Jamie Lee Curtis and Ryan Murphy are teaming up on a new Netflix limited series centered on Oakland native Glenn Burke, the first former MLB player to publicly come out as gay and the inventor of the high-five.
Curtis told Deadline’s "Hero Nation" podcast last week that she has tried to get the project made for over a decade. It's tentatively titled "Outfielder," with Tony Award-nominated director Robert O’Hara attached to write and direct while Curtis and Murphy's Ryan Murphy Television are set to produce.
Burke was a basketball star at Berkeley High School before shining on the hardwood and on the baseball diamond at nearby Merritt College. He attracted the attention of Los Angeles Dodgers scouts there, joining their farm system in 1971.
Five years later, Burke made his big league debut with the Dodgers. On Oct. 2, 1977, Burke celebrated Dusty Baker's 30th home run of the season with a first-of-its-kind high-five from the on-deck circle.
Burke was incredibly popular with his Dodgers teammates, and his sexuality was an open secret. He later said that Los Angeles' front office offered him $75,000 to marry a woman, and the Dodgers traded Burke to the hometown Oakland Athletics soon after he declined in 1978.
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Oakland's clubhouse was less welcoming than his old one in Los Angeles. Some teammates wouldn’t shower with him, and then-A’s manager Billy Martin allegedly called him a homophobic slur in introducing him to his teammates in 1980. Burke had, at that point, been attempting a big league comeback, specifically in order to play for a fellow Berkeley High School alumnus.
But Burke was sent to the minors and released by the end of that season.
"Only a superstar could come out and admit he was gay and hope to stay around, and still the fans probably would call the stadium and say they weren't going to bring their kids," Burke said in a 1982 Inside Sports story in which he pubicly came out as gay. "Instead of understanding, they blackball you."
Burke died in 1995 of AIDS complications. He was 42 years old. This June, the A’s renamed their annual Pride Night after Burke.
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