Robbie Rogers returned to Dignity Health Sports Park on Saturday. It wasn’t his first go to since he performed his final sport for the Galaxy eight years in the past; his two younger youngsters, Caleb and Mia, love coming to the video games, he stated.
Yet it was the primary time he had come to the stadium to obtain a bobblehead in his likeness, sit within the president’s suite and have a good time Pride Month by participating in a nationwide telecast on Apple TV.
“We know what a particular participant he was and the way a lot he meant to our group,” Galaxy president Tom Braun stated.
In 2013, Rogers turned the primary overtly homosexual male to play a sport in a significant U.S. skilled sports activities league. It was a historic second, which appeared a harbinger of issues to return. A month earlier, Jason Collins, an NBA free agent, got here out as homosexual in an interview with Sports Illustrated. Less than three months later Michael Sam, a standout defensive lineman on the University of Missouri, got here out to his teammates. He would quickly develop into the primary overtly homosexual participant chosen within the NFL draft.
Then, nothing.
In 2018, Minnesota United midfielder Collin Martin got here out of hiding, however has since performed fewer than a dozen MLS video games. In 2021, Carl Nassib of the Raiders introduced on Instagram that he’s homosexual. He performed two seasons with the Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, then retired.
Galaxy midfielder Robbie Rogers tries to beat Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei throughout a match in 2015.
(Ted S. Warren/Associated Press)
Eleven years after Rogers’ Galaxy debut, there aren’t any overtly homosexual gamers within the nation’s 5 main skilled sports activities leagues. What ought to have been a defining second is now little greater than a footnote.
“I assume I’m slightly unhappy, you realize?” Rogers stated.
According to Statista, roughly 7.6% of the grownup inhabitants within the United States is LGBTQ+, which means that {many professional} groups have one or two homosexual gamers of their locker room. The braveness proven by Rogers, Collins and Sam ought to have allowed them to be trustworthy and open about who they had been. Anyone who has needed to conceal one thing as self-defining as their sexual orientation will let you know that the stress is suffocating and their efficiency has suffered.
Rogers was at a drawback. Three months earlier than he was welcomed to the Galaxy, he walked away from English second division staff Leeds United, asserting his retirement in a 408-word put up on his weblog web page wherein he revealed he was homosexual and spoke of the emotional toll it could take endure retaining that secret. had employed him.
Coming again to play with the Galaxy freed him and, in accordance with him, freed others to return out publicly as nicely.
“Obviously we had been unsuitable,” he stated.
But that does not imply there hasn’t been progress. Rogers’ debut with the Galaxy modified issues, however subtly.
Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of the web site Outsports.com and one of many journalists who has coated homosexual athletes within the United States, remembers watching Rogers’ first apply with the Galaxy.
“Robbie was kicking the ball together with his teammates they usually had been laughing and working towards and there was nothing to do,” he stated. “What I noticed that day was that issues had already modified. This was the primary time the media had seen an overtly homosexual man in a significant skilled league and it was very regular.
“I noticed we had been very unsuitable.”
Zeigler has since been confirmed appropriate time and time once more. Almost each time a homosexual highschool or faculty athlete has come out to teammates, coaches or the general public, they’ve been greeted with heat, respect and assist, simply as Rogers was.
“With our staff, it turned clear early on that there was no tolerance for any discrimination,” stated Landon Donovan, who was an outspoken chief of the Galaxy staff that Rogers joined. “It was by no means an choice to permit this to occur.”
Donovan selected an understated method to spotlight this earlier than a staff dinner shortly after Rogers’ arrival. The time and placement of the assembly had been written on the chalkboard within the Galaxy locker room, together with the admonition “no wives or girlfriends,” which Donovan modified to incorporate “no boyfriends.”
They had been all on this collectively.
“He was only a human being who was going via one thing troublesome and we needed to assist him,” Donovan stated. “We had been simply treating a teammate the way in which he needs to be handled.”
The two males, who briefly performed collectively for the nationwide staff, shortly turned allies.
“Landon was an important supporter and actually helped me really feel snug coming again,” Rogers stated. “We had a espresso, texted him and requested him some questions. He was very all for speaking to me about my expertise and seeing how I used to be doing.”
Coach Landon Donovan, left, sits subsequent to assistants Nate Miller and Carrie Taylor throughout a San Diego Loyal scrimmage.
(Gregory Bull/Associated Press)
Fast ahead seven years. Donovan is the first-year coach of the San Diego Loyal, who’s preventing for a playoff spot within the USL Championship. During halftime damage time, Phoenix Rising’s Junior Flemmings shouted homophobic abuse at Martin, who Donovan had signed to his first roster. Before the beginning of the second half, Donovan introduced that his staff would forfeit the sport and their playoff hopes quite than share the sector with Flemmings.
Donovan credit Rogers for that call.
“When you are round somebody who’s shared numerous tales about how arduous it was for him to be handled that approach, then one thing like this occurs a number of years later to one among our gamers, yeah, there is not any doubt about it,” Donovan stated . “Every time you realize somebody’s story, you’ll really feel extra compassion for them.
“And so realizing Robbie’s story gave me much more compassion.”
So whereas Rogers could not have impressed different skilled athletes within the 5 main leagues to return out en masse, he clearly made an affect. Various minor league baseball gamers have come out, gaining widespread acceptance from their teammates. Coaches and referees at each the skilled and faculty ranges did the identical.
Three years in the past Outsports performed a examine with the University of Winchester and the Sports Equality Foundation inspecting the approaching out experiences of 820 highschool and faculty athletes within the United States and Canada. Less than 5% stated the response from teammates and coaches was unfavorable.
That reply would have been unthinkable earlier than Rogers.
After an ankle damage pressured him right into a second retirement from soccer in 2017, Rogers, now 37, launched into a extremely profitable second profession as a father, husband and govt within the leisure trade. In 2017, she married author/producer/director Greg Berlanti (“Dawson’s Creek,” “Love, Simon”) — one thing he could not legally do in California when he joined Galaxy — and the couple had two youngsters via surrogate motherhood.
Rogers turned govt producer of the acclaimed Showtime miniseries “Fellow Travelers,” a political drama and homosexual romance rolled into one, and “My Policeman,” the 2022 homosexual drama on Amazon Prime Video. Before that he was a producer, together with Berlanti, on the CW drama “All American,” impressed by the lifetime of former NFL linebacker Spencer Paysinger.
Executive Robbie Rogers, heart, talks with costume designer Joseph La Corte and showrunner Ron Nyswaner behind the scenes of the miniseries “Fellow Travelers.”
(Ben Mark Holzberg/Showtime)
“Robbie Rogers will likely be remembered as probably the most necessary figures within the acceptance of homosexual males,” Zeigler stated. “Robbie has made telling the tales of homosexual males and tradition central to his profession in leisure. So should you take a look at what Robbie has finished in sport AND leisure, you may be hard-pressed to search out anybody who’s had as large an affect.
In a cellphone dialog, Rogers appeared glad, assured and eventually at peace together with his life. He additionally cherished the bobblehead.
“It labored higher than I dreamed,” he stated. “So I really feel actually fortunate. I nonetheless dwell in a dream the place I’ve household and youngsters and I can have a tremendous soccer profession and now this profession tells tales of issues that I’m actually captivated with. I really feel extremely grateful.
Perhaps that is the very best legacy of all.
