Kieran Lovegrove, Angels minor league pitcher, comes out as bisexual – Yahoo Sports

Minor league baseball player Kieran Lovegrove came out as bisexual in an interview with ESPN published Thursday.

Lovegrove, a former third-round draft pick by the Cleveland Indians, discussed his sexual orientation in a story focusing on the poor conditions of minor league baseball players. The story, which also focuses on Lovegrove’s past with suicidality and substance abuse, did not specifically focus on Lovegrove’s sexual orientation.

But the 27-year-old, a member of the Double-A Rocket City Trash Pandas (Los Angeles Angels) who plans to retire after 2021, said he wants to shine a light on the difficulty of being in the closet in the sport of baseball. Lovegrove said that he distanced himself from his family and teammates out of fear for a timeframe before feeling comfortable coming out to people in his life in 2019. The ESPN story is his first public acknowledgment of being bisexual.

“Baseball is a game of statistics,” Lovegrove told ESPN. “And if you want to tell me that I’m the only queer person in baseball, I’m just not going to agree with you. Someone is terrified because it’s a terrifying prospect to come out. I do encourage any one of them to reach out to me.”

Lovegrove now joins Salem-Keizer Volcanoes third baseman Bryan Ruby, who came out as gay in a September story with USA TODAY Sports, as one of the only two publicly out LGBTQ players in professional baseball. Now four active men’s professional athletes are out publicly, joining the NFL’s Carl Nassib and NHL’s Luke Prokop.

Lovegrove has been in the minor league system – on nine different teams – since being drafted in 2012 while being considered for a call up to the San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers and Angels. He never played in the majors.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kieran Lovegrove, MLB minor league pitcher, comes out as bisexual