? (You mention the fall of 2002);
Well, there was more visibility for gay people in mass media by that time then I could have ever remotely imagined when I was a kid.
Will and Grace had been on TV for 4 years by that time (a show completely unlike anything I ever saw on TV as a kid)!
Ellen had done a “coming out” episode 5 years earlier.
The Pride Parades had been going on for 30 years by that point, and had spread much more extensively across the country (and the world).
Just saying: there could’ve certainly been more gay representation in the mass media at the time that you describe, and it’s a tragic shame that gay marriage was a potent culture war issue for Republicans during the time period you are talking about; but,
From the perspective of my own childhood, the early 2000s was a cultural renaissance of gay representation!
eidolonnyc
EXCELLENT article. Thank you for saying it so well.
whateverokok
Oh, you’re team doesn’t support you with a special day just for you?! Who gives a flying f–k about that sh-t!. I don’t care if my favorite team supports me. I’m not watching that team to see them support me. I’m watching the game. Which the last time I checked, the game of baseball or any other sport is not about gays, straights, love, and sex.
The same goes for music and movies. I am not listening to someone to hear them sing about support for me. I listen to hear good music and good writing. If they speak about something universal, I’m sure ALL will relate. As for movies, I don’t watch a movie for support of who I am. That is something I have never understood. Why do we seek out others to validate or support who we are? We know who we are and that is all that matters. Stop trying to get validation and self worth from media. All that comes from within.
And don’t spew any crap about youth who are suffering mentally and how seeing representation will make them better or stop them from contemplating death. As someone who suffers from mental illness, I can tell you representation in media has not kept me from being depressed and does not ward off mental illness. Mental illness is no laughing matter and should not be treated. We need to encourage others to find help, find strength, and stop being such GD sheep. The best thing that can said on all this comes from an old song with the sagest of advice:
“What I am is what I am, are you what you are or what?