Next year is the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in 1969, when demonstrations after a police raid on a Greenwich Village bar helped kindle the modern gay rights movement.
The commemoration of such a seminal moment for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is expected to draw millions to New York next June for festivals, parades and cultural celebrations.
In the midst of it all, a surprising participant has gingerly emerged: the New York Yankees.
Baseball’s most famous franchise has stood by as welcoming gestures for LGBTQ sports fans have become increasingly common, such as pride nights at arenas and stadiums, or NBA Commissioner Adam Silver riding aboard a pride parade float. Major League Baseball had a float in the New York City Pride March for the first time this year, with the recently retired umpire Dale Scott, who is gay, aboard.
But faced with the potential embarrassment of being the only major league team never to have held a pride night at a game, the Yankees are developing a series of events next season tied to the celebration of the Stonewall riots, a team spokesman said, confirming an SNY report Tuesday. He declined to provide any details because the plans were not close to being completed.
“The anniversary of Stonewall every year is an emotional and seminal event for LGBT people – not just for those in New York City but around the world,” said city council speaker Corey Johnson, who came out as gay to his high school football teammates nearly 20 years ago. “To have an event in the Bronx at Yankee Stadium is a very special moment and, for me, as a former athlete, I’m going to be really proud to be there.”
The Yankees are often slow to embrace change. They maintain a strict grooming policy – banning long hair and beards – that dates to the 1970s. And they resisted calls to extend protective netting down the foul lines at Yankee Stadium until the outcry became fierce last September after a 2-year-old girl was hit in the head by a line drive.
While thematic promotions are ingrained in baseball culture, the Yankees have largely shied away from them, particularly those with an ethnic or cultural flavor, not wanting to be put in the position of saying yes to some and no to others. (The Yankees will, for the second year in a row, play a weekday afternoon home game in September so that their schedule does not conflict with Yom Kippur.)
The Yankees have been involved with LGBTQ causes behind the scenes. General manager Brian Cashman and his assistant general manager, Jean Afterman, have worked with groups that assist gay and transgender youths, and the team has invited Billy Bean, the gay MLB executive who promotes inclusion, to speak with Yankees players at the major and minor league levels.
But they have refrained from holding a gay pride event at Yankee Stadium – rebuffing at least one effort to get them to do so.
Near the end of spring training, though, the Yankees began to have internal discussions about how – with the Stonewall anniversary approaching next year – they might make a meaningful gesture to gay fans while remaining selective about whom the team recognizes and how.
A greater urgency arrived early last month when the Los Angeles Angels announced that they would have a pride event next season, leaving the Yankees as the only baseball franchise that had not held or planned such an event. The Yankees then began to answer calls from LGBTQ rights leaders and city officials like Johnson.
The Yankees have not studied how other teams put on pride events, mostly developing their plans in-house and being determined to come up with something unique. By framing their plans around the Stonewall celebration, the Yankees hope to create an event that in some way endures, though it remains uncertain whether it will be more than a one-time occasion.
Jim Buzinski, a co-founder of the website Outsports, said there were a number of meaningful steps the Yankees could take, including setting up a scholarship fund for gay college students interested in sports management and putting LGBTQ people in positions of authority within the organization.
“Stonewall is a perfect anniversary to do something special to make up for the fact that they were going to be the last team to hold a pride event,” Buzinski said. “It’s a good thing. I just hope it’s not a one-off – ‘Well, we did Stonewall at 50 years.’ The big question is, what are they going to do in 2020?”
What may be lost in the Yankees’ pursuit of a grand gesture is how important a simple one – like holding a pride night – might be in creating a welcoming atmosphere.
As recently as the 2010 playoffs, during the ritual playing of the Village People song YMCA, fans in the Yankee Stadium bleachers taunted opposing fans with a vulgar version of the song that included a chorus of “Why are you gay?” When videos surfaced on social media, the Yankees increased security and halted the practice.
“A lot of LGBT people in their childhood or adolescence were ostracized or felt trauma for not being accepted in the locker room or as part of physical education or in playing sports,” Johnson said. “That’s why I think these types of events can be healing experiences as it relates to sports and their own identity.”
David Kilmnick, chief executive of the LGBT Network, persuaded the Mets to resume their pride night in 2016 – they had held one event about a decade earlier. He was unsuccessful in persuading the Yankees to follow suit when he proposed the idea to team representatives before that season at a diversity summit sponsored by Major League Baseball.
He was pleased to learn the Yankees were planning an event next year, but he expressed hope that “it’s not just a one-time event because millions of people will be here for Stonewall 50.”