Batter Up!

Sometimes I think I'm the only gay man who has any tolerance for sports. Most guys I know are not only indifferent to sports, they're disdainful. Granted, there's much wrong with professional sports these days, much to be disdainful of. It seems like a massive misplacement of value that Michael Jordan makes so much more money than Bill Clinton, no matter how much you dislike Clinton. And I never, ever want to hear any major league player say he is underpaid, not when the entry-level contract is so much higher than the salary for a tenured teacher with a masters degree.

Still, I think there's more to my friends' collective "yuck! Patooie!" with regards to sports than reactions toward coddled spoiled athletes. Two things come to mind. One is that many gay folks aren't interested in sports, and there may be resentment that what they do like—art, music, literature—is pushed to the side whenever a major sporting event takes over the media and the minds of the world around us. Wholly justified, I think. I mean, there's NO sense of balance when the Super Bowl or the World Cup rears their ugly heads. Hello folks—while the Red Wings were whomping the Capitals for the Stanley Cup, there were a lot of people dying in Northern Ireland and Bosnia and Africa. Perspective would be a good thing, no?

Secondly, of course, there's the stereotype of the gay man as being lousy at sports from an early age. It's not so much that we're born unable to throw a ball or catch one, as it is that too much importance gets placed on it in elementary school gym classes and recesses. It's an absolute crime that gym teachers and recess monitors allow some kids to bully the less athletically adept. I surely went through this when I was a kid, like so many others. Why couldn't we all just get along?

And yet... My interest in sports didn't wane because of my ineptitude and lack of compassion from others. I found that once away from the confines of high school, there were some sporting activities I could do well at and enjoy. I ran in college, never a racer mind you, but I worked up to 20-mile weeks and down to what the height and weight charts said I should weigh. And I bowled too. OK, don't laugh, but bowling is in the Olympics, isn't it? And my average wasn't too shabby during my senior year of college.

As far as spectator sports, I can't say I like them all, but two have a special place in my heart: Baseball and hockey. The hockey is because my mom was addicted to Hockey Night in Canada and watching the Maple Leafs and the Canadiens split most of the Stanley Cup finals in the 1960s. (She was also addicted to Jean Béliveau and Maurice Richard, but that's a different though not unrelated story.) And baseball, because the Tigers won the World Series in 1968 and captured the heart of the six-year-old I was at the time.

I wanted to play baseball when I was a kid. I was never good at it, but I spent a lot of time dreaming about it, playing catch when I could. and even reading about players and techniques. I would calculate my batting average, which one year was actually pretty good at least through the first few weeks of the school year. I read about Carl Yazstremski and Tony Oliva. I followed the averages of all the Tigers. I even (finally) figured out the infield fly rule, which is one of the more mystifying aspects of any sport. These days, I can turn on the radio, tune in a baseball game, and think that all's right with the world for a few minutes at least.

But I keep my enthusiasm for baseball and hockey reined in—not that I'd ordinarily be a rabid fan, but I do have a big interest in the history and the statistics and the poetry of both games. It's an interest that just goes unmatched by most queer folk. Even most of the straight folk I know would rather watch grass grow than a baseball game.

I do have two queer sports experiences to relate though. The first was with a group of male friends at an afternoon party, and we were watching a baseball game, admiring the tight ends. No, there isn't a new position in baseball, but the uniforms do tend to be, um, snug. But the second was a football game I was watching one Sunday in Denver with a woman friend of my hosts who had both left for church. It was Denver vs. Kansas City, a big rivalry at the time, and Shirelle and I were both admiring the work of the tight ends as well as the other players for a while at least. It was a good game, really. And the right team won too.

—Charlie Songdog
July 1998