Breanna Sinclairé Becomes First Trans Artist to Perform National Anthem For MLB

Via Mediaite:

A 25-year-old opera singer made history at the Oakland A’s game when she sang the national anthem. Breanna Sinclairé, the first openly transgender woman to study and graduate from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, became the first transgender singer to perform the national anthem at a professional sporting event. This particular game, which pitted the A’s against the San Diego Padres, was on the A’s Gay Pride night at the Oakland Coliseum and a member of the LGBT community was specifically sought for the honor of performing the national anthem.

MLB Launches Pride Wear Line

Major League Baseball has launched a line of "Pride" rainbow t-shirts and hats. T-shirts are $30 and caps are $20. Not all teams are available at this writing, but right now I'm seeing the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs, Detroit Tigers, Oakland Athletics, and Washington Nationals. See them here. (Tipped by JMG reader Jeremy)

Kiss-Cam Gay Couple Comes Forward

They're even married!

LOS ANGELES: Fans Cheer As Gay Male Couple Smooches For Stadium Kiss-Cam

Via Deadspin:

Back in 2000, two women were kicked out of Dodger Stadium for kissing. The team and the world have changed since then. Between innings of Saturday’s game, the stadium’s Kiss Cam team found two men, not as a joke, but a couple. It’s cool that this wasn’t the still-prevalent homophobic gag of forcing two platonic male friends to awkwardly recoil at the thought of kissing another dude. It’s also cool that the reaction from the crowd was a genuine cheer. Reader Steven, who was in the ballpark, says he was “proud of the loud, enthusiastic response from the crowd. Not one person around me groaned or made derogatory remarks, and seemed genuinely pleased with the moment.” The Dodgers have held LGBT nights in recent years, and while it’s great to publicly announce that everyone’s welcome, there’s nothing quite like being normalized by dorky in-stadium entertainment to make everyone feel included.

(Tipped by JMG reader Helen)

Baltimore To See Pro Baseball First

It's believed that this is a first for major league baseball:

"After consultation with Major League Baseball and city and local officials, tomorrow's game between the Orioles and Chicago White Sox will be closed to the public," the team said in a statement. "The Orioles will also play their three-game series against the Tampa Bay Rays, scheduled for May 1-3, at Tropicana Field in Florida, while serving as the home team." The announcement came one day after Orioles executive John Angelos, the son of team owner Peter Angelos, responded to criticism of the protestors with a lengthy statement that pointed towards "a far bigger picture for poor Americans in Baltimore and everywhere…living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state."

Oakland A's Pitcher Offers To Buy Tickets From Fans Who Object To LGBT Night

Oakland A's star pitcher Sean Doolittle and his girlfriend have offered buy the tickets from fans that object to attending the team's upcoming first-ever LGBT Pride Night at the Oakland Coliseum. Doolittle's girlfriend has two moms and she writes:

If attending a baseball game on LGBT Pride Night makes you at all uncomfortable, it is probably a good idea to sell your tickets. And I have the perfect buyer. ME! If you'd like to sell your tickets to June 17th's LGBT Pride Night game, I will buy them from you at face value. As many as I can. No judgments. No questions asked. From there, I will donate any tickets I purchase to the Bay Area Youth Center's Our Space community for LGBTQ youth. That way you don't have to feel uncomfortable, and the seats don't go to waste. It's win-win. Please tweet at me (@EireannDolan) if you'd like to sell me your tickets. I'll purchase as many unwanted tickets as I can out of my own pocket. I also encourage other A's fans to do the same. Let's fill the stands that night! Love, Eireann and my hella gay moms.

The couple has also launched a GoFundMe account to fill the stadium. At this writing the fund has taken in over $16,000. According to an update at GoFundMe, the team has now dedicated three more sections of seating to LGBT Pride Night. Doolittle pitched for the American League in last year's All-Star Game. (Tipped by JMG reader Jim)

RELATED: Eirann writes amusingly about her moms.

My biological mom Kathy and her partner Elise (who grew up in the Bay Area) are both die-hard A’s fans as well as super gay. Like, they’re so gay for each other that they’ve fostered a long-term loving relationship likely no different from any heterosexual loving relationships you’ve seen or been a part of.

My moms are begrudgingly living in San Diego as transplants amongst all of the San Diego Padres fans. The team the Athletics will play (and beat) on Pride Night? The San Diego Padres. This night was made for them. In fact I’m starting to suspect that the Athletics focus-grouped this event idea with just my two moms and nobody else.

It couldn’t be any more perfectly tailored to my moms than if the team announced that NPR’s Terry Gross will also be throwing out the first pitch and there will be a free notepad giveaway on which my moms can write down all of the reasons I should have majored in something more practical in college.

Pro Sports First: MLB Umpire Comes Out

Major League Baseball umpire Dale Scott, seen above left with his husband of 28 years, has formally come out. Jim Buzinski writes at OutSports:

Major League Baseball umpire Dale Scott bleeds the green and yellow of his beloved Oregon Ducks football team, having gone to games since the Johnson Administration. He has two black Labs, Roman and Rollie, who rule his world. Using his skills as a former DJ, he has recorded the voice mail greetings for 15 of his fellow umpires. He loves history, politics and documentaries and watches every season of "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race." He has worked three World Series, three All-Star Games, two no-hitters and numerous playoff games. He is gay and married to his partner of 28 years. That last fact is just part of who Dale Scott is and has had no impact on his abilities as an umpire for the past 29 seasons. Yet it is understandably the one that most people will notice, because Scott is the first Major League Baseball umpire to publicly say he is gay while active (and the first out active male official in the NBA, NHL, NFL or MLB). This story you are reading now came about because Scott made a decision to first come out in a very quiet and understated way.

That "understated way" came via a profile in the small, subscription-only Referee Magazine. Hit the link, it's a great piece.

Satan's Favorite City Wins World Series

UPDATE: JMG reader Kned sends us a photo from the celebration in the Castro.

UPDATE II: Another Kned photo, this time from the Mission.

Minor League Baseball Manager Gets Prostate Exam Live On Stadium Cameras

Via ESPN:

Staying true to his word, a minor league baseball general manager underwent a prostate exam while singing "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch on Thursday night in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Andy Milovich, GM of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, a Single-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers, pledged to undergo the procedure on the team's Prostate Awareness Night if the Facebook page of local 10-year-old Fallon Emery got roughly 4,000 more likes. Emery was diagnosed with brain cancer in December. Dr. Glenn Dangi performed the exam in the team's radio booth as cameras filmed Milovich from the neck up for a feed aired live on the scoreboard. "It wasn't bad," said Milovich, 45, who had never before had the procedure. "The doc was done maybe 15 seconds into the song. I think my next exam is going to be a significant letdown."

(Tipped by JMG reader Elroy)

Brooklyn Cyclones To Host Seinfeld Night

New York Mets minor league franchise Brooklyn Cyclones will host Seinfeld Night on July 5th. The players will wear puffy shirts, there will be an Elaine dance contest, the PA announcer will be a low-talker, and there will be a table for the airing of grievances. The stadium will be renamed Vandelay Industries Park for the night and actual latex salesmen will get in free. The first 2500 fans in the gate get a Keith Hernandez bobblehead. More fun details here.

Quote Of The Day - Hank Aaron

"A lot of things have happened in this country, but we have so far to go. There's not a whole lot that has changed. We can talk about baseball. Talk about politics. Sure, this country has a black president, but when you look at a black president, President Obama is left with his foot stuck in the mud from all of the Republicans with the way he's treated. We have moved in the right direction, and there have been improvements, but we still have a long ways to go in the country. The bigger difference is that back then they had hoods. Now they have neckties and starched shirts." - Baseball legend Hank Aaron, 80, speaking yesterday on the 40th anniversary of his having broken Babe Ruth's all-time home run record. Aaron is being attacked for the above comments over on Breitbart.

RELATED: As Aaron approached Babe Ruth's record late in the 1973 season, he had received so many death threats that the editor of the Atlanta Journal quietly had an obituary written.

Chicago Cubs Unveil First Mascot

The Chicago Cubs have unveiled the team's first mascot.

Clark, a young bear wearing a Cubs jersey and backward blue baseball cap, was accompanied Monday at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center by a dozen team prospects. The mascot is named after the North Side Chicago street on which Wrigley Field is located. Team officials say they held focus groups before deciding on Clark, and fans told them they wanted a more family-friendly atmosphere at Wrigley Field. Clark will greet fans at Wrigley before and during games, and the mascot will have a Twitter account and Facebook page.

The announcement has been met with much mocking on Twitter. A sample: "He looks like was paroled from Build-A-Bear as part of work release program." Others are comparing him to Pedobear.

Meanwhile In Nebraska...

Chicago Cubs co-owner Pete Ricketts is running for governor of Nebraska. Despite having a gay sister who owns the team with him, he's against gay marriage as are the other GOP candidates.  Shocking. But the Chicago Cubs have participated in Chicago's gay pride parade, which one candidate is trying to use against him.

The Cubs' connection to the parade raised objections from a fellow Republican candidate, who said Thursday it called into question Ricketts' gay-marriage opposition. Republican Beau McCoy said that Ricketts should be held responsible for the fact that the Cubs are supportive of the gay community. Ricketts said he had no involvement in that decision. He also said that despite some “difficult conversations” in his family, he and his sister remain family. “My sister is gay. I love her, but I disagree with her on this issue,” said Ricketts, an Omaha businessman.

Ricketts, Dubas and several of the other Nebraska gubernatorial candidates staked out their positions on gay marriage Thursday, the day before the Nebraska Legislature was set to hold a public hearing on the topic. In Nebraska, voters banned gay marriage in 2000. Gay couples who are legally married in other states qualify for federal benefits as the result of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision. But their marriages are not recognized in Nebraska. All five Republican candidates say they want to keep it that way. Ricketts, McCoy, State Auditor Mike Foley and State Sens. Charlie Janssen and Tom Carlson are on record saying marriage should be between a man and a woman.

McCoy: "I don't see how it's possible to be against gay marriage while, at the same time, owning with your family, a national baseball team that purports to be one of the most gay-friendly baseball teams in the country."

Beards, Baseball, Boston

"There’s no point to a trimmed and well-groomed beard, which resembles exactly the sort of suburban lawn that often led to the growing of the beard in the first place. (That’s why my hero among this year’s pennant-winning crop is Mike Napoli, whose dense and colorful beard is as gonzo as his all-or-nothing, free-swinging style at the plate.) One of the beauties of the beard is that its lushness is polysemic, lending itself to an interpretive exuberance to match its flow.

"A beard is a celebration of nature that brings appearance closer to that of untamed human animals—a Rousseau-esque gesture that was crucial to the age of Aquarius, a time when long-established norms of behavior collapsed and made public life a clearer expression of formerly unspeakable private desires. By contrast, the shaven and crew-cut athlete suggests a martial fury that is joyless—a grim, self-denying efficiency that may work in war but is exactly the opposite of the essence of baseball, which, for all its competitive ardor, is playtime." - New Yorker columnist Richard Brody, writing about the world champion Boston Red Sox.

Controversy At World Series

There's lot of anger in Beantown today.

The city of Boston and the Red Sox were left frustrated, confused and angry by an unprecedented and wild finish to the game against the St Louis Cardinals on Saturday night. In 109 years, no World Series game has ended with an obstruction call. But this one was decided by the controversial ruling against Boston third baseman Will Middlebrooks. This allowed Cardinals runner Allen Craig to score with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning and lifted St. Louis over Boston 5-4 for a 2-1 edge. Both sets of players and fans were left in shock.

CBS Sports says the ruling was correct.

Tweet Of The Day - Nate Silver

Sullivan: "I guess I can die now."

Photo Of The Day

Mashable says this photo from Boston's Fenway Park "may be the funniest photo in baseball history."

If a picture tells a thousand words, as the old cliche goes, then this amazing sports shot is good for at least a million. Seriously, every single face here tells a story. Stories of dreams. Stories of fears. Stories of courage under fire, and panic under duress. In short, the stories of men and women drilled down to their true essences, finding out who they really are in the split second it takes for a rock-hard baseball to come hurtling from the heavens down into their once-tranquil section of Fenway Park.

Embiggen and see if you can tell who caught the ball.

Red Sox Win On Pride Night

While the haters at MassResistance were presumably marching around in furious little circles outside of Boston's Fenway Park, openly gay NBA player Jason Collins was signing autographs before throwing out the ceremonial first pitch. While the Red Sox have been enduring some ugliness on their Twitter and Instagram accounts tonight, we can celebrate that they won on Pride Night with an exciting three-run homer that broke a tied score in the bottom of the ninth.

MA Hate Group Demands Red Sox Cancel Pride Night At Fenway Park

Right Wing Watch points us to a campaign by MassResistance, one of the most vile anti-gay hate groups in the nation, which is calling on its supporters to deluge the Red Sox with demands for the cancellation of tonight's Pride Night at Fenway Park, where recently out NBA player Jason Collins is scheduled to throw out the first pitch.

The Red Sox have been around long enough to know that "Pride Week" in Boston is a hideous, obscene, and outright disgusting display of perverse activities. (Plus, in recent years, more young people have been drawn in through Boston Pride's management of Massachusetts Youth Pride every May.) And the Boston Red Sox organization are not only going to celebrate it at their ballpark, but will be financially supporting it from their ticket sales. Several people have reported back to us that when they call, the Red Sox staffers tell them that the Sox are NOT celebrating "Gay Pride Day." They're also telling people that it's only about "supporting tolerance." To claim that it's not connected with "Gay Pride Week" is simply a lie. One only needs to see all the advertising that's been generated about this sordid event. Don't let them get away with that!

MassResistance plans to appear outside the stadium to hand out anti-gay fliers and tell baseball fans that they're all going to hell for supporting perversion. Or something.

Red Sox Make Pitch To Jason Collins