I haven’t written anything about the coming out of former NBA player John Amaechi, in part because I haven’t read anything from his book yet and in part because he’s not a big enough name, I don’t think, to really change the dynamic in the NBA. If Magic Johnson had caught his AIDS from some good old-fashioned gay sex, rather than the run-of-the-mill hetero promiscuity which got it for him (and when I say run-of-the-mill, I mean by NBA standards, which is to say not run-of-the-mill at all), then we’d have something to talk about, but who the hell is John Amaechi? I mean, he’s British, for God’s sake, and as we all know they’re all born a third gay anyway.
That said, the guy over at PopPolitics.com had some ancillary commentary — about the way that sportwriters and commentators are talking about Amaechi’s coming out — that I found interesting.
I caught myself watching the "Sports Reporters" Sunday morning on ESPN. Theoretically a bastion for intelligent, reflective sports commentary amidst its more flashy (and presumably better-rated) counterparts like "Around the Horn," the show regularly features at least two reporters/writers I actually respect: John Saunders and John Feinstein (Mitch Albom and Mike Lupica don’t do much for me).
But watching them struggle to discuss the implication of former NBA player John Amaechi’s "coming out" made me realize how small their sense of social context actually is. Feinstein did state the male locker room is the "most homophobic" place in America — and Lupica believed that the locker room would be the "last bastion" of homophobia in America. But none of them gave any reasons why that was the case — or any suggestion on how that might change.
I’m not an expert on seriously macho sports locker rooms (I was a wrestler in high school, but I wrestled on an extremely idiosyncratic wrestling team, one that produced guys like this, this, and this, so that was no help in understanding macho, though it was fun). I am, however, something of an expert on the types of guys who become sportswriters, and I’m not surprised that they’re less than adept in talking about the issue.
The problem is that while most of them live in, and socialize in, the kind of socially liberal environs where Jamie and I while away our days, they work in the hyper-chauvinistic world of professional sports, and they depend on access to the athletes to make their coin. On top of that, most of them are nebbishy little guys who are always, whether they admit it to themselves or not, struggling on some level to earn and to keep the respect, or at least the indulgence, of the big old, tough guy athletes they write about. And they’re always afraid, to some degree, of being shut out, or shunned, by the athletes.
So it is any surprise that they flinch when called upon to say or do something brave about the homophobia in professional sports? They’re basically a bunch of nerds who’ve figured out how to hang with the cool kids (if only in a one degree removed kind of way) and they’re not going to endanger that by calling out big-name athletes as homophobes.
Thus it’s left to the likable nutjobs, like our good friend Charles Barkley and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, to actually come out and say something refreshing. As Cuban says:
From a marketing perspective, if you’re a player who happens to be gay and you want to be incredibly rich, then you should come out, because it would be the best thing that ever happened to you from a marketing and an endorsement perspective. You would be an absolute hero to more Americans than you can ever possibly be as an athlete, and that’ll put money in your pocket. On the flip side, if you’re the idiot who condemns somebody because they’re gay, then you’re going to be ostracized, you’re going to be picketed and you’re going to ruin whatever marketing endorsements you have…When you do something that the whole world thinks is difficult and you stand up and just be who you are and take on that difficulty factor, you’re an American hero no matter what.
