This weekend, Brewers minor-league outfielder and first baseman David Denson publicly announced that he is gay, becoming the first actively-out gay player on a minor-league affiliate. The 20-year-old was a 15th-round pick of the Brewers in 2013 and plays for Rookie-level Helena. Denson’s history-making announcement adds him to a list of recent out gay pioneers in the major professional sports, including Jason Collins in the NBA, Michael Sam in the NFL, and Sean Conroy, who became the first out gay player in independent baseball earlier this year with the Sonoma Stompers of the Pacific Association.
It is important to understand the history of gay people in Major League Baseball does not begin with Denson. As Christina Kahrl wrote at ESPN, Glenn Burke, an outfielder for the Dodgers and Athletics in the 1970s, was out to his teammates and coaches (but sportswriters, as Allen Barra wrote in 2013, refused to report on his sexuality). Billy Bean, an outfielder for the Padres, Dodgers, and Tigers from 1987-1995, also came out publicly after his retirement and currently works with MLB as its ambassador for inclusion.
Burke came out publicly in a story for Inside Sports in 1982, where he discusses why he left baseball, his relationship with Tommy Lasorda, his belief that Lasorda traded him because of his sexuality, and more. Burke explains the difficulties of navigating the sports world as a gay man:
“It’s harder to be a gay in sports than anywhere else, except maybe president. Baseball is probably the hardest sport of all. Every man in America wants his son to be a baseball player. The first thing every father buys for his son is a ball and glove. It’s all-American. Only a superstar could come out and admit he was gay and hope to stay around, and still the fans probably would call the stadium and say they weren’t going to bring their kids. Instead of understanding, they blackball you.”
Sports, for many fans, is one of our earliest introductions to mass culture, if not the first. Whether from our own parents and coaches or from the talking heads on television broadcasts, we absorb core lessons about the way of the world through sports. This is what society means when we collectively talk about sports making men out of boys, and what amateur coaches mean when they proudly assert they are molding the next generation of men through their work.
We have to acknowledge, then, that sports have not been just a place where homophobia is enacted, where anti-gay sentiments show up by happenstance. Sports, rather, have been a space where homophobia is created, sustained, and propagated. Just 40 years ago, Jack Danahy, a former FBI agent who served as director of NFL Security from 1969-1980 offered his view on gay individuals in football:
“If there were actually a homosexual in the league, which I have no evidence there is, if you have a homosexual, he’s always subject to possible compromise. That’s a standard situation in world activities. In espionage, there’s been a history in international affairs of homosexuals being compromised and used against their better interests so that would naturally be a matter of concern to us.”
This was the view of gay players just two generations ago. Far from being seen as human, they were a threat, a nuisance, a “matter of concern.” It’s this kind of view that led the Dodgers to offer Glenn Burke a $75,000 bribe to enter into a sham marriage with a woman. It’s what led Tommy Lasorda to deny his own son’s homosexuality and that he died of complications with AIDS. It’s this warped and hateful understanding of sexuality that forces players to such secrecy that in organized baseball, which has seen tens of thousands of players suit up, we only know of three who have been gay, and only two have been out while in uniform.
It is this preceding history that makes Denson’s announcement so important. Baseball has not just been a place where people like Denson aren’t welcome, it’s a place where people like him have been actively rejected. That Denson feels comfortable enough to come out now, when the pressure against being openly gay in baseball has previously been enough to keep so many quiet and entirely exile others from the game, is a signal of real change.
The role of MLB and the Brewers organization in Denson’s announcement is also extremely encouraging. As Tom Haudricourt reported for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the advice of a professional counselor made available by the Brewers helped him realize he wanted to come out to team officials. And Bean, as part of his role with MLB, has been serving as Denson’s mentor throughout his preparation for the announcement.
The NFL swiftly rejected Michael Sam after his announcement. Jason Collins’s announcement was accepted by the NBA, but his coming out was self-supported, his Sports Illustrated article written and crafted while he was a free agent. That the Brewers have not only been accepting but an active supporter of Denson throughout this whole process is the most encouraging indication that the culture is changing. The Brewers didn’t treat Denson as a distraction or a matter of concern. They treated him like a human being who needed somebody to talk to and somebody to help him.
Denson has been struggling on the field in 2015. He hit just .195/.264/.305 for Class-A Wisconsin before being sent down, and he is hitting a mediocre .247/.339/.390 in 43 games for Rookie-level Helena. But chances are we haven’t seen the real Denson for a while. He was near rock bottom as spring training approached, as he told Haudricourt, “It became a depression level. I wasn’t being myself. It was visible in my body language. I didn’t know if I should still stay in the sport.” Without the support of a team, the David Denson’s of the past have simply slipped out of the game and into its past unnoticed. Now, the 20-year-old will finally get the chance to play with a weight lifted off his shoulders.
Despite the demotion to Rookie ball this year, Denson is still younger than the average player in his league. Yes, he’s a long shot to reach the majors, a 15th-rounder with a strikeout problem who needs to find a positional home. But most importantly, Denson is still a ballplayer. The chance he’s getting—to become the best ballplayer he can, and to do so in his own way—is nothing more than the chance every ballplayer deserves.