Results Matter, Even for Trailblazing Athletes Like David Denson

Just three years ago, then Toronto Blue Jays shortstop Yunel Escobar wrote "tu ere maricon" ("you are a fagot") across his eye-black stickers prior to taking the field for a game. He apologized after the fact, and was later suspended, but his rationale—which hinged heavily on logic like "What's the big deal, it's not like anyone in the locker room was offended"—hardly exonerated him.

Some felt Escobar's antics were proof positive that it would be years before a gay player would come out in one of the four major American sports. Since then, however, Michael Sam has become the first openly gay player drafted by an NFL team, and last week Milwaukee Brewers minor leaguer David Denson became the first openly gay player on an MLB affiliated team.

That's progress. As a former professional baseball player, I'm proud of Denson. It takes serious guts to tell folks you're gay in an über masculine, hetero-centric atmosphere like a pro baseball locker room. I can't imagine how many times he's heard or been called gay slurs by unsuspecting teammates.

However, if you're anxiously waiting for Sam to spearhead a gay pride event at an NFL stadium near you, or hopeful for an eye-black rebuttal game with Denson and Escobar, don't hold your breath. Sam just announced a break from football, and Denson is a career .236 hitter with no pop.

Those results matter. They shouldn't, but the harsh reality of the professional sports world is that is that everything you do—everything—is connected to your play. Denson can now talk freely about being gay, but from here on, all references about him will be followed by his slash line, his home run totals, and his prospect ranking. Such is the plight of life in sports.

This isn't unique to Denson or Sam. Every player enters into this infernal contract. The price of chasing greatness is the dehumanizing process of being ranked and compared, sifted and sorted, your entire being distilled down to a pile of sterile numbers.

All athletes go through it, but not all athletes carry the weighty significance of being their sport's first openly gay player. If you can understand the cruel duality of this, then you can understand how, in one bold declaration, Sam and Denson each broke old bonds, and yet entered new bondage. "Congratulations on coming out, but are you any good?"

That's a damn shame because it twists the narrative. I'd like to believe we live in a world where we appreciate the unfathomable stress homosexual athletes experience, a world where we value the historical milestones more than the athletic outcomes that follow. I'm afraid we're just not that altruistic.

Michael Sam is a perfect example. His story seemed straight out of Hollywood: a talented gay football player drafted by the NFL, America's bastion of heterosexuality. Could there have been a better iconoclast?

But Sam fizzled and faded. He's been cut twice by NFL teams and did not get on the field for the CFL's Montreal Alouttes until the sixth game of the season. He recently announced that he was taking time away from football in order to take care of his mental health.

Having dealt with my own mental health issues as a professional athlete, I can attest to how challenging it can be to be judged on the random stats you generate on a given day. If Sam is anything like me, or any of the athletes I know, I'm certain he spent a large amount of time worrying about the future of his career aside from what impact his sexuality would have on his long-term prospects in the game.

To many, Sam's career will have been a disappointment, not because of what he did but because of what he could have done. This is the bittersweet reality of professional sports celebrity: the same platform that inspires such powerful change can also use your on-field performance to trivialize it.

How much bigger would Denson's news have been if he were hitting .300, marching toward the bigs, in the Yankees organization?

As recently as 2009, opinion polls showed the majority of the country to be against gay marriage. This summer, the Supreme Court declared it a constitutional right. With such sweeping changes taking place across the country, Denson is as much a trailblazer as he is the product of a blazing trail. As society and sports both become more inclusive, we will inevitably see more athletes come out. Until a gay athlete makes the climb to the top of their sport, however, comparisons between gays athletes and their heterosexual counterparts will persist, along with speculation on whether their sport is being inclusive enough for them to flourish.

A consequence of Denson and Sam's inability to excel on the field may be that scouts become more reluctant to draft the next openly gay player. The sample size is small, but front offices are notorious for using past performance as a predictor of future risk. The stigmas will eventually fall, though, and not because of any well-meaning inclusion initiatives. They will fall because what matters in sports—what always has mattered in sports—is what happens on the field.