The Futility Infielder

Continuing his fine coverage of the issue of gays in sports, ball talk's Alex Ciepley published his first-ever interview for his site this week, a two-part Q&A with Michael Muska. Muska's not a baseball player, but he's a man who has made some waves as the first openly gay male college coach (at my alma mater, Brown University) and athletic director (at Oberlin). Though his areas of specialty are track and cross-country, as one of the more visible gay men in the sports world, Muska's opinions on the matter of gays and homophobia in sports certainly bear watching.

Muska had coached track and cross country at prominent college and prep schools such as Auburn, Northwestern, and Andover, but it wasn't until he admitted that he was gay in his interview for the Oberlin post that his sexual orientiation became a public issue, making headlines on the Chronicle for Higher Education website, a news and job-info site aimed at college and university faculty and administrators. Essentially, he was professionally outed, an experience that Muska calls "mind-boggling." But he drew much support from the students at Oberlin, as well as the school's basketball coach, who compared the experience to his own encounting of racism while a student at the same school. Ultimately, Muska speaks positively of his own high-profile experience -- you won't find too many more liberal, accepting places than Brown or Oberlin.

But Muska's angle on professional athletes coming out isn't what you might expect. He says some pro athletes have come out to him, but he's reluctant to advise them to take it further:

BT: What advice do you give [the athletes who have come out to you]?

Muska: In many ways, I tell them to not come out. But I don't think there was ever a situation where any of them were thinking about coming out. It was more a conversation dealing with what it was like to be in sports and to be gay.

BT: So you would actually not advise a pro athlete to come out.

Muska: I just don't think it's worth going through. I wish it were.

It's kind of like a kid coming out. If the kid's going to come out to his family, it's a scary thing -- you're going to hope that you have a support network around you. Perhaps your parents or teachers at school. I think a pro athlete needs to know they've got that same support mechanism.

Until we see a general manager who brings in people to talk about homophobia in sports, until you see some leadership in pro teams do that, I think that a guy will say, "What's my support base, what's my safety net, what's in my contract to protect me?" Basically, there's nothing.

BT: But do you think that front offices will ever be ready, or do you think this is an issue that eventually will have to be forced?

Muska: I think it will eventually have to be forced. Just look at the hate that's coming up around the whole gay marriage issue. A lot of latent homophobia is really coming to the surface.

The leadership of most teams is smart enough to know where their fan base is, and if they lose those of us that are gay because they took a stand, I don't think they're going to care. Yankee Stadium is still going to fill up even if they don't support openly gay athletes.

Ouch. Muska's contrarian view of the situation seems pretty dark, especially to someone who'd like to believe the baseball world is ready for an openly gay player. But then again, what the hell do I know about coming out? It's all second-hand stuff from here.

Muska's words point to the fact that there's no uniformity of opinion even within the gay community about this issue. And the gay community's reaction is another area Muska has reservations about:

BT: How will the gay community react to an openly gay player in one of the big four sports?

Muska: For them to become the darling of the gay community might not be such a good thing. Think about the baseball player who finally comes out, and takes that huge risk, and all of the sudden there's a whole bunch of gay guys who aren't you and me, but are perhaps a bit more queeny, and decide that this is great that they have this guy. And they're in the stands, and they're yelling and waving and screaming.

BT: You potentially gain thousands and thousands of fans.

Muska: Yeah, but the ironic part is -- and this is a kind of sad thing to say -- people will jump on the bandwagon not because they're sports fans but because someone's gay.

Again, not necessarily what you'd expect from a man in his position, and perhaps not what those of us who like to consider ourselves open to the issue want to hear. But Muska's got real experience on the front lines of this situation, and his practical insights about gays in the locker room and in sports in general are certainly worth a read, as challenging as they are. Ciepley's done a good job of eliciting some interesting answers to tough questions. Check this stuff out.