As The Athletic’s Jayson Stark wrote about the 2024 World Series, “It’s Yankees versus Dodgers. It’s New York versus L.A. Yet somehow it’s even bigger than a duel between the biggest cities in America.”
He’s right. Just consider all of the historic rivalries and legendary superstars we’re going to witness over the next seven games. The 2024 World Series is going to come down to dramatic match-ups like:
- Fire Island vs. Palm Springs.
- Stonewall vs. The Abbey.
- Bianca del Rio vs. Alaska Thunderf*ck.
- The House of Evangelista vs. The Pink Pony Club.
You can see why this Series is a sportswriter’s dream.
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Well, it’s this sportswriter’s dream.
As for the teams, the Dodgers have repeatedly set the standard for the rest of MLB to follow when it comes to LGBTQ inclusion. The Yankees, meanwhile, arrived well past fashionably late to the Pride Party but once they got there, they acted like they deserved a medal just for showing up.
I suppose that’s what we get for inviting them in the first place.
Los Angeles Dodgers
If the Dodgers could master October the way they do June, they would be the Yankees.
Every season, the Dodgers host one of the biggest Pride Nights in all of sports and this year’s event was no exception, with 20,000 tickets sold.
To put that into perspective, LGBTQ Dodgers fans outdrew the average home game for the Oakland A’s, Miami Marlins, Tampa Bay Rays, and Chicago White Sox. Plus they didn’t have to deal with horrific owners moving the Tom of Finland House to Sacramento or assembling a roster that would lose to the pregame Varsity Gay League kickball team.
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The Dodgers’ return to the Fall Classic is also a good opportunity to remind fans that Glenn Burke started for them in Game 1 of the 1977 World Series (against the Yankees no less!) and went 1 for 3. Thanks to Burke, Team LGBTQ will always have a place in the MLB postseason record books.
Furthermore, it feels appropriate for the Dodgers to host the World Series in the year where MLB honors the legacy of Billy Bean. Bean played for L.A. in 1989 and kept his sexuality a secret while enduring Tommy Lasorda’s attempts to motivate him with serenades of “Billy Bean! Billy Bean! The boy of every girl’s dream!”
As managerial snafus go, that’s right up there with, “Hey, why don’t we bring career starter Clayton Kershaw out of the bullpen to pitch to Juan Soto with a one-run lead?”
It’s not necessarily all Rainbow Heaven every June at Dodger Stadium, though. In 2023, the Dodgers briefly ran afoul of the community by disinviting the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence when anti-gay Christian blowhards and opportunistic right-wing politicians decided to make the drag nuns the target of a disingenuous freak out.
In response, several L.A. Pride organizations vowed to back out of the event and pointed out that if a Pride promotion was pissing off Marco Rubio and the Catholic League, that meant it was doing its job. Thankfully, after listening to their LGBTQ fans, the Dodgers reinvited the Sisters and honored them during the pregame ceremony.
Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
During that same time, Kershaw’s comments about the Sisters “making fun of other people’s religions” became the Playoff Kershaw of Pride Night takes, especially from a superstar who had otherwise been an LGBTQ supporter.
Relief ace Blake Treinen also issued a statement about the Sisters claiming “This group openly mocks Jesus Christ.” Which was an interesting perspective, given that nowhere in the Bible does it mention Jesus becoming a nun. Was Blake Treinen reading a gospel secretly ghostwritten by John Waters?
Despite these setbacks, when all is said and done, the Dodgers are still the team of Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss in ownership, gay VP Erik Braverman marrying his husband at Dodger Stadium, and rainbow Pride caps on the field.
It makes sense that the team with baseball’s greatest two-way player would be a stellar example of LGBTQ inclusion.
New York Yankees
By contrast, the Yankees dragged their feet on hosting a Pride Night longer than almost every other team in baseball.
For a team that considers 15 years to be a “championship drought,” waiting until 2019 to hold a Pride Night was an eternity. Then when they finally hosted their first one, they immediately Yankeed it up and dubbed it the “Legacy of Pride Game.”
Which shouldn’t have been surprising. Based on how often certain terms come up in Yankee promotional copy, I’m pretty sure “legacy,” “honor,” and “glory” are the Steinbrenner family’s safewords.
All of that said, the Bronx Bombers have done a few things right by our community. Since the first Legacy of Pride Night, they’ve partnered directly with the Stonewall Inn to award $10,000 Stonewall Scholarships to New York City LGBTQ graduating seniors. They’ve also honored the scholars on the field before each Pride game.
What’s more, during that initial 2019 Pride Night, the Yankees unveiled a plaque commemorating the Stonewall Uprising in Yankee Stadium’s Monument Park.
It’s a legitimate recognition of one of the pivotal moments in LGBTQ history in the heart of the Stadium’s signature feature — akin to the Red Sox repainting the Green Monster into a 37-foot rainbow or the Cubs cutting “BRAT” into the Wrigley Field ivy.
Even with these impressive gestures, the Yankees always seem to show a slight bit of discomfort when acknowledging the LGBTQ community.
As Pinstripe Alley writer Joshua Diemert has pointed out, you can even see it in the plaque’s anodyne wording about “the events at New York City’s Stonewall Inn.” As we all know, Stonewall was a riot. But the Yankees address it as if Marsha P. Johnson throwing a brick at police was just an itinerary bullet point on a Goldman Sachs diversity retreat between paintball and karaoke.
It almost as if they’d feel more comfortable being honest about LGBTQ history if only it were a little more Yankee-like.
Still, the dedication of the plaque means that Billy Martin will forever share Monument Park with Stonewall. And that’s worthy of a bigger celebration than all 27 championships combined.
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