Dodgers show courage, honor LGBTQ+ pioneers Glenn

Let’s go Dodgers. High fives all around.

Because this time, with the latest historic exhibit at Dodger Stadium, the crew obtained it proper.

Amid all the historic installations and tributes in the open-air museum that is the Centerfield Plaza, and just a few toes from a Fernando Valenzuela mural, a new show honors Glenn Burke and Billy Bean, two former Dodgers outfielders who have been the first and second skilled baseball gamers to come out as homosexual.

It’s not a fleeting point out on Pride evening, it’s a everlasting file. A static reminder of progress made — and still to be made. And a much-deserved thank-you.

“It’ll be here tomorrow, it’ll be here on the weekend and if you come next month, it’ll be here,” said the Dodgers’ crew historian Mark Langill, who pointed to a spot just down the corridor where in 1976 he was an 11-year-old getting Burke’s autograph.

Baseball is steeped in such historical past. The personal, the statistical, the societal. And the Dodgers’ is incomplete without their tales — Burke’s and Bean’s.

But the Dodgers haven’t, of course, always gotten this stuff proper.

In 1978, they did Burke incorrect, trading him — he believed — after management discovered he was homosexual.

In his three seasons in L.A., Burke had proved himself a succesful reserve outfielder who was in style with his teammates.

As far as we all know, in 1977, he was the first man to provoke a high 5 — spontaneously reaching above his head to slap palms with Dusty Baker after the home run that made Baker the fourth Dodger, along with Ron Cey, Steve Garvey and Reggie Smith, to hit at least 30 home runs that season, a MLB first.

Glenn Burke, left, goes to give a high-five to teammate Dusty Baker after Baker hit a home run in 1977. It is believed to be the first occasion a high 5 was exchanged.

(Los Angeles Times)

There’s a implausible photograph of the historic high 5 included in the tribute to Burke and Bean, which is located on a hallway wall beneath the left-field bleachers, beside the “Dodger Dugout” augmented actuality photograph sales space.

Burke was also the first man in that Dodgers clubhouse to crack a joke when the crew needed it, his former teammate Rick Monday said.

“When called upon, he could play really well,” Monday said before the Dodgers took the sector against the Angels on Friday, when the Dodgers and many of their rainbow-sporting followers celebrated the crew’s thirteenth annual LGBTQ+ Pride Night. “And when we needed a moment of levity, Glenn was not afraid to come forward and put a smile on people’s face.”

But shortly before he died of AIDS in 1995 at 42, Burke revealed an autobiography, “Out at Home,” in which he described the crew’s management being “afraid of my inappropriate orientation, even though I never flaunted it. To this day, the Dodgers deny trading me because I was gay. But it was painfully obvious.”

“Oh, what he had to deal with and keep it hid,” said Joyce Burke-Henderson, one of Glenn’s sisters at Friday’s pregame unveiling, where relations of both gamers gasped and cried and cheered the set up’s reveal.

“But as time went on, people did know. And then I think he came to the point where he just didn’t care and he just told it like it was.”

Joyce Henderson, sister of Glenn Burke, speaks about her brother during a ceremony honoring the previous Dodger and LGBTQ+ pioneer at Dodger Stadium Friday.

(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

Burke got here out in 1982, three years after enjoying his 225th and remaining big league sport, in an Inside Sports article, “The Double Life of a Gay Dodger.”

“We just appreciate that now people are opening their eyes and just trusting in the Lord,” Burke-Henderson said Friday, “that things will go forward and work out and everybody will be loved regardless of their situation.”

The Dodgers first honored Burke in 2022, at their ninth Pride Night.

The next season, they made a mess of the Pride festivities, inviting and uninviting and then reinviting the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group recognized for its work in help of AIDS sufferers and whose members gown in drag, as nuns.

In 2023, the Dodgers also invited Bean — who was MLB’s senior vice president for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. He appeared in a pregame ceremony on the sector while protesters gathered outdoors the stadium.

Bean died the next 12 months, at 60, 11 months after being identified with acute myeloid leukemia.

Greg Baker, husband of the late Billy Bean, wipes away tears during a tribute honor Bean as a LGBTQ+ pioneer at Dodger Stadium on Friday.

(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

Once a Northeast Santa Ana Little Leaguer, Bean turned valedictorian at Santa Ana High, performed for Loyola Marymount and went on to seem in 272 big-league video games — including 51 for the Dodgers in 1989 — before abruptly strolling away from baseball in 1995.

It obtained to be an excessive amount of, he’d clarify later, persevering with to hustle to keep his baseball profession afloat while holding his inappropriateity secret, acutely conscious of the blowback he’d get if it obtained out.

“For nine years,” he told the New York Times, “I felt as though I had one foot in the major leagues and one on a banana peel.”

“When he left baseball suddenly, I knew something was wrong,” Bean’s mom, Linda Kovac, said Friday, pausing to wipe away tears. “He was playing very well, it wasn’t like he was kicked out or anything. And it just didn’t make any sense.”

When Bean finally told his household he was homosexual, in 1996 — three years before clueing in an unsuspecting public via a Miami Herald article — none of his family members blinked. That included his stepfather, Ed Kovac, the murder cop and former Marine who’d had a associate on the pressure who was homosexual.

“He worked with someone that he respected, side by side, on criminal cases,” Linda said. “We’re still friends with that guy.”

Linda and Ed Kovac, dad and mom of Billy Bean, maintain palms in entrance of a tribute devoted to their son at Dodger Stadium on Friday.

(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

Knowing somebody — or of somebody — who is homosexual or lesbian has long tended to dispel falsehoods and quell fears that would possibly exist.

“One of the most important things any one of us can do in our community is be out, to be proud,” said Greg Baker, Bean’s husband. “The fact that someone can be out in a world that typically doesn’t have a lot of role models of the same ilk, it’s a brave thing to stick your neck out. It’s also very important.”

And it’s not a shock, Baker said, that more athletes aren’t out in sports activities like baseball. Not with Gallup polling launched last week telling us that with public acceptance of same-sex marriage and relationships in the U.S. has flattened after two-plus a long time of growing help — down from 71% to about 65%.

“I want to thank the Dodgers organization,” Baker said. “It’s brave of them in this day and age to spotlight someone in our community when other organizations are trying to erase us.”

The Dodgers have finished the other, placing up a everlasting marker. A long time coming, a tribute to last.