Saturday, May 26, 2001

Open Secrets

Salon.com News | Baseball boyfriend?

This story is still making the rounds. Kettman's article makes the case for there being a cultural vacuum into which a prominent male athelete ought to out himself into. (There's a prepositional pretzel for you.) He argues that it's only a matter of time before gays get their Jackie Robinson and that when it happens we're going to see how pervasive homophobia still is. Passages like the following make me think that the day may come soon:
It's an open secret among sports insiders that there have been all-star-caliber gay athletes playing in each of the four major U.S. sports in recent years, including baseball. Lemon's article has inspired coast-to-coast guessing games about which rumored gay major leaguer is his supposed boyfriend. Working on the New Republic piece, I got a tip from a gay friend that a certain East Coast star -- maybe even Lemon's boyfriend, if his story is legit -- was a regular at a gay bar in town. A visit to the gay bar left little doubt that the story was true. The star's picture was on a ledge above the bar. Several people there had stories about the star that passed a beat writer's bullshit tests.
The more this story makes gets ink, the harder it's going to be for players to keep their 'open secrets' secret.
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