This young baseball broadcaster is already one of the most accomplished gay announcers in sports
The New York Times recently profiled Eric Bach, the out gay play-by-play voice for the Fredericksburg Nationals, a minor-league affiliate of the Washington Nationals.
At 24 years old, Brach believes he’s the only out gay broadcaster in baseball. With that, comes constraints. “My filter of what I can say and where I am is turned up to 11 all the time when I’m at work” he said.A post shared by Eric Bach (@ebach21)A post shared by Eric Bach (@ebach21)A post shared by Eric Bach (@ebach21)Brach told his story at a young age, publishing his coming-out essay on Outsports as a student at Michigan State.
In it, the ex-high school quarterback extols the freedom of living as an out gay man.“The feeling of coming out and being accepted by those you love for who you are, not who you love, is one of the most liberating and strengthening feelings,” he wrote. “For my own sanity, I wish I would have come out sooner.”When Bach graduated school in 2021, he took a job with an independent baseball team in North Carolina before leaving to work for Lenoir-Rhyne, a small private school in the Tar Heel State.
That was where Bach received his first batch of homophobic hate mail. He says the letter, which came from an opposing fan, called him “every gay slur you could think of.”“It was almost like, ‘It finally happened,’” he said.One year later, Bach doesn’t think of the letter often.
