Why Bisexual?

Switch Hitter is, first and foremost, a baseball blog. Read about how I became a baseball fan here.

When I decided to blog about baseball, I knew I wanted my blog to emphasize my perspective as a bisexual woman. This may be an unusual choice, but the fact that gender and sexuality don’t coexist comfortably with sports writing is exactly the reason I did it.

Most of the people writing about baseball are men. Articles about “best baseball blogs” casually feature all-male lists, and in 111 years—no, that is not a typo—the Baseball Writers’ Association of America has had one female president, in 2012. Women do write about baseball. But of the baseball blogs by women that I managed to find, many were defunct, shifted in focus to entirely different topics, or steeped in insulting gender stereotypes. There’s a lot of room for new female voices.

Most of the people writing about baseball are straight. Queer sports writers—at least those who are publicly out—tend to write for LGBTQ+ publications or special interest sections of media outlets. Queer perspectives on sports are sidelined while straight perspectives, the unacknowledged default, are considered mainstream. Openly bisexual baseball writers are about as mythical as, well, unicorns.

I want to change that. I want to write about baseball in a way that’s unapologetically informed by my perspective as a bisexual woman. I want to create a space that explicitly welcomes women and queer people not as special interest groups to be catered to once in a while, but all the time, in all our complex humanity. And I want to acknowledge and amplify the perspectives of others who are sidelined in mainstream sports for their race, trans identity, disability, socioeconomic background, religion, etc. I want to write about baseball, but I want to do it on my own terms.

Major League Baseball is not friendly towards women or queer people. Professional baseball in the United States is the exclusive domain of male athletes. The vast majority of owners, managers, coaches, umpires, and commentators are also men. There are zero openly gay men currently playing Major League Baseball, and a Google search for “bisexual baseball players” returns results about gay former athletes. Athletes make homophobic comments on the field and off. With these dismal facts in mind, it’s easy to see why women and queer people might steer clear entirely, and many do. But others are intrigued by the sport despite these serious cultural flaws. These are the people I’m writing for: the people who acknowledge the shortcomings of baseball but are able to see something good in it. Together, I think, we can imagine something even better.