Glenn Burke Baseball Player & Gay

He spent the last years of his life wandering the streets of San Francisco, especially Castro Street, the heart of the gay community. Yes, the onetime Dodger outfielder made another kind of baseball history in 1982, two years after his premature retirement from the game, when he became the first player to openly declare his homosexuality. So far there has not been a second, although former umpire Dave Pallone, also openly gay, says there are and have been more. [Editor's note: This pre-dates Billy Bean]

“He was a hero to us”, said Jack McGowan, former sports editor of the San Francisco Sentinel, a gay newspaper. “He was … real. He was athletic, clean cut, masculine. He was everything that we wanted to prove to the world that we could be.”

McGowan, a long-time friend of Burke’s, was joined in his praise of the product of Oakland sandlots by Tommy Lee, a Castro district restaurateur and another old friend. “People were just honored to he in his presence. My God, a major league player, and he’s gay.”

In August 1994 I read a “Where are they now?” type story in the L.A. Times. Burke was suffering from AIDS, an 0-2 count anyway you look at it. Usually the gay community rallies around an AIDS victim. Certainly this would be expected for a hero.

But there were no helping hands for Glenn.

From an article written in 1995 by Bob Brigham, The Diamond Angle.

Read the full story at OUTSPORTS