Gay Umpire Dale Scott Comes Out of the Closet

Longtime umpire with Major League Baseball, Dale Scott has revealed that he is gay. Even though Scott is not an athlete, he is now the first person in the MLB world to come out. He is also the first active gay male official in the MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL.

"They'll still yell at me when a 3-2 slider doesn't break their way," he told The Associated Press reported by the San Francisco Gate. "But they'll be yelling at me because they didn't like my call, not because I'm a gay umpire."

Scott quietly revealed his sexuality by sending in a photo of himself with his longtime partner of 28 years, Michael Rausch, alongside an interview conducted with Referee Magazine, which is a subscription-only magazine that circulates about 45,000 copies.

In the piece, interviewer Peter Jackel covered Scott's journey in becoming one of the league's best umpire. Jackel also delved into Scott's life prior to umpiring. However, nothing about Scott's love life came up until Scott decided to send a picture of himself with Rausch. The picture was printed with this caption, according to SB Nation Outsports, "He and his longtime companion, Michael Rausch, traveled to Australia for the 2014 season opener between the Diamondbacks and Dodgers."

Scott told Outsports, "My thought process was...that there's a story about my career and how I got started in umpiring and they're talking to people I have known since junior high and it didn't seem right to have a whole story and pictures without a picture of Mike and I, someone who's been with me through this entire process. We met the October after my first year in the big leagues."

He added, "Obviously, when I sent that picture to Jeff, I knew exactly what it meant. In a small way, this was opening that door in a publication that wasn't going to be circulated nationwide. It could be picked up, but it's not Time magazine. I made that decision to go ahead and do it because I felt it was the right thing to do."

Scott has been a MLB umpire for 29 years. He has been apart of the umpire team for three World Series, three All-Star Games, two no-hitters and several postseason games.

Scott and Rausch have been legally married since 2013.

Scott's feature with Referee can be found here.