In mid-March, Tyler Dunnington walked into Major League Baseball’s Diversity Business Summit in Arizona, summoning the courage to return to the sport he had been forced to quit a year earlier. The goal of the summit was to connect hundreds of LGBT and minority job-seekers with major and minor league baseball organizations. Prior to the summit, Dunnington was simply known as a former relief pitcher in the St. Louis Cardinals’ farm system. Only Cyd Zeigler, a founder of Outsports.com, knew Tyler was gay.
“I was one of the not-so-many players to be given a chance to pursue my dream of being a Major League Baseball player,” Dunnington told Zeigler in an email leading up to the summit. “I was also one of the unfortunate closeted gay athletes who experienced years of homophobia in the sport I loved.”
In an article for Outsports published a week after the summit, Zeigler described the homophobic atmosphere Dunnington encountered in various locker rooms and clubhouses — including players and coaches making remarks about killing gay people. As a closeted gay man, Dunnington felt torn between his passion and his identity, and was left with an agonizing choice.
“I was miserable in a sport that used to give me life,” he told Zeigler, “and ultimately I decided I needed to hang up my cleats for my own sanity.”
Dunnington’s story emerged as MLB made a series of historic moves to embrace LGBT inclusion — underscoring the significant strides the league has made in the short time since Dunnington quit the sport last year. In early March, the league forged a partnership with the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce to help LGBT-owned businesses bid on contracts and seize opportunities within professional baseball. Around the same time, the Phillies announced the team’s first official LGBT pride night. A few weeks earlier, the Mets had made a similar announcement, becoming the first professional sports team in New York City to host an official LGBT pride night (although the Islanders did host a promotional night with the You Can Play Project earlier this year). The Phillies and Mets joined the growing number of teams who host official LGBT pride nights, including the Chicago Cubs, Oakland Athletics, and Detroit Tigers, among others.
As an extension of their official pride night, the Mets also partnered with the LGBT Network to raise awareness about bullying and inclusion in local communities. A portion of the proceeds from ticket sales will now go toward the LGBT Network’s Safe Schools Initiative in Queens and Long Island.
The Mets garnered praise following the announcement, including from Mayor Bill de Blasio, for publicly embracing LGBT equality and working to foster an inclusive environment at Citi Field. Cyd Zeigler of Outsports, however, expressed skepticism about such initiatives.
“The reason the MLB focuses on [pride nights] is a very simple math problem,” he said in an interview with ThinkProgress. “Major League Baseball teams have 81 home games and big stadiums they have to fill.” As a result, he explained, teams are compelled to host a range of themed nights to draw different groups of people into the stadium.
A recent article in the International Business Times, “How New York Mets’ LGBT Pride Night Can Increase Fans And Profits For MLB Franchise,” underscores Zeigler’s point. According to the article, the LGBT community represents an estimated $884 billion in annual buying power, so “it’s becoming in the best interest of many franchises to actively court that group.”
“I don’t think the nights themselves are going to change the leagues.”
Pride nights are “great for the community to see that these teams aren’t homophobic institutions,” Zeigler said, “but I don’t think the nights themselves are going to change the leagues.”
Larry Felzer, who organized the Phillies’ unofficial LGBT pride night for over a decade before assisting with this year’s official event, disagrees.
“We came in as outsiders saying, ‘We want to organize this group,’ and the Phillies welcomed us,” Felzer told ThinkProgress.
During the first few unofficial pride nights in Philadelphia, protestors confronted LGBT fans. But the Phillies stood by the group, implementing a policy that banned signs containing derogatory language about sexual orientation, race, or religion.
“I would like to think in some small ways these LGBT nights are contributing to a feeling of comfortableness [within the league],” Felzer said.
While Felzer and Zeigler disagree about the overall impact of pride nights, they agree that MLB made a historic step toward LGBT equality by hiring Billy Bean as the league’s Ambassador for Inclusion in 2014. Bean played for the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Diego Padres during his six seasons in the major leagues, shielding his private life as a closeted gay man for fear of facing hostility in the clubhouse and locker room. It wasn’t until 1999, four years after he retired from professional baseball, that he publicly came out — becoming only the second retired player in MLB history to do so.
“Culturally, we have some challenges,” Bean recently said in an interview. “But I can tell you if there was somebody doing the job that I’m doing while I was playing, it would’ve changed my whole life.” Bean spoke to ThinkProgress while on the road, traveling between organizations in the major and minor league systems to discuss diversity and inclusion. While the league doesn’t require teams to hold these internal talks, 27 major league teams and 15 minor league teams have requested that Bean speak with players and front office staff since he was hired by the league.
“I feel like whether we’re able to talk to each person individually or not, I know that the message is out there, and that it’s [also] being generated from each club,” Bean said.
In addition to shaping organizational attitudes toward LGBT issues, Bean has also been instrumental in supporting LGBT individuals within professional baseball who struggle with the same issues that he did over twenty years ago. Last August, David Denson, a first basemen in the Milwaukee Brewers’ minor league system, became the first active player in the MLB system to come out as gay. He first came out to a few of his teammates, and then eventually his entire team. After seeing the positive response from his organization, he decided to make an announcement publicly — but first turned to Bean for support. Last November, Spenser Clark, a bat boy for the Washington Nationals, penned an open letter on Outsports discussing his experiences of being gay and working in professional baseball. Clark had reached out to Bean for advice and reassurance leading up to its publication.
With the increasing presence of openly gay figures on the field in baseball — including pitcher Sean Conroy and umpire Dale Scott, in addition to Denson and Clark — the prospect of a major league player coming out seems more likely than ever. For Cyd Zeigler, this is the litmus test for achieving true LGBT inclusion in professional baseball: creating an atmosphere that encourages and reassures players about publicly coming out. Zeigler wants to see this milestone achieved as soon as possible. Bean, on the other hand, believes this historic moment needs to happen organically — even if that means waiting a bit longer.
“I don’t want the report card of our sport to be judged in a quantitative way by how many players we have out.”
“I don’t want the report card of our sport to be judged in a quantitative way by how many players we have out,” he said. “Obviously, it would be [a] huge moment… but I would want that experience, when it happens, to be a positive one.” Bean’s litmus test for achieving LGBT inclusion in professional baseball “is about the culture we create in and around our sport in every facility and in every workplace.”
At the Diversity Business Summit in Arizona, Bean had the chance to meet with Tyler Dunnington and discuss his intentions of returning to baseball in an administrative role. Bean was able to connect Dunnington with several teams in the MLB system, and believes his courage to return to the sport is a testament to the progress the league continues to make.
“I feel optimism and hope by his desire to want to work in baseball,” Bean said. “I’m going to keep my eyes open and hope for the best for him — just like everybody else.”