Gay Umpires | 30 Years Ago This Month
Behind the Mask
Growing up in Massachusetts, Dave Pallone dreamed of playing major league baseball. When a high school injury snuffed that dream, he discovered umpiring. After a long apprenticeship in the minors, Pallone became a major league umpire by crossing the picket line in the umpires’ strike of 1979. For that transgression, he paid a brutal price. Over the next ten years, union umps ostracized him relentlessly as a “scab.” They refused to associate with him off the field, trashed his equipment, spread malicious rumors about him, undermined his work in games. A closeted gay, Pallone wore not only his umpire’s mask, but also the mask of his secret personal life. His only island of sanity was a three-year relationship with his lover, Scott. But that, too, was ill-fated; the day after Thanksgiving in 1982, Scott was killed in an automobile accident.MORE from Penthouse
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