I'm going to keep this part, the part addressing the headline that drew you in here, as short as possible. It is obviously disappointing to know that Trea Turner has made homophobic statements in the past. It's disappointing to know anybody has made homophobic statements in the past. Regardless his age, regardless the motivation for the comments being unearthed, he should apologize.

As a gay baseball fan I am extremely concerned that the main lesson coming out of these incidents on social media is that baseball players, as public figures, need to sanitize their online histories so as not to embarrass their employers or fans. You know, because I'm so concerned if the storied Padres or whatever are associated with homophobic tweets. As I have said in times past that I've written about this, I really resent the spotlight that is put on players and the scapegoating they receive when they are not the primary perpetrators of homophobia in baseball.

When Josh Hader had racist and homophobic tweets surface during the All-Star game, a number of stories arose in the following days about the responses of his PoC teammates, as well their concerns should have been addressed and aired. But kind of glossed over in it all by the baseball media is that while Josh Hader almost certainly shares a locker room with a gay or bisexual teammate, as a matter of course they had to keep their POV to themselves. The incredible normalcy of the total invisibility of openly gay players in Major League Baseball needs to be understood as the fault of Major League Baseball, its front offices and managerial staffs, its journalist class, sponsors and perhaps most importantly the fans themselves.

I find it important to make this point, to come out and defend guys who have made some hateful comments, because it is so easy for these players to become scapegoats for forces they cannot control. It leads to the outright racist assertions like those by the absolute fucking hack Cyd Zeigler that Major League Baseball lacks an openly gay players because of the "cultures" that some of their teammates may come from. In the lack of critical examination this kind of racist garbage will fester as an acceptable explanation for an inexplicable phenomenon.

Anybody who would like to become better versed about the locker room atmosphere a gay player might encounter should try reading a biography of one. Glenn Burke wrote in his autobiography of what it was like being slowly outed to his teammates, trying desperately to maintain his secret but refusing to lose any ground or sense of self-respect to anybody who somehow knew. But through it all was actually one of the most popular people in the clubhouse!

Even at the infancy of my big-league career, I may have feared success a little bit. I thought to myself, "Hey, I want to hit over .300 and become a star and a hot commodity, but then the secret could be leaked out. That could be a good thing or a bad one. A good thing if I told anyone with a problem with it to go to hell, a bad one it got me blackballed from the game despite the success.

In Burke's own words, he would have had no problem telling one of his teammates to go to hell if they did have a problem with him. It was the possibility of being denied his opportunity at success despite having earned that made him want to live his life in the closet. Fans today that think gay players aren't equally capable of telling homophobic teammates to get fucked are not giving gay people enough credit. The odds are there are many openly gay players within locker rooms and that a number of homophobes have already told to get bent by a teammate they knew was gay.

But moreso than a Trea Turner tweet from his high school years (like 2016??) it is the implied threat of denial of opportunity that keeps gay players in the closet, and the more we try to blame guys like Josh Hader and Daniel Murphy the more the League itself will be able to skirt its responsibility. It was, after all, not a homophobic teammate- but abuse from Dodgers management and Athletics coaching staff that inevitably chased Glenn Burke out of baseball. And while every player caught in a scandal like this WILL be made to apologize publicly, neither the Dodgers nor the Athletics have ever publicly taken responsibility or apologized for chasing Glenn Burke out of Major League Baseball.

The journalists are no better. Homophobia in baseball is totally ignored by the sports media until a player embarrasses himself, at which point the player is run through the public wringer (with a vocal smattering of support from inveterate homophobes) all the while MLB's efforts to combat such heinous things, such as naming Billy Bean Major League Baseball's Official Gay Friend. Every one of these people would have you believe they're so progressive but not one of them has ever asked a Major League Personnel one penetrating question about why there are no openly gay players in Major League Baseball.

We won't see an openly gay Major League Baseball player in 2018. We probably won't see one in 2019. We will probably get into the 2020's before more baseball fans start to pick up a keen awareness of how strange it is to see openly gay people everywhere other than on the playing fields of our biggest professional sports leagues. But don't blame Trea Turner.