Why White Sox Pride Night is important to Liam Hendriks

When the White Sox signed Liam Hendriks in January 2021, general manager Rick Hahn spent a good amount of time explaining the complicated club option or buyout compromise reached for the fourth year of his new closer’s contract. But the assurances Hendriks sought in free agency went beyond money or the team’s immediate chances to contend.

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“It wasn’t a demand,” Hendriks told The Athletic. “It was a simple question of, ‘Do you guys have a Pride Night?’ And if you don’t, that will be something that we need to look into that working out, making sure that we can handle it, because I don’t want to go necessarily to a team that doesn’t do it.”

The White Sox front office doesn’t remember this being a long conversation. For one, Hendriks had a litany of causes he wanted to coordinate with White Sox Charities. He offhandedly referred to “22 (charitable) activations” he has in the works with his wife Kristi, and his excitement level for a “Bark at the Park” event later this season is as palpable as anything. And the Sox, of course, already had an annual Pride Night, formalized as an annual event in 2018 and preceded by similar promotions. The Sox had been working since 2012 with Center on Halsted and since 2018 with Howard Brown Health, LGBTQIA+ focused health centers Hendriks and his wife have visited and donated to since coming to the White Sox.

What Hendriks was offering, beyond a corporate partnership or a welcoming promotion in June, was to be a frontman — an active MLB player more than willing to put his name and face on the team’s Pride efforts. To sum it up in a single action: The White Sox fly a Sox-themed Pride flag in front of Guaranteed Rate Field for the occasion. Hendriks wanted to go out in his uniform — and a Howard Brown Health hoodie — and raise it himself. He’ll do it again when the White Sox host this season’s Pride Night on June 23. That the Sox schedule lines up to be in Anaheim later in June for the Angels’ Pride Night is a happy accident that Hendriks also rattled off from memory.

“It’s something that I’ve believed in,” Hendriks said. “The biggest thing is making sure that hopefully it starts more of a trend of other people willing to do it. And then the more people that are willing to do it, the more people are willing to come out publicly and say, ‘I’m fine with this.’ And I’m hoping it strengthens the resolve of those people who may be on the fence about coming out, that may be on the fence of telling family, friends, peers or teammates or anything like that and fully embrace that.”

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The gentle nudge here from Hendriks is implicitly toward other cisgender straight men like himself. Hendriks laments the lack of openly queer athletes in MLB, but views his role in improving that as creating a better environment for it to one day take place, and showing that LGBTQIA+ people will be valued and supported in a sports setting. It seems that what small sliver of blowback his actions in supporting the LGBTQIA+ community generates, compared to what an athlete actually coming out might experience, says plenty about how difficult that still would be, and why a professional sports setting stills contains attitudes that can seem unwelcoming for queer fans as well.

“I raised the Pride flag on Pride Night here last year, and some of the DMs and comments I got were just horrendous,” Hendriks said. “I can only imagine someone doing it and actually having to go through it themselves with already feeling slightly ostracized in a clubhouse where you don’t know where people’s allegiances lie. That’s a scary thought and it’s a scary world.”

There is only one MLB team that would have failed Hendriks’ standard of having a Pride Night, which The Athletic’s Levi Weaver reported is the Texas Rangers. (The Yankees do not have a formal Pride night, but have an annual Stonewall scholarship night.) As an organization, the Sox will have a presence at the city’s Pride parade in Boystown on June 26, teens from programs at Howard Brown Health and Center on Halsted in attendance on Pride Night, as well as the Pride T-shirt giveaway to fans. There are no planned hats, jerseys or uniform patches like the Giants or Rays had for players to opt in or out of, but Hendriks talked about his positions openly and comfortably from his locker. He thinks his position would not find universal agreement among any MLB team, but said of his teammates, “they would never be antagonistic. They would never be abrupt and telling you, ‘Your life choices are wrong’ or anything like that.”

Hendriks does not feel that such a brokered peace is so significant an ask that it will never be possible in MLB or across professional sports in this country. He does not think that what he is doing — which he would describe as simply not discriminating and judging people based on their gender and sexual orientation — is worthy of gratitude.

“For me, it’s just being a decent human being,” Hendriks said. “You are going to have people you just don’t get along with purely based on personality, but race, sexual orientation or anything like that should never come into it. They should never be part of the equation of why you have a disdain for somebody, and that’s something that I think the more people talk about, hopefully it gets more normalized.”

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By figuratively and literally raising the flag, Hendriks is trying to take an active role in normalizing the conversation, both on the South Side and in the league. He praised the work of MLB ambassador of inclusion Billy Bean for going around the league and encouraging players to talk about these issues and being willing to publicly show ally-ship to marginalized groups. Since Hendriks views openly being himself as essential to everything he does, both personally and professionally, he thinks players who would join him in speaking out and work through their fear of blowback would probably play better, too.

“I’ve always been very vocal about it,” Hendriks said. “But it’s been a little bit more representation from teams being more open to promoting the guys who are for it, the allies and stuff like that. The White Sox do a great job. Obviously being able to talk about it with you in a clubhouse in a situation like this is huge, because it was like, ‘OK, we’re doing it but we’re also brushing it under the rug,’ for several years. And now I think it’s gaining some traction.”

(Photo of Liam Hendriks in 2021: Courtesy Chicago White Sox)

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