Bryan Ruby: My life changed after coming out, now I want to help closeted baseball players – USA TODAY
I’ve always been the journeyman ballplayer, never the big star. Years of long-haul bus rides and economy flights spent chasing down a baseball pipe dream will make you grow up real fast. From the dusty ballfields of Chile, Germany, and Guatemala, to (most recently) the independent leagues of Oregon, I felt like I’ve seen as much of the world as a 25-year-old could possibly see.
Yet, nothing could have prepared me for what I experienced on September 2. For the first time, I was going to tell my story publicly and come out as a gay baseball player and country musician. Moreover, it was all happening on the national stage – in USA TODAY Sports. It was, to put it mildly, the biggest risk I have ever taken in my life.
I’d like to say that I woke up that Thursday morning to the first day of the rest of my life, but I didn’t wake up at all. I never went to bed, tossing, turning and worrying my way through the long hours of the cool Pacific Northwest late summer night.
Once the article was published in the morning, my cell phone went nuclear. I got so many notifications that I had to lock my phone in my truck and go walk around a state park for a few hours to level out
Luckily, the story had run on an off-day, otherwise it would have been a lot to handle and still play a baseball game that night. It was an emotional rollercoaster in the most amazing of ways. I received more messages of support in one day than I have in my entire life.
Back at the stadium the following night, I laced up my rainbow shoelaces. Visible publicly or not, I still had a job to do. In the locker room, my teammates treated me with respect and I didn’t have a single problem. On the field, I played the best baseball of my life. Not only did I crush the hardest-hit ball of my career less than 72 hours after coming out, but my batting average improved as well.
While it couldn’t have gone better for me, it is bittersweet knowing many LGBTQ athletes aren’t as lucky.
Driving my truck across the country on my annual end-of-season road trip back to Nashville, I had a lot of time to think.
I thought about that kid I was who’d fallen in love with baseball after tossing the ball around with his dad, the same kid who’d struggled through high school and college feeling like he was different from everybody else. I thought about Kieran Lovegrove, the other pro ballplayer who told me he’d seen my story and has since come out publicly as bisexual. I thought about all the young ballplayers like us around the world.
I stopped at the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City and saw a quote on the wall by trailblazing black ballplayer Larry Doby: “I knew being accepted was going to be hard, but I knew I was involved in a situation that was going to bring opportunities to other Blacks.”
After seeing that an idea was hatched.
The end result, Proud To Be In Baseball, is my player-founded support group born out of a need for LGBTQ representation at the ballpark. While still in its infancy, our group’s aim is to bring together isolated queer ballplayers and show that it is okay to be yourself in baseball. In a culture with deep closets and longstanding traditional beliefs, we exist solely to help other ballplayers. We hope to rely on strength in numbers as we grow. Already, we have identified close to three dozen people who have joined our cause. I hope our grassroots effort will one day create an environment where a Major League star is willing to come out.
Until that day, I hope that my story shines a light on the positive change that can occur when you embrace who you are and live authentically. If there’s anything I’ve learned over the past month, it’s that people will surprise you. The taunts, hate mail and alienation from my team never came. I got to carry on being a ballplayer, the only thing I’ve ever wanted to be, and stand up proudly for my community in the process.
In the end, what began as my biggest risk ended up being my defining moment.
Bryan Ruby is a baseball player, country musician and activist.
