The first MLB Pride Night was earlier than you think — and hosted by the Marlins

Until this point, we believed that the concept of MLB Pride Nights began in 2000 with the first “Gay and Lesbian Night at Dodger Stadium,” or 2001 with the Chicago Cubs’ inaugural Out at Wrigley. 

Those promotions were connected to two of the league’s most well-publicized franchises in the Dodgers and the Cubs, so it made sense that they would be at the top of our minds when we thought of noteworthy moments in LGBTQ baseball history.

It turns out, though, that the genesis of Pride Days in baseball goes back a little bit further than that — to July 19, 1998. Yes, in what can only be described as one of LGBTQ history’s biggest upsets, Pride in MLB is actually older than “…Baby One More Time.”

What’s more, the now-first-known MLB Pride promotion started with a team often overlooked by most major sports media outlets and sometimes even its own owners: the Florida Marlins.

For one mid-July day in 1998, the Marlins established a connection with the LGBTQ South Florida Softball League (now the South Florida Amateur Athletic Association) and opened their ballpark up to celebrate its players, a local drag legend, and the Miami gay community.

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All of this happened in the era of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Jerry Falwell, and Rush Limbaugh. 

The idea for MLB’s first ‘Gay Day’

In the MLB culture of the late-90s, Pride rainbows were an even rarer sight than Marlins World Championships. Until the Marlins and the SFSL decided to bring baseball and our community together that season by hosting the first Gay Day at the ballpark.

The idea was hatched during the 1997 World Series when SFSL Commissioner Patrick McNicholas attended a game in Miami with league co-founder Jim Stork and a few other friends.

Surrounded by 60,000 Marlins fans enjoying the Fall Classic for the first time, McNicholas found himself caught up in the excitement of it all.

“Patrick is that type. He just pointed down at the field and said, ‘We should have a game out there sometime,’” Stork told Outsports, “For me, I’m a visionary too. I’m like, ‘Let’s do it!’”

For the SFSL players and gay Marlins fans, that was a World Series moment right up there with Édgar Rentería’s Game 7 walk-off.

McNicholas had connections from a previous internship at Joe Robbie Stadium, the Marlins’ home ballpark at the time. He pitched his idea and found that both stadium authorities and the team were receptive.

Not only would there be a special section filled with LGBTQ fans that day but afterwards, the SFSL would host a game on the Joe Robbie Stadium diamond themselves.

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When word got back to the players in the SFSL, they were understandably over the moon at the prospect of playing on a major league field. 

Some homophobes get word of a Marlins Gay Day

But while McNicholas and the SFSL were planning the logistics of Gay Day and selling tickets, word about the promotion leaked out to Florida’s conservative talk radio and shock jocks. In the course of human history, literally nothing good has ever resulted when a sentence ends like that. 

Sure enough, it didn’t take long for the dregs of local media to take an uplifting moment for the gay community and turn it hateful and ugly.

“I remember listening to it in my car and I had to turn it off because the slurs…it stung,” Stork recalled.

With radio bottom-feeders whipping their followers up into a homophobic frenzy, listeners called in threats and stadium officials started having doubts about hosting the event. The trauma took its toll on McNicholas but he remained steadfast and determined to make Gay Day happen.

Thankfully, he saw it through and Gay Day stayed on the schedule. And unlike just about every other day during a 108-loss season for the Marlins, it was an undeniable success.

Stork recalled a sense of near-immeasurable joy walking into Joe Robbie Stadium for Gay Day and compared it to what baseball fans feel on Opening Day.

“We had that childhood innocence come back but we were ourselves,” he said.

As this was something that no one in attendance had experienced before, there was a strong feeling of camaraderie in the stands—and it wasn’t limited to just one section. While the SFSL sold a few hundred tickets among their group, Stork discovered that he could find LGBTQ fans scattered throughout the entire ballpark.

“There were other people in other sections because I walked down and ran into them. They said, ‘We just came because we heard it was Gay Day!’ It was kind of cool,” he remembered.

Playing gay softball on an MLB field

Then after the afternoon’s contest finished and the major league players had departed, the SFSL took the field to play a game in a setting that had hosted the World Series less than a year ago. To say they were in awe was an understatement and they turned the occasion into a community celebration.

In a precursor to what is now common during MLB Pride Nights, the same field where baseball greats like Gary Sheffield and Jim Leyland celebrated a championship now hosted Miami Pride’s Flamingo Freedom Band and South Florida drag icon Tiffany Arieagus.

Again, it’s worth repeating that this was happening in 1998. McNicholas, Stork, and the SFSL turned Gay Day into a success during an era when most Americans would have been shocked to learn that Rosie O’Donnell didn’t actually have a thing for Tom Cruise. It was a massive accomplishment and left its organizers in awe. 

Looking back almost three decades later, Stork felt justifiably proud of how far Pride in MLB has come and Gay Day’s pioneering role in it.

“I was always proud to see all these other teams like the Red Sox and the Cubs [host Pride Nights]. Just a wonderful feeling to see acceptance and celebration of it,” he said, “In the back of my mind, I feel good because I was part of the first one and took a chance to do it with Patrick.”

When it came to Marlins Gay Day, taking a chance resulted in LGBTQ baseball history.

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