# When will we have an ACTIVE openly gay athlete in one of the big 4 sports? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [October 23, 2011, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549 "2011-10-23T16:36:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/1 "2011-10-23T16:36:24Z")
For the purposes of this discussion, I’m using “Big 4” in the American way: MLB Baseball, NFL Football, NBA Basketball, and NHL Hockey. Anyway, I don’t why the question recently popped into my head, but it did, and I wanted to see what other people thought. So have at it. For me, I think we’re right on the cusp of a professional baseball player coming out during his playing days. I think football and basketball are still too “macho” for a player to feel comfortable coming out and (I admit my bias here), I just don’t care about hockey enough to feel like it’ll lead the way. But as same-sex marriage becomes more accepted at the state level, I can see an athlete finally saying “fuck it” and marrying his boyfriend in a big lavish ceremony. Especially if he just signs a massive contract as one of the biggest players in the game. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/2 "2011-10-23T17:01:36Z")
What does Serious Sam have to do with it? ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/3 "2011-10-23T17:29:14Z")
I voted within 5 years, and I’d guess it will be a baseball player as well. ---
**Author:** ![markdash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@markdash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markdash)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/4 "2011-10-23T17:44:45Z")
I think baseball would be the least likely sport, actually. Baseball players are in general more conservative and less educated. At the risk of getting into a political debate, these qualities make baseball players less open to homosexuality than the players in other sports. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/5 "2011-10-23T18:18:33Z")
> [@markdash](#): > > I think baseball would be the least likely sport, actually. Baseball players are in general more conservative and less educated. At the risk of getting into a political debate, these qualities make baseball players less open to homosexuality than the players in other sports. Maybe, but but it’s more in an individual team sport in the sense that even if your teammates dislike you, you can still play if you can hit and field. In football, and to a lesser extent in basketball, your peers can really freeze you out, or get you hurt if they don’t like you for some reason. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/6 "2011-10-23T18:56:25Z")
Worth reading: [Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos](http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/Gay-hockey-players-celebrate-legacy-of-late-Bren?urn=nhl-317284) ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/7 "2011-10-23T20:08:56Z")
The nice thing about answering “within fifteen years” is I’m still right if it happens within five. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/8 "2011-10-23T20:23:26Z")
> [@markdash](#): > > I think baseball would be the least likely sport, actually. Baseball players are in general more conservative and less educated. At the risk of getting into a political debate, these qualities make baseball players less open to homosexuality than the players in other sports. Football’s the same way, though for different reasons; football players are disproportionately Southern, and indoctrinated through a small number of university programs where, let’s be honest, the “education” received by many football players is a joke. Football is also overwhelmingly black, and I think it fair to say that acceptance of gays lags in the black community. I would guess hockey will be first, simply because so many of its players are from more liberal upbringings than the southern upbringings of so many football and baseball players. All hockey players are from Canada, northern Europe, or the northern, more liberal states. As macho a game as it is, people do tend to separate job-macho from life-macho. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/9 "2011-10-23T21:42:24Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > What does Serious Sam have to do with it? It was a cut and paste error the mods stubbornly refuse to delete even though I reported it two seconds after I posted the thread. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/10 "2011-10-24T03:56:10Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > It was a cut and paste error the mods stubbornly refuse to delete even though I reported it two seconds after I posted the thread. Fixed it for you. We’re just all busy this weekend. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/11 "2011-10-24T03:59:16Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Fixed it for you. We’re just all busy this weekend. Thanks. I noticed you weren’t too busy to respond to the thread a few hours ago though. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/12 "2011-10-24T15:14:48Z")
Hockey seems like the least likely sport to me, just due to the fights. I feel like any player coming out is going to be eating his own teeth every time he gets onto the ice. I’d like to be wrong about that, but I don’t think I am. ---
**Author:** ![paperbackwriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@paperbackwriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paperbackwriter)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/13 "2011-10-24T16:02:28Z")
Talking about hockey fights in the context of gay acceptance misses the mark on both ends. Fights in hockey aren’t (or aren’t just) about machismo spilling out, they’re usually tactical decisions. They are just as much as part of the team’s playbook as a line change and they are called on at certain times to achieve goals. Of course, there are also a lot of fights that start because one player tripped another or something, but there a fight is part of the players’ self-regulation system. On the other end, hockey has some very powerful and prominent advocated for gay acceptance. If you look at the link that **Muffin** posted, you’ll see that hockey is probably the _most_ likely of the sports to have an open, active gay player. [Take this quote](http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/02/04/Sean_Avery_Gay_Support_System/)from The Advocate as an example: > [@](#): > > "If there’s a kid in Canada or wherever, who is playing and really loves the game and wants to keep playing but he’s worried about coming out, I’d tell him to pick up the phone and call [NHLPA executive director] Donald Fehr and tell him to book me a [plane] ticket,” he told the Toronto Sun. “I’ll stand beside him in the dressing room while he tells his teammates he is gay. Maybe if Sean Avery is there, they would have less of a problem with it.” Sean Avery is a notorious horndog (he actually got suspended by the NHL for referring to other hockey players picking up his “sloppy seconds”) and pest/tough guy. In other words, he is a walking (or, perhaps, skating) stereotype of the the least likely athlete to be a gay advocate/supporter, yet there he is offering to fly to any dinky rural high school that a kid would ask him to to just to help that kid come out to his teammates. All in all, I think the signs point to hockey being the leader here. ---
**Author:** ![sachertorte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sachertorte/32/3727_2.png) [@sachertorte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sachertorte)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/14 "2011-10-24T16:47:17Z")
I think the most likely scenario is a High School player coming out then winding up being better than anyone expected in college and ending up a professional athlete. In-the-closet pros are unlikely to come out. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/15 "2011-10-24T22:42:28Z")
I think the first will have to be an athlete who’s already become one of the sport’s greats, and who could not be conveniently gotten rid of without it appearing to be blatant homophobia. IOW it’ll be Derek Jeter, any day now. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/16 "2011-10-25T15:14:10Z")
> [@paperbackwriter](#): > > Talking about hockey fights in the context of gay acceptance misses the mark on both ends. Fights in hockey aren’t (or aren’t just) about machismo spilling out, they’re usually tactical decisions. They are just as much as part of the team’s playbook as a line change and they are called on at certain times to achieve goals. Of course, there are also a lot of fights that start because one player tripped another or something, but there a fight is part of the players’ self-regulation system. > > On the other end, hockey has some very powerful and prominent advocated for gay acceptance. If you look at the link that **Muffin** posted, you’ll see that hockey is probably the _most_ likely of the sports to have an open, active gay player. [Take this quote](http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/02/04/Sean_Avery_Gay_Support_System/)from The Advocate as an example: > > Sean Avery is a notorious horndog (he actually got suspended by the NHL for referring to other hockey players picking up his “sloppy seconds”) and pest/tough guy. In other words, he is a walking (or, perhaps, skating) stereotype of the the least likely athlete to be a gay advocate/supporter, yet there he is offering to fly to any dinky rural high school that a kid would ask him to to just to help that kid come out to his teammates. > > All in all, I think the signs point to hockey being the leader here. Well, then, color me pleasantly surprised! ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2011, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/17 "2011-10-26T02:59:50Z")
> [@paperbackwriter](#): > > Talking about hockey fights in the context of gay acceptance misses the mark on both ends. Fights in hockey aren’t (or aren’t just) about machismo spilling out, they’re usually tactical decisions. They are just as much as part of the team’s playbook as a line change and they are called on at certain times to achieve goals. Of course, there are also a lot of fights that start because one player tripped another or something, but there a fight is part of the players’ self-regulation system. > > On the other end, hockey has some very powerful and prominent advocated for gay acceptance. If you look at the link that **Muffin** posted, you’ll see that hockey is probably the _most_ likely of the sports to have an open, active gay player. [Take this quote](http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/02/04/Sean_Avery_Gay_Support_System/)from The Advocate as an example: > > Sean Avery is a notorious horndog (he actually got suspended by the NHL for referring to other hockey players picking up his “sloppy seconds”) and pest/tough guy. In other words, he is a walking (or, perhaps, skating) stereotype of the the least likely athlete to be a gay advocate/supporter, yet there he is offering to fly to any dinky rural high school that a kid would ask him to to just to help that kid come out to his teammates. > > All in all, I think the signs point to hockey being the leader here. He also made a PSA for gay marriage legalization in New York. Of course, Sean’s been known to throw racial slurs at opposing players, so he’s probably not the best representative. But if even some asshole like Avery’s going to oppose homophobia, you can probably guess that it’s pretty unpopular in the hockey world. Brent Sopel took the Cup to a Pride parade. Georges Laraque, who was known as a big brawler, is also a big supporter of gay rights. It’s more the FANS that are the problem. You hear all the assholes with comments like “Cindy Crosby” (Even someone who commented over at _The Advocate_, praising Avery for his support, made a remark about “Cindy”) So count me as another one who predicts it’ll be in the NHL. (And hell, if anything, the fight might break out to PROTECT a fellow player who happens to be gay, if someone tries to insult him!) (Although I do think it’s funny to see Chris Pronger in a dress. Just because it’s funny to see a guy in drag. The “Chrissy” part, though – not cool.) ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2011, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/18 "2011-10-26T12:25:11Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Football’s the same way, though for different reasons; football players are disproportionately Southern, and indoctrinated through a small number of university programs where, let’s be honest, the “education” received by many football players is a joke. Football is also overwhelmingly black, and I think it fair to say that acceptance of gays lags in the black community. On the other hand, you can’t learn and execute an NFL system (offensive or defensive) if you’re a drooling moron. Wheras a drooling moron with incredible skills could still make an NBA team somewhere (depending on their commitment to defense), probably do fine in the NHL, and a certain kind of stupidity is often an asset in baseball. So, IMO, NFL players are on average more intelligent than other sports. Plus, anyone who plays pro football doesn’t really have anything to prove about their toughness. So I don’t think football is at the bottom of the list for likelihood of having an openly gay player. Though after seeing the evidence in this thread for lack of homophobia in the NHL, it does seem that’s more likely. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2011, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/19 "2011-10-26T12:42:16Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > Plus, anyone who plays pro football doesn’t really have anything to prove about their toughness. And Rugby players world over just died of laughing.😉 On the issue of [Rugby](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Thomas_%28rugby_player%29) ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2011, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549/20 "2011-10-27T04:19:30Z")
Perhaps had he lived, Brendan Burke might have been the first? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-we-have-an-active-openly-gay-athlete-in-one-of-the-big-4-sports/600549.md?page=2)