As the only out gay play-by-play announcer the mor leagu, Bach remas termed to succeed spe feelgs of isolatn.
Contents:
- THE LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN WAS TWO THIRDS GAY, SHAR 95-YEAR-OLD MAYBELLE BLAIR
- 95-YEAR-OLD ‘A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN’ WOMEN’S BASEBALL STAR OUT AS GAY
- GAY BROADSTER ERIC BACH ADVOT FOR MORE LGBTQ REPRENTATN BASEBALL
THE LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN WAS TWO THIRDS GAY, SHAR 95-YEAR-OLD MAYBELLE BLAIR
In June, 95-year-old former ball player Maybelle Blair me out publicly as gay. At a panel for the A League of Their Own seri at Framele, she shared about queer life the league. * women's baseball gay *
Donahue was a year to her four-season reer the AAGPBL, though was not yet aware of her fact, as Donahue rells the doc, she and another baseball player were so worried about gay women the league g onto them at the time, they would barri themselv si their room at night, blockg the door wh a chair. And while Chigo may have been more progrsive than Saskatchewan, was still the 1940s, when arrts om raids of unrground gay clubs or public outgs of homosexualy newspapers ed peopl' liv on the they had each other, Donahue and Henschel rarely ventured to such venu. They formed a small muny wh other gay upl and ultimately settled to a hoe St.
"There was speculatn over the years, our fay had ternal nversatns wonrg if they [were gay], " says Bolan, whose mother, Diana, a proment figure the documentary, was so close to Terry she nsired her more of a mother figure than nt. Were they gay, were they lbian?
95-YEAR-OLD ‘A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN’ WOMEN’S BASEBALL STAR OUT AS GAY
95-year-old Maybelle Blair. pched for the All Girls League the 1940's. She me out as gay while promotg A League of Their Own. * women's baseball gay *
"I thk a lot of the baseball players were gay, but maly they kept very quiet, jt away om the public, " says Henschel, who traveled wh Donahue's team for a uple weeks 1949, and regularly attend rnns wh her more recent s. Marshall and Madonna have both been nsired gay ins over the years, and star Rosie O'Donnell me out 2002. And hasn't stopped fans om labelg as "secretly gay.
" Then aga, was the early 1990s — eons ago the evolutn of gay rights and LGBTQ awarens; the film was released at a time when the vast majory of onscreen pictns of gay characters volved the AIDS epimic (Longtime Compann, Philalphia) was never an issue for Donahue and Henschel, who proudly sports a uple different sweatshirts om the film (one toutg Tom Hanks's oft-quoted "There's no cryg baseball! Julie knows that the prent day, a lot of women who play softball are gay.
But the 1940s, beg gay was still unacceptable and dangero—not to mentn that homosexualy was still nsired a mental disorr. Ju Law’s character the movie Closer, an ob wrer, d some of this language: “‘He valued his privacy’—gay.
GAY BROADSTER ERIC BACH ADVOT FOR MORE LGBTQ REPRENTATN BASEBALL
And yet, spe beg able to garner the clu about women who may have spent their liv wh other women—who may or may not have intified as gay or a lbian or queer—choosg to share the fdgs wh the world at-large was another place for me to stop and nsir. History an attempt to center the oft-buried stori: Gay Amerin History by Jonathan Ned Katz, A Queer History of the Uned Stat by Michael Bronski, Queer Ameri by Vicki L. When Maybelle Blair joed the women's baseball league that spired the film and TV seri A League of Their Own, she wonred if she'd be the only gay woman there.
"Out of 650, I bet you 400 was gay" the All-Amerin Girls Profsnal Baseball League, Blair said at a recent screeng of the Amazon Studs seri at the Framele San Francis Internatnal LGBTQ+ Film Ftival.