Glenn Burke, First Openly Gay MLB Player, Well-Portrayed in Documentary

by Milton Kent

Filed under: Sports Business and Media

The professional life of a general manager of a regional sports channel is likely a quiet one, bordering on being nondescript. Basically, you welcome in programming that is already made available to you through corporate means, like games or infomercials or syndicated shows. Or you hire reporters and producers to air about three or so hours of daily news. Nothing exciting to see or do there.

And then, there are execs like Ted Griggs, the vice president and general manager of Comcast SportsNet Bay Area. Griggs, who runs the San Francisco Bay Area channel, gave the green light to a superb documentary, "Out: The Glenn Burke Story," that airs on the channel Thursday at midnight ET (or 9 p.m. Wednesday PT).

"Out" chronicles the life of Burke, who played for the Dodgers and the A's in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Burke is presumed to be the first openly gay Major League Baseball player, and the hour-long film deals with Burke's struggles in aching and painstaking detail, with haunting interviews from noted former teammates like Dusty Baker, Reggie Smith, Davey Lopes and Claudell Washington.

 

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Source: http://mlb.fanhouse.com/2010/12/01/glenn-burke-first-openly-gay-mlb-player-well-portrayed-in-docu/

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