Sports
Rethinking the coming-out template for athletes
Despite success stories, Michael Sam lingers as cautionary tale
Tanner Williams didnāt have a typical coming-out sports story. In 2014, the 22-year-old Norman, Okla., resident, a pole vaulter on the University of Oklahoma track and field team, posted on Facebook that heād gotten engaged to Scott Williams, his boyfriend of less than a year.
He wrote about the experience in a more prominent coming-out moment when Outsports, an LGBT sports news site, published his story in April 2015.
Even in Oklahoma, which Williams himself (heās a native of Ardmore, Okla.) admits is āa very conservative and religious state,ā the experience has been overwhelmingly positive, he says.
āItās probably been one of the greatest things Iāve ever done,ā he says. āIt helped me, my family, my friends to know that itās OK to be gay. It made a huge impact in Oklahoma with the inclusion-in-sports aspect. ā¦ I got a lot of positive attention. Itās all been great.ā
Williams had read other coming-out stories on Outsports and became friendly with Jim Buzinski, who co-founded the site in 1999 with Cyd Zeigler, Jr.
āI think I just messaged him thanking him for all the stuff heās done and told him, ‘If you ever want to share my story, I could probably come up with the courage,’ā Williams says.
The only thing he might have done differently is to have come out sooner.
āThere were a few negative comments, but it was pretty mild,ā he says. āAfter the Outsports piece ran and some other papers here in Oklahoma wrote about it, there were a few comments. People said, āWhy is this news?ā and a few things like that. But then I was elected co-captain of my team and it just showed that they respected me and being gay has nothing to do with what kind of person or athlete you are. It was even more positive. It got an overwhelming amount of attention through Outsports.ā
But how typical is Williamsā experience? Buzinski says in 16 years of telling the coming-out stories of āprobably a couple hundredā athletes on āall levels,ā thereās rarely been any issue.
āWe leave the final decision up to the athlete,ā Buzinski says. āThe bottom line for them is once you come out, you canāt go back in. If youāre going to come out, even in some of the smaller sports, you have to know that thereās going to be different levels of attention and you have to be ready for that. Most of the time they write their own stories and even if we work, shape and edit them, they have to sign off on the final version. Itās their story to tell.ā
He says a few times theyāve had athletes ready to come out, but he and Zeigler have urged them to wait.
āWeāve never pushed,ā Buzinski says. āItās frustrating to us as journalists, but weāve never forced [anyone].ā
He says negative feedback has been rare. He recalls āmaybe two or threeā who asked later for their stories to be removed from the Outsports website, which is not practical since the pieces live on in web archives. He guesses āless thanā five have had second thoughts after the fact.
With lots of positives to point to ā everything from Jason Collins becoming the first openly gay athlete to play in the NBA to 41 out LGBT athletes competing at this monthās Rio Olympics ā and LGBT rights overall making previously unheard of strides in the U.S. and around the world, some assume thereās little risk in coming out.
Yet the sting of Michael Samās aborted NFL career is still fresh and thereās also a sense in some circles that things arenāt always so rosy for out athletes once the media buzz and excitement wears off.
Robbie Rogers, a soccer midfielder for the Los Angeles Galaxy who came out in 2013, told the Chicago Tribune this summer he assumed he was on the outer cusp of a sort of domino effect of male athletes coming out that never materialized. Despite many out female athletes in the WNBA, Rogers is now the lone openly gay male athlete in the U.S.ās five major pro sports leagues (the NBA, MLB, NHL, NFL and MLS).
Sam came out to great fanfare in 2014 with ESPN, New York Times and Outsports profiles (Zeigler writes of how it all went down in a lengthy Outsports piece called āThe Eagle Has Landedā). He was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in the seventh round of the 2014 draft but was cut at the end of training camp before ever playing a game. He also had a short stint with the Dallas Cowboysā practice squad but was waived. In 2015, he played a single game with the Montreal Alouettes becoming the first openly gay player to play in the Canadian Football League before leaving citing āmental healthā concerns.
Since then, heās made many appearances for LGBT rights, did a season of āDancing With the Stars,ā appeared in a documentary on OWN (the Oprah Winfrey Network) and returned to the University of Missouri (his alma mater) to pursue a masterās degree. His NFLĀ career is, for all practical purposes, likely over.
Although stressing he has āno regrets whatsoever,ā as he told Dan Patrick on his eponymous show last year, Sam has now said in several interviews that heād likely be in the NFL today if heād not come out.
āIt probably would have been better for me if I didnāt come out,ā he told Patrick. āI would be on a roster.ā
He also told Edge of Sports, āI think if I never would have came out, never would have said those words to the public, I would still be currently in the NFL. But because of me saying those words, I think it could have played a huge part in my current situation.ā
Even Zeigler agrees.
āHe would have played in the NFL last season if he hadnāt come out,ā Zeigler wrote in a September 2015 Outsports column. āThe NFL teams have, individually and collectively, discriminated against Sam because he is an openly gay man. Homophobic jerks keep saying thatās just sour grapes, but itās not. Heād be in the NFL right now if he hadnāt come out.ā
Sam parted ways with former agents Cameron Weiss and Joe Barkett and Howard Bragman, the gay PR guru who masterminded Samās coming-out media strategy. Bragman, with whom Sam had a profanity-strewn clash in clips seen in the OWN documentary, is laying low on the matter now. He declined a Blade interview request.
Buzinski says itās hard to say to what degree homophobia might have hurt Samās career. There were several contributing factors ā the Rams having been well stocked in defense (Sam is a defensive end) at the time of the draft, perhaps most notably.
āThere were probably X number of teams that wouldnāt touch him because he was gay, but not all 32,ā he says. āThe NFL has a ways to go, but if teams thought Michael Sam could have helped them, they would have picked him. I donāt believe it was exclusively because he was gay. Thatās something that can never be fully proven or disproven. Itās an assertion that can never be knocked down or supported. There are hundreds of guys who are flushed out of the NFL every year for all kinds of reasons.ā
Christina Kahrl, an ESPN sportswriter whoās transgender, isnāt so quick to let the NFL and some of its other franchises off the hook.
āIām a Raiders fan so Iām going to tell you this as an LGBT person,ā Kahrl told the Blade. āWhen Michael Sam was up, the Raiders were one of the worst defensive teams in the league. They should have taken a chance on him. You couldnāt get any worse than the Raiders were at the time, so if heās out there and freely available, for Christās sake, sign the guy. Clearly there were some management problems. Thereās no excuse why a team like the Raiders wouldnāt have taken a chance on Michael Sam.ā
Kahrl says Samās advisers had him doing too many other things when he should have been focusing on football, a point he made himself to Winfrey.
āAll of a sudden, he was everywhere doing everything, every gala, every GLAAD and HRC thing, he was dancing with the stars,ā Kahrl says. āMy throwaway line from that was we saw Michael Sam dancing with the stars before we even saw his first sack dance. He was famous before he ever did the thing he was supposed to be famous for doing, being a football player.ā
And now with Jason Collins retired from the NBA, Samās never having played a down in a regular-season NFL game, David Denson, a 21-year-old outfielder who plays for the Minor League baseball team the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, is the only other pro male out athlete to have come out. The wave many expected never happened.
āIām at the stage where itās kind of stupid,ā Robbie Rogers told the Chicago Tribune in June. āI would never force anyone out and everyone has their own time, but come on, itās 2016. A lot has changed in the United States and around the world. Obviously there are a lot of rights to fight for and a lot of hate here toward the LGBT community, but itās an opportunity to be a role model for millions and change the lives of kids not only in sports, but in our culture and around the world. Itās a little disheartening.ā
Gospel singer Jennifer Knapp, who says she experienced ātotal blackoutā from the Christian music industry after coming out in 2010, knows what itās like to go from industry darling to non-entity. Despite a handful of gospel singers whoāve come out in recent years, none were invited to the CCM United industry celebration concert last year that celebrated 40 years of contemporary Christian music. She says anytime moneyās involved, homophobia is likely present.
āSexual orientation is a very real factor but itās one of those things thatās very difficult to put your finger on how much it affects things,ā Knapp says. āYou can say, āWell, [Michael Sam] would have been higher in the draft pick, but they already had a strong defense,ā or in my case, they have the cover of saying, āWell, we donāt stock her old albums because sheās not relevant in this field anymore, sheās not making gospel music,ā and I would agree with that to a point, but what you see happening ā and this is a very difficult thing to measure ā is when they try to minimize the impact that person had before they came out. ā¦ If your name is mentioned at all, itās, āOh where did she go,ā āWhat a waste,ā āWhat a black hole,ā āSheās not relevant,ā and when you couple that with a few things that may be true, it becomes this really murky thing thatās hard to pin down. Was Michael Sam pushed out of football because of his sexual orientation? Only the long run will tell.ā
Tanner Williams disagrees and wonders why anyone in any field would want to be with people who donāt support being out.
āI think heās throwing blame because heās not in the NFL,ā Williams says. āThere are plenty of athletes out there who are very successful.ā
Kahrl mentions athletes such as Collins and Denson whoāve been successful, but says several factors contributed to Samās trouble ā getting involved in too many outside activities when he should have been concentrating on football, lingering anti-LGBT bias in football and the timing of his coming out.
āYou might have said in 2013, 2014 that we were riding this wave that was going to go up and only getting better and instead what weāve seen is this kind of chilling effect where the players in the professional leagues are more reticent in coming out,ā she says. āThe Michael Sam situation is a pretty clear indication of what I would call an observerās paradox where all of us in the community want out athletes and want to get to the point where it goes to being no big deal.ā
So what went wrong?
āI think a lot of people had a lot of good intentions from his advisers to people in the community to people in pro sports in general who all wanted the best thing and it still ended up getting screwed up,ā Kahrl says. āIt had nothing to do with Michael Samās ability to play football. He was doing all these wonderful things, but they had nothing to do with playing football and that was particularly frustrating and it had to have been immensely frustrating for him as well.ā
CONTENT WARNING: The following story discusses suicide ideation.
Her first few weeks behind bars in a Russian prison took a terrible toll on Brittney Griner, the lesbian WNBA star who is breaking her silence on the 10 months she was held on drug-related charges.
“I wanted to take my life more than once in the first weeks,” Griner told ABC’s Robin Roberts in a primetime interview Wednesday. “I felt like leaving here so badly.”
The two-time Olympic gold medalist and nine-time WNBA All-Star, who plays for the Phoenix Mercury, said she ultimately decided against suicide, partly because she feared Russian authorities would not release her body to her wife, Cherelle Griner.
Griner, 33, was arrested on Feb. 17, 2022, at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Khimki, a suburb of Moscow. Authorities said they found vape cartridges in her luggage containing cannabis oil, which is illegal in the country.
Griner told Roberts that was the result of a āmental lapseā on her part ā packing the cannabis oil cartridges in her luggage, Griner said that she had overslept on the morning she was leaving for Russia to play during the WNBA’s off-season, which is how many of the leagueās vastly underpaid players earn a living, compared to NBA players.
So, she packed while she was āin panic mode,ā Griner said.
āMy packing at that moment was just throwing all my stuff in there and zipping it up and saying, āOK, I’m ready,āā she told Roberts.
After landing in Russia, Griner realized that she had those two cannabis oil cartridges in her luggage as Russian security officers inspected her bag at the airport. She recalled the moment as a sinking feeling.
āI’m just like, āOh, my God.ā Like, āHow did I ā how did I make this mistake?āā Griner said. āI could just visualize everything I worked so hard for just crumbling and going away.ā
Russian authorities immediately arrested Griner, but her trial would not take place for five months. She described the horrible conditions of her imprisonment during that delay, saying that she didnāt always have toilet paper and that the toothpaste they gave her had expired about 15 years ago.
āThat toothpaste was expired,ā she said. āWe used to put it on the black mold to kill the mold on the walls.ā
āThe mattress had a huge blood stain on it, and they give you these thin two sheets,ā she added. āSo you’re basically laying on bars.ā
On July 7, 2022, Griner pleaded guilty at her trial to drug charges, admitting that she had the vape cartridges containing cannabis oil but stating she put them in her luggage unintentionally. She testified that she had packed the cartridges by accident, and had “no intention” to break Russian law.
Roberts pressed Griner on this point: āYou know there are those who say, āCome on. How did you not know that you had cartridges in your luggage?āā
āIt’s just so easy to have a mental lapse,ā Griner replied. āGranted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn’t take away from how that can happen,ā she explained.
Griner was sentenced to nine years in prison on Aug. 4, 2022, and in October 2022, a judge denied the appeal filed by Griner’s attorneys.
The sentence landed Griner in a penal colony in the Russian region of Mordovia.
āItās a work camp. You go there to work,ā said Griner. āThere’s no rest.ā Her job was cutting fabric for Russian military uniforms.
āWhat were the conditions like there?ā Roberts asked.
āReally cold,ā Griner said. So cold that her health was impacted and she decided to chop off her long dreadlocks.
āWhat was that like losing that part of you, too?ā Roberts asked Griner.
āHonestly, it just had to happen. We had spiders above my bed ā making nests,ā she said. āMy dreads started to freeze,ā she added. āThey would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do to survive.ā
Her arrest came around the same time as Russiaās invasion of Ukraine, further increasing tensions between Russia and the U.S. But as the Los Angeles Blade reported on Dec, 8, 2022, Russia agreed to release Griner in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
However, before winning her freedom, Griner revealed authorities forced her to write a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“They made me write this letter. It was in Russian,” she said. “I had to ask for forgiveness and thanks from their so-called great leader. I didn’t want to do it, but at the same time I wanted to come home.”
Griner said her heart sank upon boarding the plane to freedom and finding that Paul Whelan, another American the White House said was āwrongfully detained,ā wasn’t leaving Russia with her.
“I walked on and didn’t see him, maybe he’s next. Maybe they will bring him next,” she said. “They closed the door, and I was like, are you serious? You’re not going to let this man come home now.”
Griner recounts on the experience in āComing Home,ā a memoir set to be released on May 7.
988 is the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and is available 24/7 via phone, text or chat to everyone of all ages, orientations and identities. If you are a transgender, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming person considering suicide, Trans Lifeline can be reached at 877-565-8860. LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger) can reach the Trevor Project Lifeline at 1-866-488-7386. You can still also contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 24 hours a day, and itās available to people of all ages and identities.
Additional resources:
If you are in a life-threatening situation, please dial 911.
If you are in crisis, please dial 988 or contact Rainbow Youth Project directly at +1 (317) 643-4888
Sports
Bisexual former umpire sues Major League Baseball for sexual harassment
Brandon Cooper claims female colleague sexually harassed him
A fired former umpire is suing Major League Baseball, claiming he was sexually harassed by a female umpire and discriminated against because of his gender and his sexual orientation.
Brandon Cooper worked in the minor league Arizona Complex League last year, and according to the lawsuit he filed Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan, he identifies as bisexual.
āI wanted my umpiring and ability to speak for itself and not to be labeled as āBrandon Cooper the bisexual umpire,āā he told Outsports. āI didnāt want to be labeled as something. It has been a passion of mine to simply make it to the Major Leagues.ā
But that didnāt happen. Instead of being promoted, he was fired. His suit names MLB and an affiliated entity, PDL Blue, Inc., and alleges he had endured a hostile work environment and wrongful termination and/or retaliation because of gender and sexual orientation under New York State and New York City law.
āHistorically the MLB has had a homogenous roster of umpires working in both the minor and major leagues,ā Cooper claims in his suit. āSpecifically, to date there has never been a woman who has worked in a (regular) season game played in the majors, and most umpires are still Caucasian men. To try to fix its gender and racial diversity issue, defendants have implemented an illegal diversity quota requiring that women be promoted regardless of merit.ā
Cooper claims former umpire Ed Rapuano, now an umpire evaluator, and Darren Spagnardi, an umpire development supervisor, told him in January 2023 that MLB had a hiring quota, requiring that at least two women be among 10 new hires.
According to the suit, Cooper was assigned to spring training last year and was notified by the senior manager of umpire administration, Dusty Dellinger, that even though he received a high rating in June from former big league umpire Jim Reynolds, now an umpire supervisor, that women and minority candidates had to be hired first.Ā
Cooper claims that upon learning Cooper was bisexual, fellow umpire Gina Quartararo insulted him and fellow umpire Kevin Bruno by using homophobic slurs and crude remarks. At that time, Quartararo and Cooper worked on the same umpiring crew and being evaluated for possible promotion to the big leagues.
This season, Quartararo is working as an umpire in the Florida State League, one of nine women who are working as minor league umpires.
Cooper said he notified Dellinger, but instead of taking action against Quartararo, he said MLB ordered Cooper to undergo sensitivity training. According to his lawsuit, he was also accused of violating the minor league anti-discrimination and harassment policy.
Cooperās suit says he met with MLB Senior Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Billy Bean ā who the Los Angeles BladeĀ reported in DecemberĀ is battling cancer.Ā
The lawsuit says at that meeting, Bean told the umpire that Quartararo claimed she was the victim, as the only female umpire in the ACL. Cooper said he told Bean Quartararo regularly used homophobic slurs and at one point physically shoved him. He also claims that he has video evidence, texts and emails to prove his claim.
But he said his complaints to Major League Baseball officials were ignored. His lawsuit said MLB passed him over for the playoffs and fired him in October. He said of the 26 umpires hired with Cooper, he was the only one let go.
Through a spokesperson, MLB declined to comment on pending litigation. Quartararo has also not publicly commented on the lawsuit.
Sports
Brittney Griner, wife expecting first child
WNBA star released from Russian gulag in December 2022
One year after returning to the WNBA after her release from a Russian gulag and declaring, āIām never playing overseas again,ā Phoenix Mercury star Brittney Griner and her wife announced they have something even bigger coming up this summer.
Cherelle, 31, and Brittney, 33, are expecting their first child in July. The couple shared the news with their 715,000 followers on Instagram.
āCanāt believe weāre less than three months away from meeting our favorite human being,ā the caption read, with the hashtag, #BabyGrinerComingSoon and #July2024.
Griner returned to the U.S. in December 2022 in a prisoner swap, more than nine months after being arrested in Moscow for possession of vape cartridges containing prescription cannabis.
In April 2023, at her first news conference following her release, the two-time Olympic gold medalist made only one exception to her vow to never play overseas again: To return to the Summer Olympic Games, which will be played in Paris starting in July, the same month āBaby Grinerā is due. āThe only time I would want to would be to represent the USA,ā she said last year.
Given that the unrestricted free agent is on the roster of both Team USA and her WNBA team, itās not immediately clear where Griner will be when their first child arrives.
The Griners purchased their āforever homeā in Phoenix just last year.
āPhoenix is home,ā Griner said at the Mercuryās end-of-season media day, according toĀ ESPN. āMe and my wife literally just got a place. This is it.ā
As the Los Angeles Blade reported last December, Griner is working with Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts ā like Griner, a married lesbian ā on an ESPN television documentary as well as a television series for ABC about her life story. Cherelle is executive producer of these projects.
Next month, Grinerās tell-all memoir of her Russian incarceration will be published by Penguin Random House. Itās titled “Coming Home” and the hardcover hits bookstores on May 7.