Source: Seattle Post Intelligencer, Seattle Times, Windy City Times, Southern Voice
Thousands of gay softball players and fans began to arrive in Seattle over the weekend for the 2008 Northwest Quest Gay Softball World Series.

175 teams and 4,000 athletes and fans from 41 cities in Canada and the U.S. will participate in the week-long event.

Opening ceremonies are 4 p.m. today at Seattle Center. Games are scheduled Tuesday through Saturday at five different ballparks in South King County. Championship games and closing ceremonies are Saturday at Russell Road Park in Kent.

The series is jointly sanctioned by the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (NAGAA) and the Amateur Sports Alliance of North America (ASANA).

"The World Series is all about the pomp and pageantry," Shawn Albritton, 33, of Rogers Park, Ill., told Windy City Times. He is one of only five known Chicagoans who have twice won the championship in the annual event.

"There are guys who have been playing gay softball for 20 years or more, and this is their ultimate goal: to win the World Series," Albritton said. "I consider myself very blessed to have won it twice.

"The level of play is top-notch. These teams are serious, very serious. You're playing the best of the best."

The opening ceremony will feature keynote speakers David Kopay, the first American pro athlete to say he was gay, and Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer, a lesbian who successfully challenged her discharge from the Washington National Guard.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels will greet the athletes, too.

The games start Tues., Aug. 26, with pool play. The double-elimination tournament starts on Thursday. Teams are eliminated starting on Friday. Teams are guaranteed to play five games, but might need 10 or 20 to win the championship.

"If you make it to Saturday, it's pretty special," said Albritton, who has played in the World Series five times. "The championship games are extraordinary. Everyone is cheering and supporting you; it's amazing."

Nina Cole of Atlanta returns to the World Series for the 16th consecutive time and faces a unique moment in her history with the tournament -- the team she coaches, the Riptide, won a title in 2007 and will return to defend it.

The Riptide is one of two Hotlanta Softball League teams looking to repeat as champions this year. A decade earlier, Cole was a member of the Atlanta Heat that won back-to-back titles.

"That'd be neat if we could do that 10 years later," Cole told Southern Voice last week. "We will have to work for it, which is good. We need to do that."

A Seattle-area man who helped create the area's strong softball league will be will be inducted into the Gay Softball Hall of Fame, during the series, Seattle PI reports.

Nic Bacetich, an Everett attorney, served as the commissioner of the Emerald City Softball Association and is a player-coach on one of 19 Seattle-area teams that will play in the World Series.

This week's huge tournament is quite a change from the early days of Seattle's gay softball league, Bacetich told PI columnist Jim Moore.

Twenty-five years ago, when the Emerald City Softball Association formed with only five or six teams, "there were unique challenges of playing gay ball in a straight world," Bacetich said.

When he played for the Elite Batboys, Bacetich heard the taunts. He and his teammates were called faggots. Other teams didn't like that "gay boys were playing in our league."

"But just because we're gay doesn't mean we can't play ball," Bacetich said.

The Batboys proved it, winning a Seattle Metro League championship in the 1980s.

"That was a learning experience," Bacetich said. "The stereotypical viewpoint of what comprises a gay athlete may need to be rethought. Explain that to your wife or girlfriend that you just got your asses beat by a bunch of gay guys."

Even before the widespread publicity about out-gay Olympic diver Matthew Mitcham, Bacetich told the PI that he detects a change for gay men in the sports world. He told Moore that he can't remember the last time he heard of a negative experience from a gay team playing in a straight tournament.

"I sense a turn, a change in attitude," Bacetich said. "But there's so much money. Does a gay athlete jeopardize his ability to earn money in endorsements? That would be difficult to turn your back on potential (earnings) just to make a statement."

"As society continues to accept the reality that there are gay people out there who are athletes, I hope it becomes more acceptable," Bacetich said.

In pro sports, the few who have come out did so after retirement. Society's not there yet.

Source: Gay athletes on move for acceptance | Seattle Post Intelligencer
NW Briefs | Softball tourney hits town | Seattle Times
Local softball teams headed to World Series | Windy City Times
Hotlanta Softball looks to World Series | Southern Voice