Over at Salon, King Kaufman has a thoughtful look at whether gay people would be accepted in baseball, and comes out fairly optimistic: he interviews Eric Anderson, an adjunct sociology prof at SUNY-Stony Brook who edited a book on gay athletes (Anderson was also the professor on the “Real Gilligan’s Island”), who says:
“We assume that sports are one of the most homophobic environments left in American institutions… so what it really is is sort of a survey of homophobia on that last front. And with findings like that it basically shows that being homophobic is increasingly unpopular.”
Interestingly, unlike in Take Me Out, the Broadway play in which the gay ballplayer is a superstar, Anderson thinks the first gay ballplayer will be someone who’s an AAAA guy:
“He’s had his shot, he realizes he’s a no-name, he’s going to have no career. He is literally Billy Bean of today. And he realizes, ‘My God, if I come out of the closet now, I am an international celebrity. I’m on the front page of every magazine, there’s movies made about me, I’m on “Oprah,” I’ve got book deals, I’ve got it all.’ And if your career is over and you know it, why not?” (Link)
That’s a really cynical reason to come out, and I’d hope that the first gay athlete does so for more personal reasons than that.