LOCAL FEATURE

Play ball!
Softball bats out of the park for many gay New Yorkers

By Cyd Zeigler Jr.
Friday, April 30, 2004

While much of New York will be headed to Fire Island, the Hamptons and New Hope to spend their weekends this summer, the men and women of the Big Apple Softball League will be swinging their own bats here at home.

For 27 years, hundreds of gay men and lesbians have been forgoing those summer weekends to participate in one of the oldest gay softball leagues in the country. Designed to foster camaraderie, the league today is one of the strongest in existence, with 26 teams.

League Secretary Michael Yang said the BASL stands as a beacon in stark contrast to the late-night options offered by the dozens of party promoters in the city.

“We’re trying to show that there are so many other alternatives other than bars, clubs and drugs,” Yang said.

With games played sometimes as early as 9 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, BASL participants often have to make a very real choice between staying out until the wee hours of the morning and performing well with their team.

While the league is dominated by men, it is co-ed. Yang has seen an increase in the number of women playing in the last couple of years — about 30 percent of the league is now comprised of women.

Yang says the increase is “because we’re fabulous. Once you have fun, you get people talking to their friends.”

Emphasis: fun over competition
“Fun” is one of the main reasons the league exists. So often, the fun of athletic competitions is undermined by the serious attitudes of past-their-prime athletes who never won the big championship and have decided that the local softball league is their Little Bighorn.

In building New York’s gay softball league, organizers aimed at getting away from the hetero-dominated leagues where machismo is the order of the day. Those atmospheres too often chase away gay men who are looking for a fun activity but remember all too well the over-competitive nature of classmates who picked them last.

“As we all know, we have faced so much discrimination,” Yang said, highlighting discrimination at all levels of sport from elementary school to the pros. “This is just something we feel can be made especially for us.”

The emphasis on fun, and the lack of emphasis on winning, not only attracts more gay men and lesbians, but also more straight men, a number of whom have thrived in the league.

BASL is a member of the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance, the softball organization that puts on the Gay Softball World Series every year. Teams participating in the World Series must adhere to NAGAAA’s restriction of only two straight players per team.

Presently, BASL is fighting NAGAAA’s restriction on gay players at the World Series. “We don’t discriminate. Whoever wants to play can play with us. We don’t want restrictions on it,” Yang said. “We just want their money,” he joked.

Still, BASL encourages its players to go to the World Series if their team qualifies (each league in North America — of which there is about 30 — is allotted a certain number of bids to the national tournament) because of the unique nature of the event, attracting over 150 teams and about 3,000 participants every year.

For those who do want to just play the game to win, there is the Dima division – the highest-level division in the league. Eagle, sponsored by the bar with the same name, is one of the teams in that division.

Yang plays on the Eagle’s newer team, Wings, which is in the recreational division, called the Rainbow division, where beginners are warmly welcomed.

Broadway League’s glamour
In all the divisions, in addition to having fun, there is an emphasis on personal best. As with all sports, the mantra is, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Each team dictates its own practice schedule, and players are encouraged to get the most out of those team sessions and practice by themselves.

Yang said his team had two very green new players last season. After a year of solid practices and focusing on improvement, “they’re now good.”

“You’ve got to put in effort before you get something back,” Yang observed.

Most of the teams are sponsored by a local business; the teams in turn patronize their sponsor. One of the teams is backed by a chiropractor — a smart move for a business catering to weekend warriors.

“Obviously, we get a lot of injuries. Most of us aren’t 19 years old,” Yang said.

Last year saw the return of Playing For Life, an Independence Day weekend softball tournament held by the BASL in Central Park. After a 12-year hiatus, the tournament returned last year to again raise money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Attracting 40 teams and 500 players last year from as far away as San Diego, the event raised $6,000. The group hopes to raise more this year.

While it’s not dominated by gay players, the Broadway Show League has long been a draw for gay players and spectators. Since 1955, when it was founded by energetic stage manager John Effrat ,the league has played games early Thursday afternoons at the Hecksher Ballfields at the southern end of Central Park.

Yul Brenner, Jack Lemmon, Bernadette Peters, Lou Diamond Phillips, Matthew Broderick, John Lithgow and many others have played in seasons past.

Rosie O’Donnell (who showed her stuff in “A League of Their Own”) was the pitcher for “Grease” when she performed on Broadway. Jack Lemmon used to play second base smoking Tipparillos and sipping from a beer when “A Long Days Journey Into Night” was on Broadway in the late 1980s, said Steve Loehle, one of the league’s past organizers.

The league is co-ed, and at least two women per team have to be on the field and in the batting rotation at all times.

“Folks from all areas of a show come out to play softball in the Show League,” said Loehle. “Cast, crew, musicians. It is about socializing with others from other shows in the daytime. Some of the play is serious as some players are very athletic, and some is not so serious.”

The division playing at 11:30 consists mostly of new shows and could be nicknamed the “Pink” division, with Avenue Q, 42nd Street, Gypsy, Hairspray and Wicked, among others. Other teams include De la Guarda, I Am My Own Wife and Rent playing at 1:30; that early afternoon league consists mostly of longer-running shows and is generally a higher-quality game. The 3:30 games consist of mostly unions.

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