I am at Yankee Stadium, and it's the top of the third inning in game one of the American League Championship Series. The guy behind me in Tier 3 (yes, you!) is screaming "FAGGOT" at one of the Red Sox players for the 13th time this game. "Gee, I didn't know the Red Sox had so many gay players," my domestic partner mutters under his breath.

Fortunately, when Yankees pitcher Mike Mussina is pulled after surrendering four runs, my partner's misconception that Boston has a monopoly on gay players is corrected when a Yankee fan stands up to yell, "Mussina, you faggot! Go back to Baltimore!"

By the fifth inning, I stop counting "faggot" calls after I reach 25.

Ah, sports and homophobia. They just seem to go so naturally together, like peanut butter and jelly. I'd forgotten why I hadn't ventured out to the stadium in a decade: As a gay man, I find it isn't a lot of fun to go to pro sporting events.

I didn't always feel this way. As the youngest of four athletic boys, I used to love these events. One of my fondest memories of my dad was when he took me to my first NFL game, featuring his favorite team, the Miami Dolphins. I loved it, mainly because I got to have this special time with my father. When my mom let me pick my own bedding for the first time, I chose sheets that had the helmets of each NFL team on them. In sixth grade, I annoyed Mom by waking her up while chanting "Looey, Looey" in our living room as Red Sox ace Luis Tiant carried the Sox toward their improbable, impossible Game 6 victory in the 1975 World Series.

I lived for this stuff.

Turned away

But, as I grew older and realized I was gay, I became estranged from the sporting world. I got tired of the catcalling by fans at games, the generic use of "faggot" for any player a fan didn't like or "gay" to describe any play that didn't turn out as expected. I started staying away from ballparks, rinks, stadiums, watching instead on ESPN or ordering services like "NHL Center Ice" from my cable company so I'd never miss a game.

I wish I could say that my experience at Yankee Stadium was somehow just because these people were Yankees fans (as a devout Red Sox fan, I will admit that I'd like to blame all the world's evils on the Yankees and their fans), but it just isn't that easy. This fall, I decided to end my self-imposed exile from sporting arenas by accepting the invitation of a friend who had seats in the third row, on the 50-yard line, for the Giants' Monday night game against the Cowboys. I'm a big Giants fan, but have to admit that my enthusiasm has been tempered over the past year as their most beloved player, Jeremy Shockey, has repeatedly made homophobic comments. Weeks before the game I was to see, Shockey was reported by New York magazine to have called coaching legend Bill Parcells (the last coach to lead the Giants to a Super Bowl victory) a "homo." But I thought I'd give it another shot anyway; hey, it was Monday Night Football!

Nationwide problem

Sure enough, things hadn't changed much. Fans in Giants Stadium were only marginally less vitriolic than those at Yankee Stadium. I couldn't even blame it on New York; a gay co-worker told me that he'd taken his dad to a Chargers game back home in San Diego last fall and that they'd eventually left because of the anti-gay epithets being hurled around them. Using bigoted language with impunity just seems to be part of the culture of the sporting world.

What to do? A good start would be for the police crawling all over Yankee Stadium to discourage this homophobic language. (Would they tolerate fans yelling the "N" word?) Cutting off beer sales wouldn't hurt, either. But real change will come when fans themselves start doing what the older gentleman next to me, who was faithfully following the game on his scorecard, did: He turned to the lout who was trying to pick a fight with a Sox player and said quietly, "Hey, why don't we all just enjoy some baseball here?"

It shamed the guy into sitting down. He knew the older man was right: That was why we were all at the ballpark in the first place.

Kevin Jennings is founder and executive director of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, and a former high school soccer and volleyball coach.

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