Why the Red Sox ‘Heated Rivalry’ Night is gayer than Pride Night

Forget Pride Night. The Boston Red Sox just scheduled something gayer, and it took me a few days to begin to appreciate what they did.

That’s because, after 30 years in corporate public relations inside countless marketing departments, I’ve grown weary and cynical about what I consider gratuitous marketing schemes.

So when the Red Sox announced that on Aug. 31, Fenway Park is hosting a “Heated Rivalry” Night, I immediately became skeptical. On the surface, it looks like a way to line up gays at the famed stadium turnstiles on a hot summer night.

But to me, it appeared to be an overt attempt to bring in not the gays, but women, who have gone wild about the sexiness of the two male rival hockey players featured in the hit HBO series and their sizzling sex scenes.

Surely, it was going to be a gathering of females swooning over the fictitious Canadian player Shane Hollander, played by Hudson Williams, and the Russian puckster Ilya Rozanov, played by Connor Storie. If gay men followed the ladies into the seats, then that would be an added bonus.

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The Red Sox are going all out, trying to cash in on the cultural phenomenon of “Heated Rivalry.” There will be custom Hollander and Rozanov Red Sox jerseys. There will be themed cocktails. There will be a pregame dance party inspired by the show’s famous club scene, which, if you’ve seen it, you know is not exactly stodgy, quite the contrast to its confines.

Fenway Park is the oldest ballpark in America, and if you’ve been there, you can feel the wealth of history the stadium has experienced, from Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski Jim Rice and David Ortiz up to today’s reigning star, Rafael Devers.

It’s a cathedral of sports Americana and masculinity that smells like stale Sam Adams, worn leather and wood, and a century of some of the best ballplayers in the history of the game. When I read about the upcoming celebration of gay love, my first thought was, “What would the macho, irascible Ted Williams have to say about a night celebrating the gay character of Hudson Williams?”

Changing times

They’re throwing a party for a show that features, as its central narrative engine, two professional male athletes having a lot of very enthusiastic sex with each other. It was September 1960 when Williams famously homered in his last major league at-bat.

Up until that time, the biggest LGBTQ achievement was arguably the establishment of the Mattachine Society in the 1950s, an organization whose aim was to unify isolated gay men and educate the public to change the perception of homosexuality as a “sickness.”

So, as the old axiom goes, the times, they are a-changin’. In the early 1960s, Boston was very much perceived as a gritty, blue-collar city. Now, the city is consistently ranked as one of the most LGBTQ-friendly cities in the United States.

Given that context, and given my outdated thoughts about Williams (Ted), I suddenly began to reconsider my suspicions about the true goal of “Heated Rivalry” Night. In fact, I’d now go as far as to say that the Red Sox, and the city, are showing their appreciation for a new era of Williams’, one that welcomes gay men and the relationships — and sex — they enjoy.

A thrilling move

Here’s what made me giddy with enthusiasm about the special night: It is genuinely thrilling, and not just a quirky PR move. The show that inspired this isn’t a sanitized “love is love” after-school special. “Heated Rivalry,” directed by the openly gay Jacob Tierney, is legitimately erotic, emotionally complex television that takes the interior lives of its gay protagonists seriously.

And if I can be a bit risqué, it also takes you inside the bedroom of two men who enjoy, and I mean really enjoy, each other’s company.

Kaiya Shunyata at RogerEbert.com called it “the most significant queer show of the year.” The show won a Peabody Award. Storie, who plays the Boston Raiders’ Russian star Ilya Rozanov, hosted ”Saturday Night Live” and walked the red carpet at the Met Gala. This is not some fringe, B-level boy-meets-boy melodrama. It is now a verifiable cultural touchstone.

And the trendy, creative-thinking Boston Red Sox looked at all of that and said, “Wow, yes, that’s us. That’s our thing. That’s what we’re doing on a Monday night in August.”

There’s a Boston dimension to this that makes it even better as a marketing tool. Rozanov doesn’t just play for any fictional team, he plays for the Boston Raiders. Fenway isn’t just hosting a themed event; in a strange and lovely way, it’s hosting a homecoming of all things Ilya.

And, for one night, Fenway Park becomes the metaphorical cottage where he and Shane finally fully commit to each other.

The night benefits OUT MetroWest, a nonprofit supporting LGBTQ youth in the Boston suburbs. I’ve always said that a successful and smart marketing strategy needs a cause component. So the Red Sox aren’t just nodding at queer culture; they’re putting money toward it, in one of the communities where it matters most.

Yes, MLB’s overall track record on LGBTQ inclusion is a work in progress. There are no active out gay players in the majors, and there never has been. That conversation isn’t going away, and it shouldn’t.

But the argument that institutions should do nothing until they’ve done everything has not produced much. What Fenway is doing on Aug. 31 is planting a flag in the middle of America’s oldest ballpark and saying that a love story between two men is worth celebrating. 

This whole thing made me recall the iconic and famous Madison Avenue advertising slogan — a true marketing gem — from 1974 about all things considered American: “Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet.” Now, the Red Sox are adding gay men to that list.

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