Baseball celebrated its Opening Day today and for the first time, an openly gay umpire was on the field. Dale Scott was the home plate umpire and crew chief in Milwaukee as the Brewers lost to the Colorado Rockies, 10-0. Scott was ignored by the media, which is how it should be for an umpire in a 10-0 rout.

I am writing this simply to acknowledge history and to happily point out that Scott's small milestone went unnoticed. On Twitter, there was one post about Scott, and it had nothing to do with his sexual orientation.

The Associated Press game story does not mention Scott, and I could not find no photos of Scott in action during the game from the photo services of AP, USA TODAY or Getty. Hooray. Scott came out quietly late last year. His story got a flurry of attention and then died down. If something had been written about Scott following Monday’s game, that would suggest something of note had happened, so in this case no news is good news.

Scott's sexual orientation has been known and accepted by baseball officials for years. Being an umpire is largely an anonymous job, and an openly gay player would have received far more attention.
In an ideal world, we would have numerous openly gay athletes and coaches and they would just be part of the landscape without special notice. It's far from an ideal environment for gays in sports, but at least in Scott's case it was a positive case of "nothing to see here, move on."

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