First gay baseball player

Glenn Lawrence Burke (November 16, – May 30, ) was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) player for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland Athletics from to He was the first MLB player to come out as gay, announcing it in after he retired.

Outside of the clubhouse, though, Burke lived a relatively open life. The player refused. He expected to talk about expectations for the coming season. Burke hoped a ballclub would call him and offer him a contract after he went public with his story and he wanted to make some money off it, too, since he was running out of cash.

Burke was born and raised in Oakland, California. More important, he came out as the game's first openly gay player. [1] Though he would eventually embrace his sexuality publicly, rumors and mistreatment due to speculation eventually proved to be.

Burke was called up to the major leagues inmaking his debut for the Dodgers in a game against the San Francisco Giants on April 9 of that year. His teammates were baffled, too, and thought of him as a quirky guy. Burke fell into crack addiction and homelessness and, eventually, contracted HIV.

Toward the end of his life, he was found frail and destitute, living on the streets of the Castro District, too ashamed to seek help or support from his family, who had always stood by him. It was into this landscape that Glenn Burke entered the sport of professional baseball in the s.

But he had a controlling and emotionally abusive partner who spent most of the money Burke had made— a partner who had also pressured Burke for years to come out publicly as gay, even when it might have cost him his career. After Spring Training inwhich was the earliest Burke could be traded, the Dodgers sent him to the Oakland Athletics.

Along with being the first openly gay man to have played in the MLB — he came out inafter leaving the league — Burke and his teammate Dusty Baker are often credited with inventing the high five. He never saw a dime from the story — Smith, who wrote it, kept all the money — and no ballclub ever called.

But in between the and seasons, Burke was invited to a meeting with Al Campanis, then-general manager of the Dodgers. A first baseman for the Helena Brewers, rhe Milwaukee Brewers' rookie affiliate team in Montana, David Denson in became the first player affiliated with Major League Baseball to come out as gay.

Honoring Glenn Burke MLB : In this Wiki Wormhole, we high five Glenn Burke, the first openly gay MLB player and inventor of one of the most famous gestures

As Maraniss explains in his book, it was unheard of for professional male athletes to be gay at that time. His teammates loved and respected him, even those who knew he was gay. He also spent the off-season prowling the gay bars of the Castro in San Francisco, across the Bay from his hometown of Oakland.

Eventually, Burke understood himself to be gay, which came as a relief.

He would never again play a major league game, nor would he hold a regular job. In Oakland, Burke struggled to find his groove after an injury.

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He rented rooms at the local YMCA instead of staying at the hotel with his teammates and left games in cars with various friends and lovers. Glenn Burke played in the World Series, invented the high-five, and was the first to wear Nikes during an MLB game.

His favorite in high school was basketball, but it was baseball that offered him a professional contract after graduation. That partner, Michael Smith, finally convinced Burke to come out in a article in the magazine Inside Sports.

He was a playground legend, an athlete who excelled at every sport he tried. Byhe was a regular fixture on the team and even started in the World Series that fall. Yet his accomplishments were largely forgotten or intentionally obscured, whether by a homophobic society that had no use for a gay athlete or by a baseball franchise that wanted to claim credit for the things Burke had done for the team without acknowledging the presence of an out gay man in their clubhouse.