Camden Riversharks' Gay Community Night

It's becoming commonplace for teams, particularly in baseball, to welcome groups of fans from the LGBT community. For sure, the teams are interested in selling tickets. However, the fact that they treat gay and lesbian groups no differently than other groups of fans -- Boy Scouts, church groups, colleges and universities, whatever -- is important.

The Phillies are one of the forerunners in this area, as this year's Gay Community Night at the Phillies will be the 8th. (Information on the event is available here.) Just within the last 10 days the Houston Astros and Minnesota Twins held similar events, and it's not limited to major league baseball. NBA and NHL teams, including the Flyers and 76ers this past season, have also held events. However, it's spreading even beyond the four major pro leagues. The organizers of the Phillies, Flyers and 76ers events put together two more events, which were held on back-to-back nights last week: Out with the Philadelphia Freedoms (the World Team Tennis) and one that strikes me as more significant, the first Gay Community Night at the Camden Riversharks. I was at the latter. More, including some video, after the jump...

The Riversharks are a minor league baseball team that plays across the Delaware River from Philly, at the very nice Campbell's Field near the Camden waterfront. Minor league baseball tends to be a family draw, because the costs -- from ticket prices to concessions -- are much lower than for MLB, NBA, NHL and NFL teams. There are a lot of promotions geared towards kids, such as a between-innings sack race. So I think it's noteworthy that teams like the Riversharks aren't scared of the right-wing creeps who would scream about "family values" and "protecting the children."

Unfortunately, there wasn't a large turnout on this night, by the gays or anyone else. There was a monsoon earlier in the day and the threat of more rain was in the forecast, so that didn't help. Also, minor league teams usually don't command much interest from Philadelphia sports fans, obsessed as they are with the major league teams. I used my new cell phone's camcorder to survey the crowd during the 2nd inning...




To their credit, the Riversharks actually went a little beyond what the Phillies have done, at least in the Gay Community Nights I've attended (I wasn't there last year and am unsure about this year). Sure, there was the mention on the scoreboard (see picture), and the national anthem performed by the Philadelphia Gay Men's Chorus:



In addition, though, between innings on three different occasions they showed very special clips on their video board. The first was the coming-out airport scene from the sitcom "Ellen." I captured the moment, but not very well -- I'm still learning how to use all this newfangled stuff so I didn't get the entire moment, nor did I even get a chance to zoom in. And I was kind of in shock seeing it to begin with.



It was a nice moment. As for the other two videos, shown later in the game, one was basically a lot of slogans and signs and pictures of people, and the final video was a clip of President Obama speaking to LGBT people at the White House. By the time these last two were shown, however, the park was even more empty, as the Riversharks were closing out a dismal 13-1 loss to the Somerset Patriots. (Oh, and there will be a follow-up post about one interesting baseball-related note from that game.) Despite the result, I enjoyed it a lot and I will definitely be returning to Campbell's Field.

Here are two other videos I took. One is just a PATCO train crossing the bridge from Philly into Camden, and the other is from the top of the 4th inning, and featured some silly remarks, a shot of my Baseball Bingo card, and a batter getting hit by a pitch that was high and tight.