MLB umpire Dale Scott: ‘I wasn’t intimidated by threats to out me as gay’

Major League Baseball umpire Dale Scott made history in 2014. He came out as gay, the first MLB umpire to do so. It was big enough news that Jimmy Fallon joked about it on The Tonight Show – “Well, he says he’s out, but the other umps said he’s safe. So now they gotta look at replay.”

But during Scott’s 37-year career in pro baseball, his identity was no laughing matter. He feared the repercussions if he was outed, especially in his early seasons, which coincided with the Aids crisis. Now retired, Scott reflects on his years in the pros in a new memoir, The Umpire is Out: Calling the Game and Living My True Self, co-written with Rob Neyer.

“Rob said: ‘You’ve got a completely unique, different story that nobody else ever had,’” says Scott, who initially didn’t want to write the book. “The more I thought about it, after I came out publicly in 2014, the feedback I got was so positive. People told me my story really helped them in their lives.”

He remains the only MLB umpire to come out publicly while on the job, although the book makes it clear he’s not the only gay umpire in Major League history.

No active player on an MLB roster has come out to the public – although there were two who did so after their careers ended: The late Glenn Burke, and MLB vice president of social responsibility and inclusion Billy Bean, who wrote the introduction to Scott’s book. Bean evokes a painful memory from his final season, in 1995, when he played for the San Diego Padres. He suffered the death of his partner and felt he couldn’t tell his teammates.

Scott wonders when an active MLB player will come out, as athletes in other leagues have done, such as Carl Nassib in the NFL and Jason Collins in the NBA.

“We’ve had it in football,