Glenn Burke (1952-1995) was Major League Baseball’s first out gay player and inventor of the high five excelled as a multi-talented athlete. Born and raised in Oakland, California, Glenn, led Berkeley High School to the 1970 NorCal Championships and an undefeated season in Basketball, ran track in the 1982 Gay Olympics and joined the San Francisco Gay Softball League. The bold, beautiful, part of Glenn Burke’s story was his fierce determination to be out and true to who he was. The sad, tragic, part of his story was the way he was villainized for it by the managers of the sport he loved. In common conversation it’s been pointed out that Glenn’s Los Angeles Dodger teammates didn’t care about his sexual orientation but management did and they responded by trying to bribe him to marry a woman, trading him to Oakland because he was gay, and ultimately destroying his career because of Billy Martin’s notorious homophobia. Having his career stolen was followed by a series of tragedies that culminated in Burke struggling with HIV & homelessness and eventually dying of AIDS. In addition to being memorialized on the Rainbow Honor Walk, the hometown hero’s memory is being kept alive through the Oakland LGBTQ Community Centers 2020 launch of the Glenn Burke Wellness Center.
Find his plaque on Market St between Castro and Noe