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all the tickets for the game were sold out, and more press credentials were requested than for a World Series game. Tickets were being scalped at over a thousand dollars apiece. Security was unprecedented—everyone attending the game had to walk through metal detectors and all bags were searched. The cops told me I set a record for number of death threats in a twenty-four-hour period.
    Hundreds of other calls came from people threatening to cancel their season tickets. Some threatened not to go to another baseball game as long as I was in the league. A slew of supportive calls came too, but none of these were what I was afraid of.
    Several prominent sports people have said that it would be easier for a convicted felon, returning from a stint in prison, to play on a professional sport team than it would be for an openly gay person. There’s no question there are gay people in major sports. A few who compete in individual sports have come out—Louganis, Navratilova, Galindo—but these are the exceptions, not the rule.
    I was unprepared for what greeted me when I went out to begin warming up that day. As I walked out of the club-house, I heard an uncharacteristically loud murmuring from the stands. I could see blue-uniformed cops blocking the light in the doorway to the field.
    My favorite catcher, Morty Hamilton, was behind me. Morty wasn’t that great with a bat, but he threw himself with reckless abandon at anything pitched to him. He set the record for fewest passed balls in a season. He said, “I ain’t never been shot at.”
    “This isn’t a day for dying,” I remember saying.
    Five feet from the dugout I stopped and took a deep breath. I walked into the sunshine and stopped again. Thirty thousand people were already in the stands. As I jogged onto the field, they rose to their feet cheering and applauding. I turned around 360 degrees. It was hours before game time and the stands were nearly filled.
    “Don’t sound like a lynching,” Morty said.
    I nodded.
    After a few moments, he nudged me. “We gonna get started or you gonna stare at them?”
    The crowd clustered as close as they were allowed to the playing field during batting practice. Police officers stood at every egress to the field and at the end of the aisles next to the field. After I finished stretching and doing wind sprints, Ibegan to warm up. There were calls of encouragement and scattered applause at every pitch.
    It was the largest crowd in the history of the park. When I walked out to pitch in the first inning, the ovation continued for five minutes. A few in the reserved boxes were sitting down. As far as I could see, the rest were on their feet. Thousands were waving little rainbow flags. I saw numerous rainbow banners unfurled. I could see groups of leathermen, clots of drag queens, and thousands of regularly dressed men and women.
    After the national anthem, they didn’t sit down. They roared and cheered for each strike I threw. They booed at each ball. Each out caused a wave of thunderous cheering. After the third out that inning the noise swelled to a crescendo. As I strolled to the dugout, I gave the crowd a slight tip of my cap. They went nuts.
    Most of them sat down as my team came to bat. When the first batter stepped in, the singing started. First it was “We Shall Overcome,” then “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” then various show tunes. It was a gay crowd after all.
    I pitched a one-hitter. Morty said I never threw harder. While I was on the field, I don’t remember the cheering ever stopping. Even when the game ended, they kept on. Hundreds of cops stood on the field as I made a circuit of the stadium. Even then they didn’t stop. I came out of the club-house three times before they finally began streaming out of the stadium.
    In every city it had been the same. Threats. Tickets sold out in minutes, record crowds, wild cheering, rainbow flags, singing. In one city someone had shouted out, “Sinner.” The cheering didn’t