None of Our Business If He Is Called Out

Who is the gay major leaguer?

The baseball world wants to know.

The baseball world is today chasing the answer like Randy Johnson chases batters, hard and inside and scary.

Who is the gay baseball player?

The question arose from an article that appeared in the May issue of Out magazine.

Yeah, hard to believe some of these players would put down the latest issue of “Boobs and Ammo” long enough to read the nation’s largest-circulation gay magazine, but that is what happened, and weren’t they surprised.

The editor in chief wrote that he was sleeping with one of them.

“For the past year and a half, I have been having an affair with a pro baseball player from a majorleague East Coast franchise, not his team’s biggest star, but a very recognizable media figure all the same,” Brendan Lemon wrote in a letter from the editor.

He continued, “During this time, none of my friends has been privy to this liaison, a concealment that has been awkward at times but nothing in comparison to the maneuvering that my ballplayer has had to make.”

An affair. Recognizable media figure. My ballplayer.

Fighting words.

The story appeared earlier this month, and soon became the stuff of batting-cage gossip, press-box guessing and front-office debate.

Not to mention, Internet chat rooms. Speculators there are taking wild stabs, working their way through every roster, having thus far determined that the American and National League East divisions are composed entirely of homosexuals.

An editor throws a smoldering pitch that the baseball world can’t handle, but refuses to drop, and now it simply must know.

Who is the gay major leaguer?

To which I propose another question:

Who cares?

We really must stop this obsession with sports and sexuality, all this changing of the rules.

It’s not whether you win or lose, but where you sleep?

Winning isn’t everything, it’s also important who you date?

Even the most trusted of cliches seem twisted lately, what with last fall’s lesbian kiss incident at Dodger Stadium followed by this spring’s Sparks’ lesbian marketing controversy.

And now, the presence of a gay baseball player.

As if he’s the only one. Please.

The splendid thing about sports is that, take away all that money, and our teams are often a reflection of our society. There are good people, rotten people, funny people, blond-haired people, big-eared people.

And there are homosexuals, less in some leagues, more in others, but probably the same 5% that exist in society.

And 100% of the time, it doesn’t matter.

Maybe I’m naive. But when I buy a ticket, it is to watch an athlete compete, not kiss. I come looking for a final score, not a bedroom secret.

And to those who complain about the sexuality of the other patrons, particularly at Spark games, are you buying a ticket to look at the stands? Doesn’t the idea of attending a sports event revolve around actually watching the game?

The Sparks’ decision to become marketing partners with a lesbian bar was neither particularly noble nor nasty. It was just business.

Those two lesbians who kissed after a Dodger home run last season--and later forced an apology from the club for being ejected--were neither pioneers nor perverts. They were only fans.

And now we’re dealing with this baseball player, who is only a baseball player, although listening to all the twittering, you would think otherwise.

“I think of all the other things in the world we can be worrying about, I’m surprised people are so worried about this,” Lemon said Wednesday from his magazine’s Los Angeles offices.

Of course, he knew people would have some sort of reaction to the revelation. That’s why he wrote the story.

“I wrote the article to foster discussion, and it worked,” he said.

Some thought it was so provocative, it was fabricated, a sort of written touch on the pulse of gay and lesbian acceptance.

“I did not make it up, I do not crave attention that much,” Lemon said.

In fact, Lemon said, the story was written with the approval of his closeted boyfriend, who he expects will come out.

“He’d like to come out, but he doesn’t want to disrupt the team in the middle of the season,” Lemon said. “But I think he will eventually do it.”

If and when he does, he would be the first pro athlete to come out of closet while he is still playing. He would join Glenn Burke and Billy Bean as the only pro baseball players to come out.

I covered Bean, a reserve outfielder, when he played for the Dodgers about 10 years ago. I wrote 22 stories that included his name.

I never knew about his sexuality. Yet, upon a recent review of those stories, that lack of knowledge did not render any of them untrue. It didn’t matter.

Others, however, do not feel the same way. If Lemon’s article was a testing of the waters for his friend, he knows now that, even in 2001, those waters are still dangerous.

“I would feel bad for that person because he would be a pariah,” Dodger pitcher Matt Herges said in an interview with The Times’ Jason Reid. “He would have to deal with a lot of crap.”

In the Angel clubhouse, the reaction was only a tad gentler.

“Some guys would probably be all right,” Angel infielder Scott Spiezio told The Times’ Bill Shaikin. “Some guys would probably be in the middle--they’d say it was his choice, but they really wouldn’t want to be around him too much.

“But I think there could be some guys who would say, ‘I don’t like him and I don’t want him on my team.’ ”

This most insulated of sports--they spend seven hours a day hanging around something called a clubhouse, for Pete’s sake--simply isn’t ready for an athlete perceived to be so different.

It is hoped that when the time comes, the rest of us won’t have that excuse.

Who is the gay major leaguer?

I am fairly certain I know his name. I am absolutely certain it is none of my business.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.