MLB

Baseball Team Criticized For Not Showing Gay Couples Kissing On Gay Night

After a week of speculation, the St. Louis Cardinals didn’t show any same-sex couples kissing during the team’s “OUT at the Ballpark” event on Saturday. Some people are peeved, while some people are just glad that the Cardinals had a gay-centric night.

Before we get into the arguments from these two camps, let’s start from the beginning.

Last week, the kiss cam at the St. Louis Rams game lingered on two male fans decked out in Arizona Cardinals jerseys, who the Rams happened to be playing that day. As the crowd laughed and urged the two dudes to kiss, the men became visibly agitated, and shooed the camera away. Deprived of their bro smooch, everybody booed.

Now, there’s a definite frattiness to trying to coerce two men, who may or may not be in a homosexual relationship, to make out, simply because they’re dressed in the wrong color (“Dude! They’re wearing red! Make them do gay stuff!”). But was it an overt knock on homosexuality, or just some harmless fun at the stadium?

Some gay people took it as a knock, saying that the Rams were trying to embarrass the opposing fans by saying they were gay. So the topic of getting on the kiss cam at the Cardinals game came up at a St. Louis gay bar, the local newspapers and TV heard about it, and that’s how we got to Saturday.

Over 200 people showed up for Out at the Ballpark, all in a specific section. Despite the cameras knowing where they all were, the Cards didn’t show any same-sex couples kissing. Those who are peeved about this would include Out Sports’ Cyd Zeigler, Jr., who concludes that “the Cardinals will take our money, they just don’t want anyone seeing us kiss.”

Meanwhile, Ethan Barnett, a gay rights activist who organized the event, seemed okay with how things went down.

“We’re really excited about it,” he said. “It’s the first time the Cardinals have gone so far as to look us up as a community and approach us. Everyone’s been welcoming.”

Welcoming or not, they didn’t show any gay kisses on the kiss cam. Which isn’t surprising, since the Cardinals are perceived as the extremely understanding yet devoutly religious grandmother of pro sports franchises: you could tell them you’re gay, they’d smile and hug you, but they’re probably not totally cool with it, you know? To ask them to break this barrier (if you could even call this a barrier… I suppose you could, actually), is asking a lot.

Which begs the question: which pro sports team is most likely to show the first man-on-man smooch in kiss cam history (it has to be guy-on-guy to really count as groundbreaking, since, I don’t know if you know this, but most heterosexual males who are into sports are also into two girls kissing)? The Lakers pseudo did it when Dustin Hoffman and Jason Bateman kissed during the NBA Finals, but that doesn’t count. Has to be a legitimate gay male couple.

The smart money is on a major city that is also media-savvy and leans toward the liberal. I’m thinking a football or baseball game is unlikely, since these sports have the highest instance of fans who get drunk and say stupid derogatory things. The general mood is a bit too barbaric for us to make any progressive steps as a society (yes, I know Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, but that wasn’t exactly a walk in the park for him). Ditto for hockey.

Which leaves basketball, and my pick for the first team to have man-on-man kiss cam action: the Portland Trail Blazers.

Think about it: arguably, the most loyal fanbase in the NBA, in a liberal area that would probably be cool with it, with people watching who probably have a gay friend or two.

The only question mark is team owner Paul Allen, but he seems like an okay guy, so we’ll mark him down as a “yes.” The whole owner thing made me initially think Dallas Mavericks, since Mark Cuban never met some publicity he didn’t like, but his team is in Texas, and I don’t think even he has that much cojones.

So there you have it, my prediction on how sports’ latest issue that’s really a non-issue will come to a head: in Portland, this NBA season. It’ll be a lot like when a TV show has a gay kiss. Some people will go apeshit, some people will be really happy and proud, and most people will go “eh.” Welcome to the 24/7 news cycle.