The bumps and bruises of this year's Gay Games VIII are rapidly fading as we await final financial figures for the quadrennial event to be released. A territorial court battle must be resolved before we will know who will have the honors as hosts in Cleveland in 2014. Nevertheless, wheels are already in motion for the 2018 event: wherever that may be, whatever it may be called, whatever it may look like.
One thing is certain: this will be a Gay Games unlike any before it, with the strongest effort to re-direct the legacy of founder Tom Waddell that the global sports and cultural festival has ever seen.
After sending representatives on a fact-finding mission to Cologne during this year's Gay Games, London launched a website this month announcing its intent to bid for Gay Games X. London has never bid for the Gay Games before, but rumors of London's interest have swirled ever since the city won the 2012 Summer Olympics, which have required construction of improved infrastructure and new sports facilities.
On its Back the Bid site (www.london2018.info), London 2018 lists a seven-member bid committee headed by co-chairs Jonathan Harbourne, a member of the steering committee of the National LGBT Sports Network in the United Kingdom; and New Zealand native Suran Dickson, a triple gold medalist in Cologne who met her partner, comedian Rhona Cameron, while they were soccer teammates.
Harbourne got into LGBT sports out of the same impulse that drives many.
"I started the London Raiders softball teams over 20 years ago when I moved to London, wanting to participate in a social LGBT group that was not exclusively about pubbing and clubbing," he told the Bay Area Reporter. "A couple of weeks before the Gay Games in Cologne this year, I wrote to the minister for sport and the Olympics' Hugh Robertson asking if he would back such an event. Within a couple of days, he wrote back on official Olympic letterhead endorsing the project as an ideal legacy event."
That was all the introduction Harbourne needed.
"I went to Cologne with my piece of paper, and was invited to some of the official receptions," he said. "When I came back to London, the prime minister's office called and invited me to Number 10. The PM's senior press secretary met with me, for over an hour, in one of the staterooms, and asked me about the Gay Games and my experience in Cologne. I had come back so inspired by my week's experience, and he was very supportive and encouraging, seeing what a difference such an event would make. Since then, I have formed a leadership committee with some amazing people who have come forward to offer their support, some of them involved with the 2012 Olympics, and all involved with LGBT sport. We are in discussions with City Hall's major events team and also the Olympic Legacy Company. I've been blown away by how people immediately get this project – and how they want to see it happen."
In what is a first for a bidding organization, London 2018's home page includes a link to the Gay and Lesbian International Sports Association, which was founded to market the rival World Outgames after drastic disagreements with the Federation of Gay Games about the size and scope of the global sports and cultural festival.
Which brings us to the whatevers and wherevers of 2018. As reported last month (see October 14 Jock Talk), the FGG and GLISA are choosing 14 representatives to discuss the goal of ending the World Outgames after one more iteration, holding a unified single quadrennial event for 2018.
Half of the working group will be named by GLISA. An ongoing vote by the FGG membership assembly to designate its two co-presidents as members of the working group is expected to pass easily this week. That would be followed by a ranked-choice membership vote on 24 nominees for the remaining five positions.
The chasm the group will be tasked to bridge goes deeper than personalities or politics: it involves fundamentally different views of the value of sports in our lives, the relative importance of creating a unique, sports-centric event to empower the community, and how much of an event should be entrusted in the hands of the global LGBT sports community.
Outgames hosts have been virtually autonomous; the Gay Games have been run with ongoing oversight of the host organization by the FGG. Much of the sports operations at the Outgames are outsourced; Gay Games competitions are usually organized with the involvement and support of FGG sports member organizations. There have never been multiple bidders for the Outgames; Gay Games bidding has been highly competitive for the past two decades. Outgames sites (Montreal, Copenhagen, Antwerp) have been chosen for preexisting LGBT tourist appeal; Gay Games voters have consciously considered cities such as Cleveland that were not as well known but promised better value for low-income athletes. Both have participatory cultural events, but Outgames has an equally balanced trio that includes sports and human rights conferences, with the conferences essentially being subsidized by athlete fees. The Gay Games do not have conferences as an integral element, concentrating on the success of sports as their unique contribution to human rights. The Games, they say, are the time for doing, not talking.
Past attempts at offering major conferences in Gay Games have resulted in massive budget deficits for the hosts, and the results of a participant survey after the 2002 Gay Games in Sydney overwhelmingly supported the Gay Games model, codified in a white paper issued in 2003 as Montreal organizers were walking away from negotiations to organize a more ambitious but financially ill-fated event. After Gay Games VII in Chicago broke even while the inaugural World Outgames were losing millions, the calls began for an end to the dueling events.
But those most invested in the legacy of the Gay Games and their ability to bring together a critical mass of athletes and artists are wary about sinking limited resources into conferences at the risk of lower sports attendance and accompanying decreased athlete and sports diversity. Numerous organizations have called for the Gay Games to hold onto its sports-cultural formula and resist efforts to change the mission, content, or name.
The latest to join the fray was Team Rehoboth Beach. In September the Rehoboth board unanimously said that it "supports the concept of one quadrennial event in 2018. However, the board would prefer separate, competing events if the only path to one event involves compromising the 'Gay Games' brand or diverting scarce resources away from sports. More specifically, we direct our delegates to vote against any motion which might result in either of the following two conditions: 1) Changing the name of the 'Gay Games' to something else; 2) a human rights conference organized by the Gay Games host organization."
Team Rehoboth said it was not opposed to the FGG "entering into a co-marketing agreement with GLISA for designating a co-located, concurrent (or semi-concurrent) human rights conference as an officially endorsed Gay Games event, provided that it is done at the sole risk and expense of GLISA and provided that GLISA and their members cease to offer global quadrennial sports events like World Outgames."
And hey: it's a formula that has worked well enough to capture the attention of the politicos of London and the athletes they represent. Harbourne said his team is eager for a chance to stage it.
"Our vision for London is very exciting, we know we will have the best facilities, some great talent, ideas, experience and the creativity to put on the most amazing show, as well as providing a lasting legacy and a world-class example of a truly diverse and inclusive event," he said.
World Series perspective
If you live in California and you watch a lot of sports on television, you have probably noticed just a tad bit of bias in the coverage – enough so that many fans feel that ESPN might very well stand for Eastern Sports Programming Network.
Perish the thought! Last week, when the San Francisco Giants crushed the Texas Rangers to capture the World Series just weeks after many ESPN analysts were writing off the Giants after their horrendous pitching in August, ESPN gave the Giants a prominent role in its newscasts.
The lead? Well, not quite. In ESPN world, the more earth-shattering story was the Minnesota Vikings' decision to put receiver Randy Moss on waivers. But at least the Giants got a quick appearance in second slot in the newscasts – right before the feature stories speculating about which free agents the New York Yankees need to sign to restore sanity to the world order.
Note to Bristol, Connecticut, where ESPN is based: This postseason was decided by one of the most dominating pitching staffs in the history of the game. Period. One hiccup in a field of annihilation.
I grew up in Ohio rooting for the Big Red Machine. It was a team so offensively and defensively dominant that it pretty much spoiled me for what I've seen elsewhere since.
But I have never gotten to see the quality of pitching I've been blessed to see on both sides of the bay in recent years. I don't care how much the Yankees spend: they won't be able to match either the A's or the Giants in pitching in 2011. This year was great. Next year? I can hardly wait.
The euphoria of the past weeks for me was diminished by just one very sad note: the passing of former Reds and Tigers manager Sparky Anderson at the age of 76. It may be hard for folks on the coasts to understand just how deeply Anderson resonated with folks in the heartland. In the crazy atmosphere of the 1970s, he was a reassuring figure of stability and calm competence. Not Mr. Cool, but Mr. O.K.
G'night, Sparky.
The Glenn Burke story
Since writing my column last week on the documentary Out: The Glenn Burke Story (Nov. 4 Jock Talk), which premiered Wednesday at the Castro Theatre and will be rebroadcast November 16 on Comcast SportsNet Bay Area, I had a chance to share some reflections on Burke's life after major league baseball and LGBT sports: the challenges gay athletes face, the empowerment competition can provide individuals, and the explosive growth of LGBT sports since Burke's playing days for the Dodgers and A's.
Have to say, though, that I was more than a little disappointed by a quote I read Tuesday in a Ron Kroichick article in the San Francisco Chronicle to publicize the film. A question and answer interview with film producer Doug Harris quotes him as saying: "He was an icon in the gay community, and once he has this car accident – and he can't run, jump, and dunk a basketball anymore – then he's not an icon anymore. ... Once he got hit by that car and he couldn't perform, they kind of shoved him to the side. To me, that spiraled into his heavy drug use and his crash and burn. So that's the part that really grabbed my heart. People have to realize the gay community turned on him just as much as baseball did, if you really look at it."
I think it is inaccurate and unfair to say the gay "community," which at the time was just beginning to acknowledge the athletes in its midst and had only begun to build its sports organizations and events, "turned" on Burke. Would one say the same thing of communities that knew Burke better and longer, such as the folks of Berkeley, or of African Americans in the Bay Area?
For his part, Harris said he was not misquoted, but that the full context was not contained in the story. Harris said the comment was based upon conversations he had with Burke's sister, Lutha, relating the observations of the late Jack "Irene" McGowan, the longtime gay softball leader who was close to Burke. "According to Lutha," Harris said, "McGowan felt that the gay community could be doing more to support Glenn. In turn, that's why McGowan reached out to Sandy Alderson and the A's to help Glenn."
"I in no way meant to offend or single out the gay community," he added.
There was no turning, no betrayal of trust: there was a collective failure by all of Burke's communities to reach him and help him in the ways and times he needed it the most. The efforts that were made failed or were rejected or were insufficient.
The tragedy is not betrayal, but rather the knots of ignorance, fear, hostility, and apathy that led to his fate. The things that surround us all, the things each of us must always strive to rid from our hearts. The communities of decades past fell short; today we can only strive to do better.