First off, I picked a great time to start this project. One week to go in the 2024 Major League Baseball season!

I guess we can start with a little bit about me. My name is Nathan. I am pushing 40. I sleep with men. I got obsessed with baseball in 2015, when I was 29 years young. I always love hearing someone say that a person is “90 years young!” It feels both polite and backhanded at the same time. Usually the person this is said about has no idea where they are or who the president is. They will not be contemplating the strange nuance of this phrase.

I got into baseball at an unusually late age. Most of the time you grow up with sports, and I did, but being a child in the suburbs of Orlando, Florida meant that “We Believe in Magic.” For anyone reading this in East Timor, or in the year 2014, the Orlando Magic were an explosive force of professional basketball in the mid-1990s. One of our players, Penny Hardaway, had a miniature doll version of himself–voiced by Chris Rock–that sold sneakers. It truly was the end of history.

I promise, this will be about baseball, sort of. Believing in Magic did not equate to a larger community that believed in things like equality or acceptance. Like most people who do not fit in with the larger world around them, my gay ass found refuge with the socially maligned world of musicians. I learned some basics on the guitar, joined and started a few bands, and did my best to ignore a place that re-elected George W. Bush. If you live in a world devoid of anything but baseball, Bush’s greatest achievement was throwing out a ceremonial first pitch in the World Series.

Eventually the insular world of Florida became a bit too oppressive. Just look where that place is now. Those bizarre years of Tea Party fervor feel like part of a previous life at this point, but they helped me realize things were not headed in the right direction in the Sunshine State. Losing my job to the Great Recession afforded me an opportunity to return to community college. Remember those bands from a paragraph ago? I quit college to be in them. That kind of rational judgment is what you can expect around here. Anyway, finishing community college led to the opportunity to complete the requisite coursework for a bachelor’s degree at a university of my choosing, in a place that had seasons other than “hot” and “a bit less hot.” I figured why not go to the place most hated and reviled by those people who hated and reviled me: New York City.

New York City fit like a glove. Nary a person batted an eyelash when I came out to them as gay. It also helps that the only thing I loathe more than intolerance is driving a car. One place you do not have to drive a car to, contrary to recent discourse, is Citi Field. In 2015 I joined a friend at a Dodgers/Mets game, and I had a great time. I never had a baseball team because I was too busy believing in something completely childish like magic. Orlando was home to the double A affiliate of the Cubs, the Orlando Cubs. While my family did go to some of their games, as a child I was, as mentioned a moment ago, into more childish pursuits such as the playground within Tinker Field.

Being surrounded by a few thousand people cheering every strikeout, every ground ball that was run out, it was magic. It was something I once believed in. I was sitting outdoors, drinking a cold beer, with moments to breathe and ask my more knowledgeable friend just why certain things were happening. I was already in the thick of a formal education. Might as well learn about something that was fun. I received an invite for the next game in the series, and I eagerly accepted. The spell was cast.

The Mets would go on an incredible run to win the pennant that year. I went along for the ride. While the eventual outcome was a bit disappointing, I could not overstate how giddy I was to have a new hobby, a new obsession. Yet like many of my other passions, I could not help but worry about the culture surrounding it. While my years of playing in bands afforded me plenty of warm friendships, there were not too many queers at post-punk shows. Sure, a few token ones here and there, of which I fit the bill. While most of my fellow gays in high school were swearing fealty to Beyonce, I was reading Killing Joke lore on Wikipedia. I could never get this whole being gay thing quite right.

Here I was, diving into another passion with very few fellow travelers. Why couldn’t I just get into the Real Housewives or something that afforded a modest chance of me meeting someone who would want to go home with me? I do not have an answer to that question, but that question is in part what I hope this site will be about. I do want to write about things that are pure baseball: playoff chases, manager ejections, sausage races. However there are a few times throughout the season where my place as a gay fan of this game provides me a peculiar vantage point.

Take for instance this year’s controversy regarding Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran tossing the pejorative “faggot” at a heckling fan. There were plenty of people who wrote about it, most of them straight men. There is a strong chance hardly anyone will ever read anything I write here. Yet if there is a chance to throw a slightly different voice than usual into the void, I might as well take it. At the very least it will stave off the rotting of my Florida sunbaked brain. I am gay, I like baseball, therefore Baseball Is Gay. If this invokes a seventh grade lunch table conversation, I’ve done my job.

Thanks for reading. I hope you will continue to read in the future!