Matt doesn’t come out until after he’s already retired and written a memoir of his days in baseball, exposing what it means to be a closeted athlete, which doesn’t diminish that courage at all, but it’s really Iggy who risks everything by confessing his sexuality during his ascension into the major celebrity of professional sports and product endorsement. Theirs is a story of courage, which doesn’t have anything to do with being unafraid and has everything to do with facing that fear and persevering and standing up, finally, and being proud of not only who you are but also of whom you love. Iggy is the rising star, whereas Matt is approaching the twilight days of his legendary career with the Brooklyn Eagles, and theirs is a May/December romance that thrives but is also tested by the terror of being exposed to the world, fearing the backlash of such a revelation and its impact upon their personal, and especially their professional, lives. Matt Blanco and Ignacio “Iggy” Rodriguez are the ballplayers who star in Kate McMurray’s fictional exposé of what it means to be forced to hide who they are from the prying eyes of the media and the public in order to play in the sport at which they both excel. Where Fontana does absolutely nothing to romanticize the plight of baseball player Ricky Fontana, Out in the Field takes a slightly less heart-wrenching but no less touching look at what it means to be gay in a world where testosterone and machismo and intolerance drive the attitudes of some players and fans alike.
After reading Joshua Martino’s Fontana, the outstanding fictional tale of a professional baseball player who is outed by a journalist and then falls victim to the aftermath of that invasion of his privacy, I was both hesitant and tempted to read Kate McMurray’s Out in the Field.
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