By Larry Elder
Michael Sam appears to be a fine young man.
But, no, he isn't the first openly gay male U.S. athlete to play in a major
sport. And "brave"? Can we please dispense with the absurd Jackie
Robinson comparisons? Wake me when a black collegiate pro prospect "comes
out" as a Republican.
A starting senior on
the University of Missouri football team, Sam looks like a mid-round
draft pick in the NFL. He recently "came out" to his teammates, many
of whom said they already knew or suspected. Neither teammates nor coaches had
an issue. Most normal people ask, "Who cares?" or "Can he
play?"
Some, however, liken Sam's "pioneering
status" to that of Jackie Robinson, the first black man to play in the
modern baseball major leagues. "Michael Sam has the opportunity to be the
Jackie Robinson of the NFL," said professor Orin Starn, chairman of Duke
University's cultural anthropology department. "Michael Sam is a Jackie
Robinson Moment For NFL," according to the editorial headline in the
Boston Globe. And then there's Fox Sports analyst Brendon Ayanbadejo who said,
"We were there to celebrate his groundbreaking voyage that in many ways is
similar to those of Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks."
Where to begin?
First, Sam isn't even the first openly gay
male athlete to play in a major American pro sport. That distinction goes to
Glenn Burke, who played with the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Oakland Athletics
from 1976-1979. He might well have played longer and been more successful had
he not clashed with management — not his teammates — over his sexual
orientation.
Burke was "out" to teammates,
management and sportswriters. It is not Burke's fault that both media and
management preferred to say nothing. Dodger management reportedly offered him
money to go through a sham marriage. Burke refused.
Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda, whose son died
of AIDS in 1991, allegedly helped engineer a trade of Burke to Oakland because
of a friendship between Lasorda's son and Burke. The trade of the popular,
outgoing player stunned many Dodgers. Team captain Davey Lopes said, "No
one cared about his lifestyle."
Traded during the 1978 season to the Oakland
A's, Burke ended up managed by the openly homophobic Billy Martin. The volatile
manager, according to a documentary about Burke, "baited" him with
gay slurs. Frustrated, and never realizing his potential, Burke left baseball
in 1980 and became a drug addict. A former Oakland teammate, Shooty Babitt,
said, "They ran him straight out of the game." Burke died of AIDS in
1995. He was 42.
Sam will encounter no Billy Martins. He
enters an NFL with a written policy against discrimination based on race,
religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
Second, let's discuss Jackie Robinson. Many
of his own teammates signed a petition stating they would not play with him. At
least one petitioner was traded.
Viciously taunted, and sometimes threatened
by players, fans and others, Robinson faced enormous pressure to not only play
well, but to do so while restraining the desire to punch somebody in the face.
Had Robinson not "succeeded," the path for other black players would
have become even more difficult, about which the former UCLA student was quite
aware.
The attention and pressure on Robinson makes
Sam's future career look like a coronation. Robinson's was a pre-television,
pre-Internet, Jim Crow America, where sports fans really paid keen attention to
only three sports — boxing, horseracing and America's pastime, baseball. Most
everybody was watching, many hoping and expecting him to fail. Robinson played
Major League Baseball for 10 years and died early. His death certificate
described the official cause as a heart attack. But it might as well have said
pressure and stress killed him. He was 53.
Yes, Sam will have some challenges. But tell
that to Hank Aaron.
In his autobiography, "I Had A Hammer," Aaron
writes about when he and others were the first black players to play the South
Atlantic League — a minor league affiliated with the majors — five years after
Robinson entered the major league. Southern newspapers, covering the
"Sally League," refused to print pictures of the black players. Taxi
drivers in places like Florida refused to pick them up. Players, Aaron said,
could be arrested simply for being on the street at night.
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