a reflection on the Dodgers & the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
by a queer, trans, lifelong fan.
I haven’t watched a Dodgers game in five days.
It would be my first true act of outward rebellion, switching my allegiance officially, at the age of twelve, from the California Angels to the Los Angeles Dodgers. I’d been raised to be an Angels fan from the time I was born, my father’s attempted indoctrination beginning simply enough with our once or twice a season trips out to Anaheim. The town I grew up in, Downey, situated fifteen miles south of Dodger Stadium, twenty miles north of the big A.
There would be gentle prodding from my mother’s side of the family - a Property of the Dodgers tee shirt given to me by my Aunt as a birthday present, as much a thinly disguised jab at my father as it was a gift - the tension there, always there.
He would argue his case a number of ways over the years, trying out various arguments and angles in his bid to persuade me away - that the fans are too rowdy, too drunk, parking there sucks, and then he’d go on to laud the accomplishments of cowboy actor and Angels owner, Gene Autry, shaking his fist in the air at the mere mention of the name Walter O’Malley.
“He had people run out of their homes.”
“That’s not exactly how it happened, dad. I asked Aunt Val about it. Nice try, though.”
I would also ask her if there was a reason our entire family all loved the Dodgers so much. It began with the brothers and sisters, she said, among whom was my mother. It had been the older brothers’ love of Jackie Robinson, passed down to the little ones, they lived in Ramona Gardens back then. The brothers would put what little money they had together to buy a ticket. One would enter the stadium and then pass the stub to the next one, out of sight of the ushers, until all of them were in. She said my mother had loved them. Before she met my father. She had been a Democrat, too, my Aunt also informed me.
I grew to love them out of that seed of teenage rebellion. I would get to know the stadium, the treat that sitting in the old loge box seats was, the perfect view from infield reserve, the skill and nerve required to navigate the merry go round parking lot at sixteen years old (iykyk). I came to expect the heartbreak of the Dodgers’ yearly chokes - their frequent appearance in the post-season, imploding on pee-wee league t-ball plays made in the Division series or the Championship series and a few times, the World Series. So close, but always so far away. I would grow to understand the club’s long history of this watching Ken Burns’ Baseball every off season.
When I got older, before estrangement set in, Harry and I would come to a respectful and friendly rivalry, gleeful teasing the other when one of our teams were however many games back, neither of us having no shame in throwing it back in the other’s face when both of our teams often were, giving me a call each time he was offered the company season tickets at work.
There was only one thing I miss about Los Angeles after settling here in the Bay - Dodgers baseball and Chavez Ravine. The first few I was here I’d wait until mid-season, sign up for mlb.tv after their rates went down, daily games a three hour reprieve from the strain of study at UC Berkeley, from the latest love affair gone wrong, from the pain of lost friends & family members after I came out as trans. And then later from Dump Truck Donnie and the pandemic, most with the soundtrack of Vin Scully’s voice.
I haven’t watched a Dodgers game in five days.
This at the behest of Florida man, FLORIDA MAN, book banner, Senator Marco Rubio and Bill Donahue, the abuse denying, longtime President of the Catholic League, both of whom decried the Sisters’ alleged mockery of the Catholic faith and its people.
I haven’t watched a Dodgers game in five days because it felt like a hit by line drive. For myself, as a fan; for my community, as a whole. In this climate, at this time, on our night. Recognizing the purpose of Pride Night as a marketing ploy, while also seeing and feeling it’s importance. At a time when the GOP is trying to legislate trans folx like me out of existence, resurrecting Anita Bryant propaganda for the MAGAs. A chance for our community, family, friends, and allies to see and celebrate ourselves and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence with the team that we love, a chance for the Dodgers to but, actually them.
The Sisters came to be at the dawn of the eighties, the virus already out there. They would be at the vanguard of HIV / AIDS education, activism, and outreach - ministering to community members, fundraising, educating on safe sex practices - at a time when the Church turned it’s back on its positive sons and daughters. I wouldn’t come to know all of this until much later, attending a weekly open mike night in WeHo, hosted by The Lovely Carol (iykyk), with the boy I came out with, my best friend, Marc. The L.A. Sisters often were judges. As newly out, baby gays from the suburbs, they’d freaked us out at first, seeing them out and about on those early Pride Sundays before we’d grown into our community and our gayness, before we truly understood.
A balk for the ages by the team that signed Jackie Robinson. The team that last year made amends to the memory and family of Glenn Burke, the first openly gay major league baseball player, who the Dodgers traded away after he’d refused the team offer of $75,000 for a honeymoon if he would marry a woman. The team who counts among it’s ownership group, Billie Jean King and Magic Johnson. Magic Johnson, a man who, it is a not a stretch to say, is alive today because of the activism of our community organizations like the Sisters.
I just didn’t think it would end this way.
I’d woken to the news that morning and posted about it on Facebook, how broken hearted I was that my team had caved to right wing bigots. A friend of mine, Jay, replied, to open a dialogue, to help him understand, he said. He’d evoked the memory of the Catholic nun who had taught him piano, her service, dedication. Evoking my own - of Father Dave, a priest at the church and school I attended from first grade to just after eighth, his place in my life the spark of my activism, though I left the Church long ago. I’d had to leave for work and wrote that I would reply in full later that day, that I appreciated him. While I was gone an activist friend, a very passionate radical, shared his own thought, an incendiary exclamation, tagging Jay, shutting down the dialogue I had hoped to continue. It is uncomfortable and messy and difficult, much easier to walk away, to preserve that energy for oneself. I’d also thought that if we don’t start talking to each other, we are doomed and done for. So I answered in full. And when I received Jay’s response the next day, I knew I was heard.
I just didn’t think it would end this way.
I was ready to walk away from the team that I love. I was ready for another shitty ending, after seeing those GOP bills pass all over, worried for myself and our youth and their families.
I watched the Dodgers game last night.
We won.
And it was glorious.