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Out
With the Out Guy
Why Billy Bean Is a Lousy
Spokesman
By Randy Boyd
Special to
Outsports.com
We might be able to start setting our
clocks by it: the annual mini-media spotlight on the question: Is
there a real catcher in baseball?
Last year, an Out magazine op-ed piece allegedly written by the
lover of a gay player ignited the fury. This year, it's another New
York based publication that dishes out a heavy dose of insinuation
and innuendo, and for a few days anyway, the NBA playoffs, NHL
playoffs and everything else in the sports world is on hold while we
speculate on the answer to The Biggest Question and Challenge in
Professional Sports: Can naked grown straight men function in the
same enclosed space as naked grown not-so-straight men?
Cue the speculation, theorizing and gay sports fans' hopeful
fantasies. Cue the homophobic players saying they're afraid to let
anyone who's gay see their penis. Or their backstops, for that
matter (cause Lord knows, all it takes is five seconds alone with a
naked straight man to make him forget his wife and/or girlfriend and
switch to "our team." We're that persuasive or they're that weak and
inclined, take your pick). Cue the rumor mill. Cue the denials. Cue
Billy "Please Don't Hurt Me" Bean, our
poster boy and
media expert when it comes to the subject of homos hiding out in pro
sports.
Bean became "a qualified expert" by default when he came out of the
closet after his short-lived baseball career, and to my knowledge,
has never had anything positive to say about the prospect of someone
being same-gender loving in the world of sports. His negative
demeanor on the topic doesn't just cover the prospect of someone
being an active player and openly gay. No, sir, if you listen to
Doomsday Billy, a homo couldn't make it in pro sports in any
capacity, in or out, because there's just too much pressure to be a
hetero pig with the rest of the boys. If I were a young, gay or
questioning kid with aspirations of 360 slam dunks or grand slam
homers or hat tricks, I'd run the other way from the playing fields
after listening to Bean.
Could the dude be more fatalistic?
If that's what his own experience was like, fine, but hey, don't
rain on everybody's parade. Attention, Billy: your experience as a
queer journeyman in baseball is not the sum total of all experiences
by all homos in sports. Common sense would dictate that, if nothing
else. But not to CryBaby Bean. Sometimes he sounds like the PR rep
for an organization trying to keep gays outta sports.
Maybe that's why he's the media darling; he helps them feed on their
fears.
With this latest flare-up of New York Met gossip, expert Bean
appeared on expert Jim Rome's show and reiterated what expert Bean
has said from Day One about gays in sports: Coming out and being da
man in the pros mixes like oil and water, like baseball contraction
and good will, like the Cleveland Cavaliers and wins.
"The people who run sports don't want distractions," he told Romey.
People running sports don't want distractions?
Since when is getting laid a distraction?
Since when is loving with dignity a distraction?
Since when is being accepted and respected for who you are a
distraction?
People are fighting and dying all over the world at this very moment
because they want to be treated fairly (whatever their version of
"fairly" is).
SPORTS is the distraction, CryBaby.
Halfway across the globe, young men (and women!) are walking into
bakeries and onto bus stops blowing up themselves and strangers, and
now, just about every security official in the US with something at
stake is warning us that that road show is coming our way sooner
than Star Wars III.
Yeah, it's nice for Shaq et al. to make millions dunking baskets and
pitching burgers and cheese fries, and therefore they gotta take
sports, e.g., their jobs, seriously if they want the dough. But
children starving, restaurant-goers exploding, people feeling
generally alienated from society for a billion reasons (AIDS,
poverty, lack of affordable housing to name a few)--that's the real
world. The half-assed efforts these athletically gifted men provide
on the court and fields (see Chris Webber rebounding) is NOT.
Sports is nothing BUT distraction, which is why it's only natural
and fitting that reporters have feeding frenzies over things like
Chuck Finley in a shoe fight with his skanky rocker wife; Michael's
gambling ways; Ray Lewis's borderline(?) criminal ways; Barry Bonds'
and Mark McGwire's supplement ways; Webber's model girlfriend;
questions like, who's dating Toni Braxton?; who shot the limo
driver?; who punched whom in the locker room?; which French judge
made which deal?; which city gave out the best bribes to land an
event?; and on and on and on to the break of dawn.
Dear Crybaby: Don't try and tell us there's no room for one more
ring in the infinite ring circus that is sports.
Dear Gay Man in Pro Sports Who Might Be Entertaining the Idea of
Going Public: Here's the best reason of all for you to come out: So
we can fire Doomsday Billy as our spokesperson.
Related:
Bean Did the Right Thing
Randy Boyd is a novelist and
regular
contributor to Outsports. His novels include
Uprising,
Bridge Across the
Ocean, and his newest
suspense thriller, the just-released
The Devil Inside.
May 24, 2002
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