The Mets are done, but the ride was worth it. You can read many wonderful pieces about their majestical run. I don’t have anything to say that more professional sportswriters haven’t already said. I am sad that it ended, but so glad that it happened. That about sums it up.

What I’m thinking about today is where I watched their demise. Last weekend I was a guest at a wedding in Toronto. I have many old, close friends there due to some circumstances that are too unwieldy and too boring to recount here.

Toronto is host to a great baseball bar called The Dock Ellis, named for the man who threw a no-hitter under the effects of LSD. I stop in to catch a game whenever I’m in the 416 during the summer months. This time it happened to be while my team was in the NLCS. I knew where I would be taking it in.

I got to watch the Mets stay alive and win game five and also fall to the better team in game six while sitting at the bar ordering pilsner after pilsner. During game five there was a fellow Mets fan at the bar. I don’t remember exactly how–again, many pilsners–but “the most attractive Met” became a jokey question posed by the bartender. I immediately responded that as a bit of an authority, a gay man, it was Adam Ottavino.

This is not a piece about why I think Adam Ottavino is hot.

In reflection, what really strikes me is the ease at which I relayed this information. I felt perfectly comfortable mentioning my sexuality in this sports bar. I cannot say the same comfort has come to me at establishments here at home in Queens.

I can see it now: the eyerolling. Yes, I live in New York City, the home of Broadway and The Stonewall Inn. Paris Is Burning takes place here. What the hell am I talking about? There’s a midtown gay sports bar called Boxers. How could I feel uneasy being truthful about my orientation in a place like this?

In thinking on this contradiction, I believe it comes down to the difference between the nations. This entire postseason we’ve been bombarded with a Donald Trump campaign ad that says something along the lines of “Harris is for they/them, Trump is for you.”

The person I saw get married this past weekend woke me up on July 26, 2015. She was staying with me in Queens, sharing a bed in the cramped room I rented. She let me know the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, that gay marriage was now legal across the United States. Right now, we feel so far from that moment.

I feel like what we are witnessing in part these past few years is an attempt at reclamation of space by the majority that already occupies most of it. Everyday life was for normal people, not queers. Now we’re on your TV, we can admit that we’re teachers, doctors, accountants, any normal job.

What we are not is athletes. At least not the male ones. Yes, baseball had Glenn Burke and Billy Bean. Neither was publicly out during their playing days, which is no fault of their own. They had to survive in a hostile environment.

I guess what I’m getting at is the difference I feel in that Toronto sports bar versus one in Queens. While Toronto (and Canada as a whole) certainly has its share of bigots, forums for sports in New York still feel slightly oppressive and hostile toward queerness.

I think back to a Reds vs. Mets game I was at in 2022. A young interloper, maybe 21 or 22 years old, sat down in the vacant seat next to me. He admitted that he was typically a casual Yankees fan, but got some free tickets, put some money on the Mets, and was at the game for a good time. He saw me scoring the game and started asking my thoughts on certain aspects of the events unfolding before us.

Eventually, Joey Votto came to bat. Some of you know where this is going. The game’s token Canadian player was dogged by rumors of being gay throughout his career. The young man next to me brought this up and mentioned some distant relative with some menial role in the Yankees organization all but confirming it.

Whether or not Votto is gay is not what I keep coming back to. I replied that I had also heard the rumors, like most people had. My seatmate was shocked by this, either legitimately thinking or feigning that the rumor spoken to him by his step-uncle or whatever was top secret information.

It’s the next thing he said that sticks with me. He jokingly said, “So what’s his gender identity or whatever?” I already had the mental guardrails up for wherever this conversation was going. Now he made an attempt at a joke that didn’t even work. I thought about explaining that gender and sexuality are not the same thing. I thought about saying that all signs pointed to Joey Votto identifying as a man. I thought about saying, “Well I’m gay. What’s that supposed to mean?”

I didn’t do any of those things. I shrank. I pulled away. I acted like a coward. I didn’t want to deal with one moment of discomfort. Whenever I’m at a stadium or in an American sports bar, I feel like I am in a very straight space. I feel like I am the outsider who managed to sneak in. All around me I see aggressive heterosexuality trying to reclaim its total domination of American life. Our current political climate is not solely about this issue, but it is part and parcel.

At The Dock Ellis the owner once showed me a soccer league shirt he was wearing that had the equivalent of one of those “In this house . . .” liberal yard signs on the back of it. Yeah, a bit tacky. I agree. Yet I can’t deny its effectiveness. That shirt let me know that his bar is, well, a safe space. Yeah, I know. Tacky. Can’t help it though. It’s the term that works best.

Meanwhile, in the sports bars of my neighborhood and at Citi Field I don’t ever feel safe being completely honest and open about myself. I know that part of this is a personal flaw, that there are others who refuse to be ostracized. Sure, Citi Field runs a Pride Night these days. Other than some rainbow kitsch giveaway and some Pride flags above the stadium, does it actually mean anything? Does it change the fact that I can hear Keith Hernandez go suddenly reticent when he sees said flags during a broadcast?

I guess there’s an argument to be made that these things are a bit more than pinkwashed capitalism, that Pride nights are chipping away at that oppressive heteronormative culture that has many friends of mine asking why I like sports when they come with such baggage and animus towards the gay community.

When my Canadian friend informed me that gay marriage was legal in the United States, it was nearly ten years to the day that Canada underwent the same change. Check back with me in ten years. Maybe I’ll be ready to tell that punk off at Citi Field. Maybe the Pride nights will have done their job.

Or maybe the bigots will win. America will regress. Obergefell v. Hodges joins Roe v. Wade in the dustbin of history. I can’t predict the future, but it feels like the most fortunate and expansive group of people in the United States, straight white males, are out to take back the mere inches they’ve lost in recent years. All for them, nothing for us.