Who Invented the High Five?

Some players have been able to express themselves privately, but at the elite professional ranks it has been extremely rare and nobody has come out to the public while actively playing. The most prominent baseball player to have ever come out of the closet would probably be Glenn Burke. Burke was not an elite player, but he was a guy who was good enough to play in 225 Major League games. Burke was out and openly gay to his teammates and the Dodgers organization, and that did not sit well with him. At one point, someone in the Dodgers front office, Al Campanis, even offered to pay for his honeymoon if he got married to a woman. Eventually he was traded away when, according to teammates, the Dodgers management decided they did not want a gay man in the clubhouse. Burke has a place in baseball history also because he was known to have given the first ever "high five'. So not only was he a trailblazer as a gay man in Major League Baseball, but he also started a trend that many people do not even realize has only been around since 1977.

Burke was a trailblazer, but he did not do so publicly. He existed in the shadows and fought to keep his life as normal as possible while having to hide a major piece of who he was from the public. After he was traded to Oakland, Burke started regularly for the Athletics in 1978, but he pinched a nerve in his neck and missed the majority of the 1979 season. In 1980 he returned to Oakland, with Billy Martin as the new manager. Martin was known for being a wild personality who rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. He was a brilliant manager who would often wear out his welcome in just a few years because of his personality. He did not welcome Burke with open arms. In the 2010 documentary "Out: The Glenn Burke story," Athletics teammate Claudell Washington recalled how Martin introduce the new teammates that year: "Then he got to Glenn and said, 'Oh, by the way, this is Glenn Burke and he's a faggot.'"

His teammates were not comfortable around him, notably avoiding the showers when he was around and being sure to appear at a distance from him to not arouse suspicion. As A's outfielder Mitchell Page told Inside Sports in 1982: "I liked Glenn, but if I'd seen him walking around making it obvious, I wouldn't have had anything to do with him. I don't want to be labeled and have my career damaged...you make sure you point out that I'm not gay, okay?" Eventually the isolation he felt, in addition to a knee injury and his demotion to the minors, drove Burke to leave baseball altogether. Just two years later he came out to the public, the first former Major League player to do so in baseball history. "I had finally gotten to the point," he told Inside Sports, "where it was more important to be myself than a baseball player." 

For more of Glenn Burke's incredible story, LOOK FOR THE REST IN MY UPCOMING BOOK "You're Not Welcome Here: Stories of Discrimination and Exclusionary Practices in Baseball"