Adam Amel Rogers
The gay Jackie Robinson.
This short phrase has populated headlines, media soundbites, and Hollywood scripts for decades. Jackie’s legendary name is synonymous with “barrier breaker,” so “the gay Jackie Robinson” has been used to describe any trailblazer in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) community.
Ellen DeGeneres was compared to Robinson when she came out as lesbian on her TV sitcom in 1997.1 As was Harvey Milk, when he was elected as the first openly gay San Francisco supervisor in 1977. Milk mused that “every Black youth in the country was looking up to [Robinson], he was a symbol to all of them. In the same way, I’m a symbol of hope to gays and all minorities.”2
Mostly though, “the gay Jackie Robinson” has been used in the sports world to describe LGBTQ athletes, both real and hypothetical. Its use is typically well intentioned, but ultimately it is problematic, flawed, and unhelpful. I have two major issues with “the gay Jackie Robinson” framework.
First, Jackie Robinson faced unimaginable hatred and bigotry every day of his journey. From not being able to stay in the same hotels as his teammates to facing death threats on the field, Jackie was forced to overcome monumental obstacles during Jim Crow. It is imperative that we do nothing to minimize that, which is why “the gay Jackie Robinson” isn’t appropriate. There are certainly obstacles for queer and trans folks in 2019, and each out athlete described in the pages that follow has encountered bigotry and prejudice, but there is also a social and political capital that the LGBTQ community enjoys in 2019 that will stand behind and support openly queer and trans athletes.
My other issue with “the gay Jackie Robinson” framework is that Jackie’s journey to the majors was handled with such mastery that it has inspired a standard and expectation that is unattainable in most other parts of society. This comparison has created completely unreasonable expectations for queer and trans athletes. We are obsessed with the idea of a singular hero—having one person or one symbol to serve as the shining star on the hill for others to follow. This was the path that worked for Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey, and the Dodgers organization. They accomplished a huge feat, built the perfect Hollywood narrative, and established a larger-than-life legacy for Robinson that will be difficult for anyone else to achieve.
For the LGBTQ equal rights movement, there have been many successes in recent years—from nationwide marriage equality to the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, there are some real victories to celebrate. But the lack of a singular queer barrier breaker in sports has been a glaring gap in the story. It seems out of place that in 2019 I can take my husband and kids to an LGBTQ Pride event for every Major League Baseball team, where a queer artist will sing the national anthem, a gay TV star will throw out the first pitch, top out executive Billy Bean will give a speech, and any number of top corporations will proudly sponsor the rainbow-clad team giveaways, but we still won’t see any openly gay players on any team. This is why there is such a hunger for “the gay Jackie Robinson.” Media, corporate sponsors, and fans alike are desperate for the perfect Jackie Robinson–type figure to come along and break another barrier in sports.
The Jackie Robinson blueprint is an unproductive framework to follow—it isn’t going to happen in the same way that it did in 1947. The path to LGBTQ equality in sports does not include a singular hero; instead it involves several players chipping away at the rainbow ceiling. Women’s professional sports are light years ahead in terms of out athletes. Some of the best WNBA players, including Elena Delle Donne and Brittney Griner, are out; and perhaps the biggest power couple in sports is U.S. soccer legend Megan Rapinoe and WNBA All-Star Sue Bird. On the men’s side, we have had many success stories. A handful of athletes have come out publicly after retirement from the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball, and many openly LGBTQ athletes have thrived in individual sports. But we keep moving the measuring stick in pursuit of the singular hero—the Jackie Robinson figure who is going to serve as the modern symbol for equality in sports. We need to stop and look to the coming-out victories that have already happened, many of which took bits and pieces from the Robinson playbook. Here are some of their stories.
By many measurements, Major League Baseball has already had its “gay Jackie Robinson.” It happened on the same team, thirty years later. Glenn Burke was called up to the Dodgers in 1977 and immediately made an impact on the field and in the locker room. He was a big-energy teammate who is credited with inventing the high five. He was also gay. There was no big press conference or media reveal, but it didn’t take long for Burke’s teammates to realize that he wasn’t going to hide who he was. The Dodgers organization took notice as well. While Dodgers president Branch Rickey was instrumental in Jackie Robinson’s successful career, Glenn Burke had a much different relationship with Rickey’s replacement, Walter O’Malley. O’Malley and Dodgers general manager Al Campanis were concerned that word would get out that they had a gay player on the team, so they offered Burke $75,000 to get married. In turning down the money, Burke famously replied, “I guess you mean to a woman.”3
His relationship with the Dodgers continued to sour when Burke started dating the son of legendary Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda. To this day, Lasorda denies that his son dated Burke or that he was even gay. Two months into the 1978 season, Lasorda and Campanis traded Burke to the Oakland A’s, which left the Dodgers players incredulous. When Dodgers outfielder Dusty Baker asked the team’s trainer why they traded Burke, “He said, ‘They don’t want any gays on the team.’ I said, ‘The organization knows?’ He said, ‘Everybody knows.’”4
Burke’s time in Oakland was tumultuous. A’s manager Billy Martin made player introductions in spring training by saying, “This is Glenn Burke and he’s a faggot.”5 Burke was also called anti-gay epithets by fans in the stands and felt isolated by his teammates.
Burke’s teammates were reportedly afraid to shower with him—a story paralleled by Jackie Robinson’s experience thirty years prior. When Dodgers outfielder Dixie Walker asked Branch Rickey to be traded, he said that when he went home to his hardware store in Alabama, he had to answer incredulous questions from his customers about whether he showered with Jackie Robinson. The shower wasn’t just an issue for Walker: Jackie Robinson and fellow black teammates Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe all showered separately from the rest of the Dodgers players because white players were uncomfortable.
In 2014, ESPN faced a backlash from NFL players and coaches for inserting shower isolation into coverage of Michael Sam’s first days with the St. Louis Rams as an openly gay man. ESPN’s Josina Anderson reported, “Another Rams defensive player told me that ‘Sam is respecting our space’ and that, from his perspective, he seems to think that Michael Sam is waiting to kind of take a shower, as not to make his teammates feel uncomfortable.”6 Rams coach Jeff Fisher slammed the report as unethical and unprofessional.
Despite being a good player on one of the worst teams in baseball, Burke was sent down to the minors in Ogden, Utah, and he decided to retire from baseball. A few years later, he came out publicly and said, “People say I should still be playing, but I didn’t want to make other people uncomfortable, so I faded away.”7 Burke found fanfare and adoration in the LGBTQ community when he publicly came out and embraced his role as a barrier breaker. He said, “If I can make friends honestly, it may be a step toward gays and straight people understanding each other. Maybe they’ll say, ‘He’s alright, there’s got to be a few more alright.’ Maybe it will begin to make it easier for other young gays to go into sports.”8
Burke’s post-baseball life was riddled with tragedy. He ran out of money, turned to drugs, was hit by a car, and eventually died from AIDS-related illness in 1995. It took another two decades for Major League Baseball to officially acknowledge and honor Burke’s role as a pioneer in the league.
In 2013, NBA journeyman Jason Collins was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated next to the words “The Gay Athlete.” This. Was. It. The moment we had been waiting for was upon us—an active NBA player had come out publicly in a beautifully written piece. Collins was the perfect Jackie Robinson–esque candidate to be “the first.” Branch Rickey said that first and foremost he “wanted a man of exceptional intelligence” to integrate the league, which is a big part of why Jackie was selected.9 Years later, Collins fit this bill as well—he was Stanford educated, highly connected, and extremely intelligent. He had privately come out to his friends, Hillary and Bill Clinton, before the Sports Illustrated piece ran, and after the article came out he received a personal phone call from President Barack Obama. The only missing piece was that, as opposed to Jackie Robinson being the best player on the field when he broke the color barrier, Collins was at the end of his journeyman career, and it was unclear if he would be on an NBA roster the following season.
The beginning of the NBA season came and went with no Jason Collins. It seemed like this might have been another missed opportunity, but in February 2014 the Brooklyn Nets signed Collins to a midseason ten-day contract. His first game in uniform was in Los Angeles against the Lakers, so my husband and I rushed down to Staples Center to witness history. I thought it was going to be the modern version of Jackie running out onto Ebbets Field for the first time.
When my husband and I picked up our tickets at the game, I said, “Big game, huh?” The ticket office guy looked confused as to how the tragic Kobe-less Lakers could be in any kind of a big game right now. He clearly didn’t know that a barrier was about to be broken. We took our seats, and I wondered why no one was talking about the fact that history was going to occur just a few feet in front of us. Finally, the sushi-eating couple behind us started talking about it. The man said, “Oh, Jason Collins is going to play tonight.” His wife asked, “Which one is he again?” The man replied, “He’s the local guy from Harvard-Westlake High School.”
No one seemed to understand the gravity of the situation.
When Jason was announced into the game, we screamed our support and looked around to find polite applause and a smattering of people standing, but it wasn’t the Jackie Robinson–type moment that it was in my head. Collins played the rest of the season without incident and then retired.
In 1975, Minnesota Twins public relations director Tom Mee responded to a question about gay athletes from The Advocate, an LGBTQ advocacy magazine, by saying, “The cop-out, immoral lifestyle of the tragic misfits espoused by your publication has no place in organized athletics at any level. Your colossal gall in attempting to extend your perversion to an area of total manhood is just simply unthinkable.”10 This response was seen by Washington Star editor Dave Burgin, who decided it was time for his paper to explore the idea of gay players in professional sport. He assigned Lynn Rosellini to report on the topic, and her initial story, which was filled with conjecture from anonymous sources, in essence launched what Jim Buzinski at Outsports called “the start of the modern era of gays in sports.”11
David Kopay, a running back who retired from professional football in 1972, read the article, and after seeing that no athletes were willing to use their names, he said, “Well, at least I could do that. At least I can be myself.”12 Kopay then came out as gay in the Washington Star, and in 1977 he wrote a best-selling autobiography about his experiences. He wrote candidly about trying to fall in love with a woman and undergoing hypnosis in an attempt to change his sexual orientation. He also detailed his family’s negative reaction. When Kopay spoke with his father over the phone, his father told him, “If I were there he would kill me. He said he never wanted to see me again.”13 Negativity outside his family manifested in Kopay being “blacklisted” from football and not being able to get a job in coaching or scouting.
While many of the athletes who came out later were treated to significant media coverage, this surprisingly wasn’t the case immediately after Kopay’s announcement. In an article titled “The Cover-Up,” reporter Hugh Harrison detailed his efforts to contact media outlets and sports personnel after Kopay came out, and what he found was that the Kopay story was being “systematically repressed.”14 Harrison revealed that a contact at the Los Angeles Times said the reason why the paper wasn’t covering Kopay was that “it wouldn’t be good for the game. It would be bad for the world of sports in general. It would destroy our culture.”15 Not all outlets ignored the story though; the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed Kopay, whom they deemed “the Jackie Robinson of sex.”16 The interview wasn’t exactly friendly, as the reporter asked Kopay, “Since youth is a time of sexual confusion, do you think it’s a good idea to have homosexual coaches acting as role models for kids?”17 A question like that wouldn’t have been controversial at the time though, as only 27 percent of Americans supported a homosexual’s right to be a schoolteacher in 1977.18 Even supportive journalists were quick to point out that they were outliers, as Bill Dwyre from the Milwaukee Journal said in his column, “Fans Not Ready for Gay Athletes.” Dwyre detailed the conversations he heard from average fans that included an elderly Green Bay Packers fan talking about how she hoped her son would rip up Kopay’s autograph, businessmen making gay jokes, and a man saying, “I hope they never let the jerk back into pro football.”19
The public reaction to a gay athlete seemed to track with how the public viewed gay rights in general. This was a time when 80 percent of Americans thought that homosexuality was “always or almost always wrong” and 57 percent felt that homosexuality should be illegal.20 Despite the overall anti-gay climate, the reaction to Kopay’s coming out wasn’t completely negative—Kopay received hundreds of positive letters, and his book became the playbook for future gay athletes who were dealing with coming out. Lesbian tennis legend Billie Jean King told Kopay how much his book meant to her, and openly gay former NFL defensive lineman Esera Tuaolo told Kopay directly that the book saved his life. Kopay has embraced his role as patriarch of the gay athletic movement. He spoke with Jason Collins on the phone after his coming out and spent time advising Michael Sam before he made his coming-out announcement. After Sam’s proclamation, Kopay penned an open letter to him that said people will try to get in his way, but he needs to stay true to who he is and continue doing what got him there in the first place.
Kopay’s experience in the NFL showed that gay players can be successful on a team, but the argument that openly gay players disrupt the team dynamic continues to persist. After Esera Tuaolo came out in 2002, NFL running back Garrison Hearst proclaimed, “I don’t want any faggots on my team.”21 Former standout wide receiver Sterling Sharpe, who played with Tuaolo, implied that he and his teammates would have hurt Tuaolo during practice so he couldn’t make it to the games. These types of comments have been repeated by other players, but in some cases anti-gay comments have turned out to be a productive educational opportunity. After former NBA center John Amaechi came out in 2006, fellow player Tim Hardaway told a Miami radio station, “I hate gay people,”22 and years later, before the 2013 Super Bowl, San Francisco 49ers defensive back Chris Culliver said he would not welcome a gay teammate. But after both faced significant public backlash, they began volunteering with LGBTQ youth and are now vocal advocates of LGBTQ equality. While an active openly gay player may help speed this educational process for teammates who don’t have much experience with LGBTQ people, the process itself is still part of the distraction argument.
If anyone seemed destined to follow the barrier-breaking blueprint that Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson established, it was Michael Sam. In January 2014, months before the NFL draft, Howard Bragman, a public relations expert known for helping celebrities own their own story when they come out as LGBTQ, met with two sports agents who had a client who wanted to come out. Following this meeting, Bragman texted Cyd Zeigler, who, along with Jim Buzinski, runs the groundbreaking site Outsports, the ultimate authority on the LGBTQ-sports intersection. The text said, “The Eagle has landed.” Zeigler immediately knew what it meant—they were going to make history and finally put the question to rest of whether America was ready for the gay Jackie Robinson. Michael Sam was one of the best collegiate defensive ends in the country and was projected to be drafted in the third round of the NFL draft, but he wanted the team that drafted him to know he was gay. He had come out to his teammates at the University of Missouri the year before, and they continued to be one of the best teams in the country with no problems having a prominent gay player on their defense. “If we were choosing someone to be the first, we’d choose someone like Michael,” Bragman said. “Smart, athletic, handsome. I don’t think Central Casting could have come up with someone better.”23
Bragman carefully sculpted each element of the process—hand selecting Chris Connelly at ESPN for the first TV interview, John Branch at the New York Times for the print story, and Zeigler at Outsports for the process story. They had planned to have Sam come out after Pro Day, so scouts could judge him purely on his merit before getting the extra information about who he was, but enough people knew what was going to happen that Sam was in danger of being outed by someone else. He wanted to be the one to tell the world about his story, so they moved the coming-out interviews up to February, and Michael Sam came out to the world four months before the NFL draft.
The idea was to come out once and then turn attention back to football. They wanted to limit the perception that this would be a distraction—something they were never able to achieve. An anonymous NFL assistant coach told Sports Illustrated that his team wouldn’t draft Michael Sam because “there’s nothing more sensitive than the heartbeat of the locker room. If you knowingly bring someone in there with that sexual orientation, how are the other guys going to deal with it? It’s going to be a big distraction. That’s the reality. It shouldn’t be, but it will be.”24
The 2014 NFL draft entered the seventh and last round, and still there was no Michael Sam. Prior to coming out, he was slated to be a third rounder, but now scouts said he was a “tweener,” meaning he was too small to play defensive end and too inexperienced to play outside linebacker. This could have been true or could have been convenient cover for teams that didn’t want to draft him for other reasons. LGBTQ sports fans and fans of equality still eagerly awaited his name to be called as the first openly gay player to be drafted into the NFL. The draft was nearing the end, and it looked like history would have to wait. Then at pick 249—the penultimate pick—the St. Louis Rams selected Michael Sam. Rams coach Jeff Fisher said he was proud to be a part of history as he noted that the Rams were also the first football team to sign a black player—Kenny Washington—a year before Jackie Robinson signed his Dodgers contract.
When Michael’s name was called, the ESPN camera cut to his NFL draft party, where he enthusiastically kissed his boyfriend after hearing the news. It felt like we had made it. This is what equality was supposed to look like—a professional athlete being able to do his job and live as his authentic self at the same time. Michael Sam seemed to check all of the boxes that media and fans were craving for “the gay Jackie Robinson.” He was coming out before entering professional sports, was going to be able to hold his own on the field, was tough and smart, and seemed to be built for this, the same way Robinson was so many years before.
He wasn’t.
In many ways the Michael Sam story shows us what would have happened if Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson would have been unsuccessful in breaking the color barrier. If Jackie had punched Pee Wee Reese or just quit because it was all too much to handle, the league’s integration efforts would have been hindered measurably.
After the draft and the kiss, the Michael Sam story gradually trended toward ruin. Sports media had been salivating for a story like this for years—they covered his every move. Rams players were asked about him constantly, and any efforts to limit the distraction to the team completely failed. Sam didn’t help things. Four days after being drafted, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) announced a Michael Sam reality show, not exactly the move of someone who wanted to avoid media distractions. The show never happened, but the damage had already been done. Ultimately, Sam was cut from the Rams and picked up by the Dallas Cowboys practice squad. He was cut from the Cowboys a few months later and never played in an NFL regular season game.
The fallout continued to get worse, with rumors that the NFL pressured the Rams to draft Sam and the Cowboys to put him on their practice squad. Both accusations have been firmly denied by the teams and people involved, but the narrative continues. Sam then went on Dancing with the Stars and played in Canada before leaving in the middle of the season for personal reasons. If Sam hadn’t come out before the draft, who knows if he would have been drafted earlier, made a team, and had an NFL career. We don’t know what would have happened, but one thing is clear—the Michael Sam story sent a message to every closeted professional athlete that it is not worth it to come out. Part of the legacy of Jackie Robinson is that his barrier breaking was done in a way that allowed others to follow. Sam was handled in a way that pushed athletes farther into the closet.
I’ve never encountered anything that Jackie Robinson said on the record about LGBTQ people or issues. He spent his adult life fighting for racial equality and social justice, so I’d like to think that he would have been a firm ally of LGBTQ equality as well. Sure, part of his legacy in the LGBTQ community is that he set an unrealistic standard of excellence, but the bigger part of his legacy, for LGBTQ folks and everyone else, is that no space should be off limits because of who you are. Sports are supposed to be the ultimate meritocracy, where if you can play and contribute, nothing else matters. We have seen time and time again that barriers are still put up in the face of this meritocracy, but Jackie showed us all that the walls can eventually be brought down. All we want is for young queer and trans athletes to know that they don’t need to divide themselves up in order to be themselves and have the career they desire. They can live an authentic life and still be out on the field. They can have a career in pro sports and get married and have children. No space should be out of reach because of who you are—that is what Jackie Robinson taught us.