I Hope Robbie Rogers Plays Soccer Again

2/17/2013

Robbie Rogers, Photo with Permission of John McDermott

Judging from the lovely messages Robbie Rogers has received, his friends and teammates care for him and would surely welcome him back.

Rogers needs to work out the complications from his coming out the other day, and most of us have no idea what that involves.

He is part of the new generation that has been around gay issues from the start – friends who had gay parents, friends who came out, people who had the comfort to live their lives more in the open, plus all the references in pop culture that were not there in past generations.

It’s easier now, even if incrementally. The older generation still gets a little nervous when the subject comes up; the intolerant religious flank is watching a new generation pay no attention.

Rogers has already scored and created important goals for the national team through his ability and instincts. He is only 25. When the time comes around again, it would be wonderful if he played the sport at which he excels.

He also could contribute something vital: he could be the first openly gay male in one of America’s major leagues. Rogers could come home, to the right team in Major League Soccer, which has enlightened leadership that enforces penalties on homophobic slurs. That league will not permit ugly stuff from the crowd like the chants Rogers could expect if he stayed in England. (Ask Tim Howard about the lyrics he hears making fun of his very mild case of Tourette’s syndrome.)

My guess is that the time is right to openly welcome a gay player in an American league, as has already happened on the women’s national soccer team. Megan Rapinoe, one of the best and most popular players, came out a year ago. For that matter, her coach at the time, Pia Sundhage, one of the more mature and interesting leaders, is gay. The world did not end.

The pressure would be considerable in a male league, from media scrutiny, from fans, probably from some conservative fans and sponsors and the inevitable religious groups. Blazing a trail as a gay player would be challenging, but then again so was sitting at lunch counters for blacks in the 1960’s and so was playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers for Jackie Robinson in 1947. It’s a different time.

Those sweet messages to Rogers from his pals tells me they already get it, and will be there if he decides to play again. I hope he does.

Your comment is welcome.

Gary Drake

2/17/2013 01:38:27 am

Hi again, George,
Your writing comes on the heels of very personable Torri Hunter saying he'd be "uncomfortable" with gays in the locker room because it goes against his religious beliefs. What hypocrisy! Hunter never came out against fellow MLBers taking HGH/PEDs. I don't remember drug-taking squaring with biblical teaching. As a sports fan, I just care about the games. Who the players are holding hands with on a walk through the park doesn't interest me in the least. Love and let love. And play ball!
What you do after the

George Vecsey

2/17/2013 01:57:07 am

Ciao, Gary. I bet Hunter has played against, maybe even with, guys who are gay, and he knew it. Talk is cheap, particularly religious intolerance. Hunter seems like a nice guy in person. A presto, GV

Gary Drake

2/17/2013 10:38:02 am

Ciao, George! Yes, that's why that bothered me so. Hunter on the field is all that we love about baseball. I'm a Twins fan and lived in TC from 2006-2010. Hunter was a joy to watch and in fact I still have a photo of the smile on his face as he lead the team onto the field from the dugout at the beginning of the game.
Why couldn't he just leave me with that impression??? And to the point of your article why not let everybody smile?

Alan Rubin link

2/17/2013 05:33:45 am

Hi George,

Many more should join you and Robbie’s friends in voicing their support and encouragement. I hope that his retirement will be short lived and he will return better able to enjoy his talents.

My children and grandchildren bracket his generation and things are definitely changing. It is perfectly normal for them to have close friends from same-sex marriages.

Although prejudice and phobias will always be a fact of life, social tolerance continues to improve.

I’m looking forward to seeing Robbie playing soccer again at the highest level.

Ed Martin

2/17/2013 06:50:45 am

George, "Some of my best friends are gay." Only I mean it --men and women. The time is now! Good for Robbie for coming out. Just think,he could be in the military, Congress or even a sports reporter.

Kids Soccer Shoes link

6/17/2013 06:50:10 pm

Thank you for writing and sharing this informative article. we really hope Rogers will play again...

Nike Soccer Shoes link

7/21/2013 06:09:02 pm

Nice to see, this was really a interesting article. In this article I would like to write like this too.

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3/3/2014 07:28:42 pm

I wanted to leave a little comment to support you and wish you a good continuation

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

I Hope Robbie Rogers Plays Soccer Again

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