How the ‘Love, Simon’ location made this gay baseball fan’s road trip perfect
Great gay movies make everything better, even baseball trips. Plus: the brilliance of the Braves organist and the best thirst trap hair in decades. The post How the ‘Love, Simon’ location made this gay baseball fan’s road trip perfect appeared first on Outsports.
Mark
Welcome back to Talkin’ Gaysball where everyone deserves a great love story except fans who start the wave…
Every summer, I take a baseball roadtrip to a different major league city with two goals in mind:
- Cross another MLB ballpark off my list
- Avoid Florida for as long as possible
Get off the sidelines and into the game
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Last weekend, I accomplished both objectives by visiting Truist Park in Atlanta. It should tell you how determined I am to abstain from visiting Florida that I was willing to spend two nights watching the Braves pitching staff in order to do so.
One aspect of these trips that I’ve come to love is finding a side quest that leads me off the typical tourist path. And for The ATL, I had one in mind that was giving my little gay heart a massive case of the swoons for months.
Because Atlanta is the home of “Love, Simon.”
You know how there are some movies that are so unexpectedly moving that even their establishing shots make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up? “Love, Simon” is that kind of film for me.
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I originally saw it in the theater during the spring of 2018 and went with a straight friend who seemed to enjoy the film perfectly fine. But I don’t know if he noticed that seated right next to him was a middle- age gay man having a complete emotional breakdown watching a teen rom-com.
To this day, if I want to make sure my feelings still work, I rewatch the Ferris wheel scene and unapologetically weep for joy. “Love, Simon” has the kind of emotional power over me usually reserved for the last out of the 2016 World Series.
Since I was going to be in town for the weekend, I decided to plan the most Ken Schultz doubleheader I could think of: find the “Love, Simon” house in the afternoon and go to a Braves game that night.
Suffice it to say this is not an itinerary from your standard Ballpark Bucket List travel guide. Which is what made it perfect.
While the movie did well at the box office, it certainly wasn’t a blockbuster so I had to go down a bit of a Google rabbit hole to find the address. Then I had to navigate a train, a bus, a mile-long walk, and at least five streets named Peachtree.
But when I got there and saw the familiar two-level gray Spier family home in three dimensions for the first time, I had a Becky Albertalli narrator moment and forgot how to breathe.
On one level, it was a dwelling like dozens of others in this well-to-do subdivision. But mentally picturing so many scenes from a movie that has personally affected me playing out on that very location somehow made the house itself feel emotionally resonant.
It’s amazing how the location from one gay movie could hit me that deeply but you could not have blow-torched the smile off my face for the rest of that afternoon.
It was the best way to spend a day before going to the ballpark because it was so gay and so personal. Going forward, it has also inspired me to try to add LGBTQ side quests to all my future baseball trips.
So for next year…Florida, I accept your challenge.
Yet Another Reason to Never Play the Tomahawk Chop
As a baseball gay, I’m well aware that a lot of my fellow members of the community are not going to be hanging on every pitch the way I do and would be OK with a few distractions during a three-hour ballgame.
Which is where the genius of Braves organist Matthew Kaminski really shines through.
When Kaminski plays opposing players up to bat, he treats Braves fans to two games within the game: naming that tune and then doing mental gymnastics to try to connect it to the player.
For example, when Mets outfielder Brett Baty stepped to the plate, Kaminski played the first few stanzas of “Dueling Banjos.” And it made me think, “OK…that’s from the soundtrack of ‘Deliverance’…a movie that starred Burt Reynolds and…Ned Beatty, Holy cow, he’s good!”
That’s next-level deep cut brilliant. Thanks to Kaminski, every batter is a musical Rubik’s Cube to solve and his unceasing cleverness is a way to keep fans engaged for every at bat.
Of course, anything that keeps Braves fans from having to ask “Didn’t these guys used to be good?” might be the best feature at the ballpark.
MLB Thirst Trap of the Week
In a summer of Red Sox prospects, newly promoted outfielder Jhostynxon Garcia stands out and not just because he makes spellchecks throughout Boston suggest phrases like “I give up” and “Did you have a stroke?”
Simply put, Garcia already has the greatest mane of hair of any Sox player since Johnny Damon.
During his time in the minor leagues this season, Garcia hit 20 home runs. I’m not sure how many actually went over the fence and how many were the result of fielders watching his flowing tresses as he rounded the bases and forgetting how to throw the ball.
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The post How the ‘Love, Simon’ location made this gay baseball fan’s road trip perfect appeared first on Outsports.
