Burke's four years in the major leagues were mediocre (a 237 batting average), although he did make a mark on the game: during the Dodgers' 1977 season, the outfielder invented the "high-five."
He started his career with the Dodgers, but was traded to Oakland after he turned down the Dodgers' offer of a free honeymoon if he would just get married. From Waterbury, where he was playing in 1975, he flew to Oakland and initiated his first sexual experience with a junior high teacher on whom he had nursed a crush. And so began the double life that would complicate Burke's existence from 1975 to 1980. Knowing that public knowledge of his sexual orientation would be "baseball suicide," he did his best, like other gay professional athletes, to discreetly pursue his desires.
Unlike David Kopay, an NFL running back who terminated a ten-year football career before publicly coming out, Burke didn't try to repress his sexuality once he discovered who he was. He began going to gay bars, dating men, and even bringing them home. Already, rumors about Burke's possible homosexuality were beginning to circulate. He didn't date; he didn't have a steady girl. Burke's homosexuality was known within baseball, but not generally until he came out in 1982, two years after retiring. He played basketball in the 1986 Gay Games.
The year following his release from the major leagues Burke described as "the happiest year of my life." He had cast his lot with he Castro. His best friends were gay black athletes, such as Wes Jackson (died of AIDS, 1989) and Manny Smith (died of AIDS, 1995). Soon after leaving professional baseball, Glenn began playing for the Gay Men's Softball League. The Castro's only interracial bar, the Pendulum, sponsored the team that would win the San Francisco league championship and then head to Toronto to play in the Gay World Series.
The relationship between Burke and Smith had metamorphosed into something more open and complex. Burke had moved out and was living with another older white man, Art Searle, but Smith had been handling Burke's finances ever since he began making big league money, and that continued. When Burke received a severance package from the A's, he agreed to "jointly" buy Smith's rented apartment - except Smith never put Burke's name on the deed. Smith also betrayed his former lover's trust by authoring an article that outed him nationally in Inside Sports, in October 1982. Smith wrote about Burke's double life as a gay baseball player without mentioning that the two had been lovers.
Burke continued to devote himself to athletics within the gay world. He played both basketball and baseball in the 1982 Gay Olympics, winning the Most Valuable Player award for basketball and leading the Pendulum Pirates to victory in the Gay Olympic World Series. As an added fillip, he won both the 100 and 200-meter sprints in track. He was a superstar in the gay subculture.
Oakland's manager, Billy Martin, wanted no part of him, either; with no other team willing to sign Burke, he was essentially blackballed for being gay. After leaving baseball, Burke became a heavy cocaine user, and spent 17 months in San Quentin on several charges. At age 42, he died at Fairmont Hospital in San Leandro, California of AIDS-related complications. His autobiography, Out at Home co-written with Erik Sherman, was published in 1995.
In a 1993 New York Daily News article, Burke was quoted as saying that he knew at least ten active or recently retired major-league players who are gay or bisexual. "There is no sport that accepts gays less than baseball," Burke wrote. He claimed that of the four major team sports (baseball, basketball, football, and hockey), the NFL had the most gay players (some insiders in the gay community estimate that at least 50 NFL players are homosexual or bisexual) - and the most-represented sport in this column is football.
