In wake of the NBA’s Jason Collins announcing that he’s gay–and the largely positive and supportive response to him–Deadspin unearthed a 1982 Inside Sports article about Glenn Burke, a gay pro athlete during the 1970s, who was out to his teammates in a less-enlightened era for sexual politics. The opening:
“The game is over and the baseball player sits in the hotel lobby, his eyes fixed on nothing. He thinks his secret is safe but he is never quite sure, so at midnight in the lobby it is always best to avoid the other eyes. He neither hears the jokes nor notices that a few teammates are starting to wear towels around their waists in the locker room. He does not want to hear or see or know, and neither do they.
The baseball player waits until the lobby empties of teammates and coaches. Some are in the bar, some out on the town, some in their rooms. Some, of course, have found women. He walks briskly out the door toward the taxicab, never turning his head to look back. He mutters an address to the driver and has one foot in the cab. …
‘Hey, where you going, man? You said you were staying in tonight.’
The baseball player feels his lie running up the back of his neck. ‘Changed my mind.’
‘Can I come with you? I got nothing going tonight.’
The baseball player pauses. ‘You don’t want to go where I’m going,’ he says at last. He is leaving a crack there, in case this teammate knows the secret and really would like to go with him.
‘Okay—have it your way.’
The baseball player is in the back seat, the door slams, his heart slams, the cab is pulling away. Fifteen minutes later it stops a block from the place the passenger actually intends to go. He pays the driver. Did the driver look at him sort of funny?
The baseball player steps out and walks back a block, his face turned 90 degrees to his left shoulder, away from the traffic, just in case. What if he meets someone he knows there tonight? There was the ballplayer’s brother the one night and the son of.a major league manager another. Man, they have to know, don’t they? And if he is recognized tonight, should he pretend he is someone else?
Suddenly he is pulling open the door and the men inside smile and the music swallows him and for a few hours in the bar the baseball player does not feel so alone.”
