Books
A high-five for ‘Singled Out’
True story of Glenn Burke is important gay baseball history lesson
‘Singled Out: The True Story of Glenn Burke’
By Andrew Maraniss
c.2021, Philomel Books $17.99/320 pages
“Singled Out: The True Story of Glenn Burke” by Andrew Maraniss is the perfect read for you if you’ve been jonesing during this pandemic winter for baseball.
The affection queer fans have for baseball is intermingled with sadness and anger. Because, historically, Major League Baseball has been homophobic.
“Singled Out,” written for readers age 12 and up, sheds light not only on homophobia in MLB but on LGBTQ history. Maraniss tells the story of Glenn Burke, a Black, gay man who was in Major League Baseball from 1976 to 1979 (playing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, then with the Oakland Athletics).
Burke, who was born in 1952 and died in 1995 from complications of AIDS, was the first openly queer MLB player. Though he didn’t come out until after he stopped playing with the MLB, his sexuality was an open secret. His family, friends and teammates know he was gay.
“Singled Out” is a page-turner for teens and adults. Maraniss, whose first book “Strong Inside” received the Lillian Smith Book Award for civil rights and the RFK Book Awards’ Special Prize for social justice, makes Burke come alive.
In lesser hands, Burke’s story could have been a dull history lesson. Thankfully, Maraniss, who lives with his wife and children in Nashville, transforms Burke’s story from a historical footnote into a vibrantly lived life.
Burke, born in Oakland, Calif., loved being in the limelight even when he was a child. From early on, he was a terrific singer as well as a fab athlete. At age nine, he was among a group of Berkeley kids who sang in the chorus of a recording of a live album by the popular folk group the Limeliters. He’s on the album cover wearing a gold sweater.
As a student at Berkeley High School, Burke was a star baseball and basketball player. LA Dodger coach Junior Gilliam, after watching Burke play, said Burke was the next Willie Mays. After playing for one season in the Dodgers farm system, he played with the basketball team at Nevada-Reno for a few games in the 1974-1975 season.
Burke was a highly touted prospect for the Dodgers. He was popular with his teammates, who loved the way he played his music and made them laugh. He started in center field in Game 1 of the 1977 World Series.
On top of that, Burke invented the high five. In the last game of the 1977 season, Dusty Baker hit his 30th home run. Burke greeted Baker with a raised hand as Baker crossed home plate. Baker slapped Burke’s hand. This was the first high five. When Burke, too, hit a home run, Baker greeted him with the second high-five in history.
Though Burke was closeted, he lived as an openly gay man in San Francisco during the off-season. But he discovered that “fame came with a price,” Maraniss writes.
“In the baseball world, he worried he’d be shunned because he was gay,” Maraniss adds, “In the gay world, he resented that his fame was the only reason some men cared about him … otherwise he’d just be another gay Black man facing two layers of discrimination.”
The Dodgers offered him $75,000 if he would get married. “To a woman?” Burke asked as he turned down this proposal.
After being let go by the Dodgers and leaving the A’s because of homophobia, Burke struggles with homelessness and drug addiction. In fast-paced, short chapters, Maraniss writes of Burke’s pain and of his legacy. He sets the homophobia that Burke encounters within the context of the 1970s – Anita Bryant, sodomy laws – the decade after Stonewall. This is particularly helpful for young readers who would have little or no knowledge of that time.
Burke was posthumously honored at the 2014 All-Star Game and inducted into San Francisco’s Honor Walk in the Castro in 2017. Last year, the MLB paid tribute to Burke during Pride month. In December 2020, Oakland’s LGBTQ Community Center’s wellness clinic was named after Burke.
Without being preachy, Maraniss deftly tells Burke’s story. A high-five for “Singled Out.”
You’re all geared up.
You’ve got your best parade-walking shoes, your coolest tee, your most-comfortable shorts, and a rainbow flag to carry. You’re set for Pride, but before you go, try one of these great new books about LGBTQ life and history.
After the parade, where will you end up? A place to talk your experience over, to re-hash things for the next parade? Then you may need “The Lesbian Bar Chronicles: The Living History and Hopeful Future of America’s Dyke Dives and Sapphic Spaces” by Rachel Karp (Beacon Press, $29.95).
Lesbian bars, says Karp, are more than just places to drink. They’re also places to find community, and to organize. For many, she says, they are “sanctuaries,” as they have been for at least a century, and this book introduces you to some of the people who run the establishments, the things they do to support their patrons, and the 100-year-plus bravery that it took to own, run, and enter a lesbian bar.
If you had to name a gay icon, there are probably quite a few who come to mind. So read “Without Prejudice: My Life as a Gay Judge” by Harvey Brownstone (ECW Press, $21.95) and add another name to your list.
This memoir, written by Canada’s first openly gay judge, takes readers from Brownstone’s childhood to his life as a lawyer, then to his work within the justice system in Ontario, and beyond, to his current career. This is a surprising, informative book that gives you an idea what gay life is like, north of our uppermost borders, then and now.
Pride is a celebration, an event, but it also demands a peek backwards, and in “The LGBTQ Almanac: 500 Years of Queer Culture in American History” by Deborah G. Felder (Visible Ink Press, $39.95), you’ll get a wide look at the pioneers, allies, policy, and gay life over the course of the last five centuries. Want to know more about religion in the gay community? It’s in here, along with celebrities, presidents, science, business, and more. This is the kind of book that settles bets. It’s one you want to have in any room of your home because it’s comprehensive and perfectly browse-able for all of its 600-plus pages.
And finally, here’s a book to read and think about: “No Fats No Fems: A Guide to Queer Empathy and Unpacking Prejudice” by Max Hovey (HarperOne, $19.99). How do you eliminate hateful, hurtful words, aimed at gay people – by gay people? What kind of stereotypes do we carry, unintentionally? This book takes those things out into the daylight by talking honestly and thoughtfully about them, as well as other issues. It’s a book to have when doubts creep in, when you need a new way of thinking or a different direction, or when you just want something different to read.
And if these great books aren’t enough, head to your favorite bookstore or library and ask for books that you can read before Pride or after. And happy Pride!
Books
New books reveal style trends for a more enlightened century
Guidelines that hint about gendering clothing are out
Books about Fashion and Style
By various authors
c.2026, various publishers
$19.95 – $29.95
Don’t look now, but your legs are showing.
It’s OK, it’s almost summertime and you want to show both skin and style. So how about a few hints for looking your best? Check out these great books and get stylin’.
Who says there are rules about fashion? Wearing white before Memorial Day is OK; socks with sandals not so much? Fine, but in “Bending the Rules: Fashion Beyond the Binary” by Camille Benda with Gwyn Conaway (Princeton Architectural Press, $29.95), you’ll see that any guidelines that hint about gendering clothing are oh-so-last century.
Along with lively, fun narrative, there are lots of photos in this book, ads for how clothing used to be worn along male-female lines, and short biographies of some of today’s best designers. Here, you can check out prom dresses from the 1950s and new haute couture gowns practically right off the runway – and see how one parallels with the other. The timeline reaches back centuries, so you get a nice idea of where certain kinds of clothing originated and how it’s relevant today – making what’s inside here perfect for browsing.
Pick up this book, in fact, and you might also pick up some ideas for filling your closet and creating your very own style.
The fashion you wear on your body isn’t all you’ll find in “Pretend to Be Fancy: A Field Guide to Style and Sophistication” by Whitney Marston Pierce (Chronicle Books, $19.95). You’ll also read about other nice things you can have.
So you’re not a pinky-in-the-air kind of person, whatever. You can easily hang with those who are, once you read and absorb this book.
Tongue-tied at fancy soirees? Not anymore, there are tips for talking here. What do you know about canapes, hors d’oeuvres, and the kind of foods you don’t get at the corner c-store? How do you make a charcuterie that everyone will Ooooooh over? And how do you give a gift for the person whose taste seems scads better than yours? That’s all in here, along with what to drink, how to dress, and how to make every corner of your home look like something right out of a high-end magazine.
Will this book make you chic? Possibly, yes. Will it help you get invited to all the best parties? Maybe, but for sure, it’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you feel fabulous, look fabulous, and live your best life with the surroundings you deserve. Out May 5, so put it on your list.
But let’s say you need more ideas. You have questions or thorny issues with fashion that you really need answering. That’s when you ask for a talented fashionista at your local bookstore or library, that knowledgeable someone knows books and knows how to get what you need to be your most dazzling, best-dressed, finest-appointed self in a home you can be proud of, with comfortable furniture that will be the envy of everyone who sees it.
In the meantime, grab the above titles, because these books got legs.
‘La Lucci’
By Susan Lucci with Laura Morton
c.2026, Blackstone Publishing
$29.99/196 pages
They’re among the world’s greatest love stories.
You know them well: Marc Antony and Cleopatra. Abelard and Heloise. Phoebe and Langley. Cliff and Nina. Jesse and Angie, Opal and Palmer, Palmer and Daisy, Tad and Dixie. Now read “La Lucci” by Susan Lucci, with Laura Morton, and you might also think of Susan and Helmut.
When she was a very small girl, Susan Lucci loved to perform. Also when she was young, she learned that words have power. She vowed to use them for good for the rest of her life.
Her parents, she says, were supportive and her family, loving. Because of her Italian heritage, she was “ethnic looking” but Lucci’s mother was careful to point out dark-haired beauties on TV and elsewhere, giving Lucci a foundation of confidence.
That’s just one of the things for which Lucci says she’s grateful. In fact, she says, “Prayers of gratitude are how I begin and end each day.”
She is particularly grateful for becoming a mother to her two adult children, and to the doctors who saved her son’s life when he was a newborn.
Lucci writes about gratitude for her long career. She was a keystone character on TV’s “All My Children,” and she learned a lot from older actors on the show, and from Agnes Nixon, the creator of it. She says she still keeps in touch with many of her former costars.
She is thankful for her mother’s caretakers, who stepped in when dementia struck. Grateful for more doctors, who did heart-saving work when Lucci had a clogged artery. Grateful for friends, opportunities, life, grandchildren, and a career that continues.
And she’s grateful for the love she shared with her husband, Helmut Huber, who died nearly four years ago. Grateful for the chance to grieve, to heal, and to continue.
And yet, she says of her husband: “He was never timid, but I know he was afraid at the end, and that kills me down to my soul.”
“It’s been 15 years since Erica Kane and I parted ways,” says author Susan Lucci (with Laura Morton), and she says that people still approach her to confirm or deny rumors of the show’s resurrection. There’s still no answer to that here (sorry, fans), but what you’ll find inside “La Lucci” is still exceptionally generous.
If this book were just filled with stories, you’d like it just fine. If it was only about Lucci’s faith and her gratitude – words that happen to appear very frequently here – you’d still like reading it. But Lucci tells her stories of family, children and “All My Children,” while also offering help to couples who’ve endured miscarriage, women who’ve had heart problems, and widow(ers) who are spinning and need the kindness of someone who’s lived loss, too.
These are the other things you’ll find in “La Lucci,” in a voice you’ll hear in your head, if you spent your lunch hours glued to the TV back in the day. It’s a comfortable, fun read for fans. It’s a story you’ll love.
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