Dodgers must honor Glenn Burke, MLB’s first openly gay player – California News Times

When I was on vacation on the beach in Florida with my family last week, I was ordered not to check my cell phone too much.

But I sneaked into the peak last Friday afternoon and got a tweet from a Bay Area sports writer. Oakland Athletics Renamed the annual Pride Night GlenbergFormer Berkeley High Baseball and Basketball prominent figure, then became the first openly gay Major League Baseball player. Dodgers A in the late 1970s.

This is a natural posthumous honor for Burke, recognizing his unique contribution to the game and the lasting importance of his story. But if necessary, A’s celebration of Burke also raises the question of why the Dodgers didn’t do it in the first place.

Is Dodgers I chose Burke in the 1972 MLB draft. The Dodgers invested in his growth and minor league career, and he surpassed .300 four times and set stolen base records in two leagues. Longtime Dodgers player and coach Junior Gilliam shared the organization’s high opinion on the speedy and powerfully constructed outfield outlook. Burke could be the next Willie Mays, Gilliam said.

Burke couldn’t live up to these high expectations, but started two games for the Big Blue Wrecking Crew in the 1977 National League Championship Series against the Phillies, playing Game 1 of the 1977 World Series. It started at Yankee Stadium. He was a popular player at the clubhouse when the roster was packed with all-stars. It is even believed that he invented the high five as the Dodgers.

The first openly gay major leaguer was a charismatic reserve of the great Dodgers team, but franchises rarely admit him. When I searched Twitter, they mentioned his name only once, a tweet about the historic high touch in October 2012. Searching for his name on the Dodgers website will leave it blank. When Burke was homeless while dying of AIDS in the early 1990s, it was A, not the Dodgers, who provided the help.

In studying my biography of Burke, “Carefully selected” I felt this was a subject that many Dodgers players and executives in the past and present didn’t want to touch. The team’s marketing department acknowledged that it received some of the questions in this column, but didn’t answer some of the questions, including a question asking for an example of Burke’s team approval that I might have missed. It was.

Looking at the long history of the team’s excellent pride nights and their support for LGBTQ organizations and causes, there is a significant lack of something significant about Glenberg’s position in the history of gays. A invited Glenn’s brother Sydney to the opening ceremony six years ago. Tonight’s pride event will raise funds for the Glenn Burke Wellness Clinic at the Oakland LGBTQ Community Center. (The Dodgers said there was “no special plan” to recognize Burke at tonight’s Pride Night, but “it doesn’t rule out more in the future.”) The Dodgers do more. I don’t know why I didn’t raise it. Regarding his relationship with Burke, there is an element of his experience that the team may rather forget.

Following the 1977 season, Dodgers Vice President Al Campanis offered a large bonus if Burke got married.

“To a woman?” Burke replied in May 1978, refusing to bribe for trade to Oakland and moving his wheels.

I wondered when the franchise’s attitude towards Burke would change. But last week’s announcement, 43 years after Burke played his last match for the Dodgers, and 26 years after his death, A defeated the Dodgers in at least one highly visible way.

This situation reminds me of an interview I had with David Williams, the late African-American athletic director at Vanderbilt University, when I was writing my biography. Perry Wallace (“Strong Inside”), the first black basketball player in SEC history. Wallace attended Vanderbild in the late 1960s and found that in many ways his own campus was as unpopular as the expedition to Mississippi and Alabama. Williams was stunned to find that Wallace arrived at Vanderbilt 30 years after making history in Vanderbilt and that Nashville College did nothing to honor him. about it? “Williams remembered what he said to the university administrator.

At Williams’ recommendation, that changed. Today, there are two scholarships named after Wallace and an annual Courage Award in his name. His 25th jersey hangs from the rafters of the memorial gymnasium, the oil portrait is prominently placed in the engineering building, and the Perry Wallace Way passes through the Vanderbilt campus.

During the decade before his death in 2017, Wallace was repeatedly invited to the campus to tell a new generation of students about him and receive praise, if any, for being late. I asked him what it would be like to be honored by the same institution that had long ignored him. “A reconciliation without truth is just acting,” he said. “But when the truth exists, real change and healing can occur.”

Vanderbild finally decided to settle with Wallace in good faith, and first graders had to read “Strong Inside” for the second year in a row. Instead of hiding from the painful times of school history, managers embrace it and learn from freshmen about college’s past racism, how it affects people on campus today, and I called on them to discuss how to fight. The conversation was powerful.

Why is the Dodgers not taking a similar approach? I don’t have an ax. I love uniforms and the passion of the fans. My grandfather grew up in Brooklyn and was a fan. As a Vanderbilt man, I support Walker Buehler and David Price. Mookie Betts is also a Nashville hero. And while the Dodgers certainly deserve to admire the long history of reaching out to gay fans, the Texas Ranger, for example, has never held a Pride Night.

But the Dodgers, whether true or not, do not seem to have reached a reconciliation point with Glenn Burke’s story. This is a shame. Because the Dodgers, as one of the most famous organizations in all sports, can make a difference in games that require it if they have an honest conversation about Burke’s experience as a gay major leaguer. .. There are no openly gay players in Major League Baseball today.

David Williams told me something else when I asked him about squaring his commitment to advancing past racism in his college. People will not forget, but forgive past violations, he said, if they can see you making honest and meaningful progress towards progress. They care more about what you are doing now than your predecessor did wrong in the past. Ask A. Manager Billy Martin told sports writers that Glenn wouldn’t forgive af to “contaminate” the team and expel him to minors and never come back. Still, the team’s decision to honor Burke is celebrated.

The first openly gay Major League Baseball player was the Dodgers. The Dodgers take ownership of homophobia, which ended Glenn Burke’s era in Los Angeles early, and the organization goes beyond that, claiming history centered on Burke’s experience, and the path to LGBTQ rights in baseball. It’s time to be able to lead. There is no more reliable voice.

Best-selling author Andrew Maraniss writes sports and history-related nonfiction for teens and adults. He lives in Nashville and is on Twitter @ trublu24. “Selection: The True Story of Glenberg” Published by Philomel Books on March 2nd.