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Kendall Guillemetted (KG): Hello everyone and welcome to So Many Questions. Happy Pride. Today we’re gonna be talking with author and comedian Ken Schultz, who writes for Out Sports about the recent San Francisco Giants Pride situation as well as queer representation in media and how it’s been as a queer person writing about sports.
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Without further ado, I have So Many Questions for Ken Schultz.
Ken, thanks for joining us.
Ken Schultz (KS): Hello Kendall, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
KG: I initially asked you on because I wanted to talk to with you about your coverage at Outsports about the San Francisco Giants Pride Night. You’ve done a lot of coverage on Pride Night. We’ll definitely get to that. However, in my preparation, I realized that we have a little bit of an overlapping history at Baseball Prospectus.
KS: Really?
KG: Yes.
KS: You’ve written for the site as well?
KG: I have. I actually worked for Baseball Prospectus for a few years, doing development work. I think that I saw did you get your start at BP Wrigleyville? Is that where you first started writing?
KS: Yes. It was when BP for a few years did the experiment of having team centric it was leading into 2016 when BP Wrigleyville put out a notice that they were looking for a few new contributors and one of my longtime comedy besties, Kevin McCaffrey, saw it and was like, You should absolutely send something in for that. And so I sent in a few things to them. They liked it well enough. brought me on board. And was the best possible time to start writing about Cubs As opposed to the previous hundred eight years.
KG: Yeah, it’s a good year. And you are are you in Chicago?
KS: Yes, I live in the city up in the Edgewater neighborhood in the North Side.
KG: I grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago. Now I am located in Seattle.
KS: Excellent. Yeah, I grew up in the north suburbs, so we are both kind of recovering mall rats, I suppose.
KG: Yeah. Chicago suburbs, you mentioned comedy. give me a little bit of your background in terms of like things that you have been up to and and what’s kind of brought you to the space from writing, comedy, all of those kinds of things.
Ken Schultz (02:45) Yeah, I I’ve spent most of my college life steadfastly avoiding anything resembling a real career or money that goes along with it. I jumped into stand-up comedy right after graduating college and spent probably twenty-ish years in that between Chicago and about nine in New York City. and still do it on rare occasions just to say that I still am a comic and have that as part of the is
As part of the skill set. but yeah, I kind of started as I say writing sports on a regular basis in 2016. And then during the COVID pandemic, kind of devoted most of my creative energy to that, and it’s it’s been that way kind of ever since then. it started out at BP Wrigleyville and then when BP did away with the team-centric sites, I would do some freelance work for the main site every month or two.
And then I got submitted to join for Outsports in April of 2019 I believe, and have been with them ever since. that’s kind of been my main focus. I do mostly writing for Outsports, the occasional piece for Queerty and then kind of wherever else they’ll say, Hey, we’ll give you money for that, sure.
k3nd477 (03:55) So w was writing always something that you wanted to pursue or was it did it kind of just was it born out of sports fandom, comedy writing,
Ken Schultz (04:05) something creative was what I always wanted to to stick with, again because as I said before, I steadfastly avoid like making a real living at any point in my life. I went to college at a school called Kenyon College in Ohio, which is a very English major centric school. majored in English and drama there and that kind of got got the bug, honestly, from from on
both writing and performing while while there and have wanted to kind of maintain that s throughout my time since. I wouldn’t say that I I would say comedy was gonna be kind of my first ambition for the first couple decades out and then it just kind of gradually shifted into writing as during the pandemic, as I said before.
k3nd477 (04:44) in in your time at B P did you ever know or talk with Russell Carleton? I think he is also a Kenyon person.
Ken Schultz (04:50) Yes. he sh shot me a message on Facebook, I think, after I plugged one of my old pieces on there. And yeah, we overlapped by a couple of years, though I did not know him at Kenyon, but he mentioned in an intro message that yeah, you’re you remember when you did that stand up comedy senior thesis? Yeah, I remember being in the crowd for that and I was like, really So yeah. Yeah.
k3nd477 (05:10) wow. Wow. That’s cool. Yeah. Russell’s good people.
yeah, so I previously had a baseball podcast with Harry Pavlitas from BP back in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, something like that. And so we had Russell on for one of the episodes. It was really fun.
Ken Schultz (05:30) Do you go back to the Christina Kahrl era as well?
k3nd477 (05:33) Not that far. I kind of jumped into Baseball Prospectus I read Moneyball and then I received one of the compilations books as a gift and read that and was like, yeah, this is this is right up my alley. And and then started
Ken Schultz (05:33) Hmm.
Nice.
k3nd477 (05:53) I guess Up and In. Did you listen to the Up and In podcast back in the day with the Jason and Kevin? Yeah. That was kind of my gateway drug to BP and then started coming to events and meeting folks and and then ultimately said, Hey, I’m a web developer professionally, and that hey, do you need help with the website? And they said yes. And so that’s that’s how I got got in in
Ken Schultz (05:56) I remember it, yes.
Awesome.
k3nd477 (06:20) Doctrinated into it. Yeah. And then if you’re in Chicago, there’s a baseball statistics conference in August, I think this year, called Saberseminar. Super fun. I definitely recommend to you and to anybody else who’s interested, check it out. I’ll put a link to that, but yeah, check it out.
Ken Schultz (06:33) nice.
k3nd477 (06:42) you mentioned being submitted or submitting to Out Sports. How did that come about? in terms of the next step of of your writing?
Ken Schultz (06:50) I got my job thanks to Daniel Murphy, weirdly enough. so back in August of 2018 is when the Cubs traded for Daniel Murphy, and I was still writing for BP Wrigleyville at that point, and that was a day I mean that was a low. I had been out myself for probably three or four years at that point. So it’s still relatively new to
k3nd477 (06:53) Yeah.
Ken Schultz (07:14) The whole being honest about who I was as a baseball fan kind of thing. And that felt like a bit of a betrayal when they acquired him. And the fan base kind of getting on board immediately also was was kind of a, I your humanity doesn’t really matter to us at all. So the day that they traded for him, I was in like a group chat with a couple of my comedy friends about it, and we were
ranting on and off about kind of just the awfulness of everything and and why you had to add this terrible person to a team that I otherwise adored between you know the Rizzo, Javy, Bryant, and Hendricks and all those guys. I kind of spent the day just in a mood and stewing. And I remember getting home that night and just opening up a word processor and kind of wrote my feelings out about it.
And submitted it for BP Wrigleville. And it was mostly a piece about not just like my anger and sense of betrayal as a gay fan that my team had acquired Daniel Murphy, but also kind of questioning Theo Epstein. at that point, you had already reached the mountaintop with this team. And you did so by kind of sacrificing some integrity by bringing in Aroldis Chapman back in 2016. It was a different shade of awful person. So
Part of the piece was like, Theo, you don’t need to go pedal to the metal and bring in the worst possible people. We’ve already had the best moment, but Theo is not made that way. so that got published at BP Wrigleyville got for that site, pretty wide readership, a lot of comments, a fair amount of positive in the middle of some pushback from Troglodites as well. But
It was one of my proudest pieces that I put out there. And it was also, I think, the first time where I talked about being a gay fan in relation to my team. So then in the next spring, I’d been a frequenter of OutSports for years. as part of my coming out process, that was a site I go check out regularly because I, you know, had been a sports fan long before I was anywhere close to being honest with myself as a gay man. And like reading their coming out stories was kind of part of my process and inspiration. And so
That spring, Dawn Ennis, who was then the managing editor at Outsports, put out a notice that, hey, do you like reading the site? Would you like to write for us? Submit something. And I was like, hey, I have got the piece that is just for you. And Dawn is a huge Mets fan, for one thing. So I’m sure reading about Daniel Murphy immediately struck a chord with her. And she’s also a big fan of comedy in general, so like I probably submitted some of my other
k3nd477 (09:51) Yeah.
Ken Schultz (10:00) funnier pieces as well. And so we had an interview, we talked a lot of baseball, and she brought me on board. And so yeah, that’s it’s in a weird way, thank you, Daniel Murphy, for being the worst
k3nd477 (10:12) That’s a great story. you mentioned your coming out
I guess I wanna ask more about fandom and growing up queer as a sports fan, as I did as well. know that I always like I’ve been pretty much straight passing my whole life, not a big like, and so I didn’t have to like
deal with any of the things that a lot of people do have to deal with. and so it was o okay for me to be a sports fan. however I always knew that I was queer and I always pretty much knew that there was not a very welcoming space in the professional sp like
broader sports people, for gay fans
how does your experience growing up inform your work and how you want to show up in the world and the in the work that you do?
Ken Schultz (11:17) growing up being a queer kid in the eighties and nineties, and and it sounds like we’re pretty close to the same generation then, is kind of navigating this part of yourself that you know is there that is making itself felt. and for me personally, it was something that for decades
I worked actively not to acknowledge. and certainly when I was in high school and college as well, although for different reasons, it was something that I actively tried to repress within myself. and I think, I mean, I had been a sports fan and have been a sports fan for as long as I can remember.
That the baseball bug got hold of me in when I was five years old in 1984. I also, you know, followed the Bears and the Bulls and the Blackhawks very closely as well as a kid and got super excited when the Bears won the Super Bowl in ‘85, for example. and I think in my own experience, being a sports fan as the queer part of myself was developing.
was something that I used to reason with myself that I can’t possibly be gay because I like baseball and I like non-gay things like this. So that’s a part of me that at some point I’ll just figure out how to overcome, I think was was the way my mindset was. And so When I look at my work now with OutSports especially when I to tell
athletes coming out stories, which I think function as kind of almost an oral history for these people. I want to help put this out there so generations after us who are also into sports and who participate in sports, then sometimes have to deal with the very real locker room environments in sports, which I’m sure we’re going to get into later on in the podcast, will know that.
They can be themselves and still be in this world and still excel in this world and still find acceptance in this world. And so you won’t have to go through what we went through in our era, which was a sense of gayness and homosexuality and being LGBTQ in any way and queerness is wrong. That is a wrong part of you. The sports world is the right, acceptable part of you.
and those two back in our eras couldn’t meet. So the idea that we can kind of break down this barrier and if I can contribute to breaking down that barrier in any way with my work, that means I’m doing hopefully something right.
k3nd477 (13:55) Yeah.
I think that that’s so important. the the just the idea of so last year I designed this t-shirt, says baseball’s for everyone. it’s it was partnered partnered with our friends at BP and sold it to raise money for the Trevor Project and Trans Lifeline. Did a new design this year and like in a similar way.
Ken Schultz (14:12) ⁓ wow.
k3nd477 (14:27) the advocacy everybody is welcome and should be welcome in sports specifically. Like because that is such a huge part of my life and things that I love is sports. I’m a huge sports fan. And like you said, growing up in Chicago in the eighties and nineties, pretty good time to be a sports fan
So that’s that’s a part of who I am. And to be able to hopefully, like you said, break down those barriers or those expectations or thoughts that that those two cannot overlap and and coexist. That’s super important. And and I think that that’s what really draws me to sites like Outsports and the work that you have been doing there. And and I think, maybe now let’s dig into the San Francisco Giants Pride Night.
situation. well maybe before we do that, you have written a Pride Night preview. Is that how you would characterize it at Out Sports? For like five years, something like that?
Ken Schultz (15:22) Mm-hmm. Yes.
⁓ yeah, I think this is the sixth year of it. the first one came out in twenty twenty one. A suggestion again from Dawn Ennis, who is kind of one of my patron saints in all this, is leading into that season, she was like, Hey, we should like check and see what each team has planned for Pride and just do like a capsule like two or three sentence summary and be as snarky as you want. And all of that sounded perfect. And yeah, that’s kind of
k3nd477 (15:29) Six years.
Ken Schultz (15:52) as the years have gone by, kind of become my little niche in the baseball writing universe that it’s one of our most read pieces. It was our second most read piece all of last year on Outsports. And I think on the day it was released two years ago, it was also the most read piece of anything on q.digital which incorporates Queerty and LGBTQ Nation. So yeah, it’s it’s something I’m put a lot of work in, is an incredible amount of fun to put together.
And I’m immensely proud of when we released it every year. And yeah, to segue into it, I always do just kind of as tongue in cheek, I always award a condragulations you’re a winner, baby, to whichever team has what looks like the coolest looking jersey every year. And this year’s condragulations went to the San Francisco Giants. So yeah, called that, didn’t I?
k3nd477 (16:42) Right.
Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say, so in that piece you were the preview was very positive. It was very like this is gonna be great. They’ve got everybody you know, such great things lined up And I also want to give a hat tip. You do mention the jersey that was designed by Oakland artist Favianna Rodriguez.
You describe it and then you say that it’s giving Matisse and Madison Baumgarner. I’ve got to give you props for that, referencing the show that’s currently at SFMOMA And of course, MadBum. Yes, that was I got it. I was able to go to that Matisse show about a month and it was amazing. So if you’re in San Francisco, check out the Matisse show.
Ken Schultz (17:17) Great.
k3nd477 (17:31) Glowing, excited, all of these things. And then the game happened. pitchers decided to write Bible verses on their hats. basically talking about the rainbow And then Sam Hentges also decided to not wear the Pride hat.
Ken Schultz (17:36) Mm-hmm.
k3nd477 (17:48) There was outrage and upset and hurt and the Giants basically did terrible in their response. At maybe like pick it up from there from your perspective.
Ken Schultz (18:01) well I was watching that game for that evening ‘cause they were playing the Cubs and so I tuned in for the first, I think, six or so innings. And for the past I think since 2022, off the top of my head, th is when the Giants first started wearing the rainbow pride caps on the field. And like that was when we reported on it initially.sports kind of a it was a major thing ‘cause like you have an entire roster of guys
Who are taking the field with this message of welcome on one night for our community, like visible on the field. Like that is for a sport that is as traditionally conservative as baseball has been, like, a phenomenal to the point where like the Hall of Fame asked for, I think it was Gabe Kapler’s cap from the first Pride Day when they wore that. and Kappler was always a huge supporter of our community, so it was appropriate that they would go to him. And I
When I last visited the hall I think 2023 I saw the cap on display and was like, Yep, there we are, right there in Cooperstown. So it’s it’s a special symbol. I tuned in on that Friday night, you know, expecting to see, you know, everybody in rainbow caps. And even though I’d be rooting against the Giants, just like feeling the vibe. And like one of the first things I saw in
top of the first, was Landon Roup out there on the mound with something written in Sharpie on his cap. And I know ball players enough to know that it is probably not going to be anything like stream hate that it made me love you on there. So I figured that’s probably bad news. and then logged onto social and saw somebody taking a close-up screen grab, and it was the Genesis Bible verse.
k3nd477 (19:39) Yeah.
Ken Schultz (19:47) And it was the same thing that Clayton Kershaw had written the year before and was like, Jesus Christ, here we go. And so at that point it was like, okay, one idiot doing the take back the rainbow thing again. It’s gonna be a story. And then it was, I think, when Brubaker came in the game right after Roup and was wearing a Genesis Bible verse scrawled in even bigger letters on his cap, or it’s like, okay, now this is a thing that you have coordinated.
And it flashed back to me the Tampa Bay Rays in 2022 tried to do rainbow caps and rainbow logos in their jersey and five of their bullpen pitchers took the field ripping off the Pride logo on their jerseys and it was like, okay, and this is now a coordinated effort to s to send a message to the community that that you are not accepted here and you are not welcome. And and it was galling.
⁓ to it and it was kind of the momentum of it that that was most galling. And I think I turned the game off after the fifth or sixth inning. So I found out the next day about Henkes and I think it was Walker was the last one who had who had written the Bible verse in his cap. And so it’s like, you know, one pitcher after the other after the other is sending this message of you are not welcome and we find you repellent.
In this way. that’s in and of itself disgusting on a night that should be about joy and celebration. And for the 27 other pride nights, was to everything that I was able to determine. And the fact that this was also then taking place in San Francisco, which is many people have mentioned, is is kind of the cherry on top of this.
Sunday of awfulness. I I don’t know if we can curse on here, but I was headed in that direction. Yeah. Cherry on Top of the Shit sundae know, obviously one of the main focal points of LGBTQ rights, the fact that this was taking place in that, and that none of the players it either didn’t occur to them or they didn’t care.
k3nd477 (21:42) Let a rip. Let a rip.
Ken Schultz (22:01) that it was taking place in a city that is so important to our community and who we are as a people is just I mean the best thing you can say about it is ignorance. The worst thing you can say is it’s a direct attack on their own fan base and on a major section of their own fan base. And and they don’t care. And the only one who has distinguished themselves in any way in the Giants organization was Mike Krukow
the broadcaster who went on KNBR, the flagship, a couple days later. And the words he used were pretty appropriate that when you specifically, as a ball player, are pitching and playing for this organization in San Francisco, it is on you the LGBTQ community means to your home city, to the fan base, and to the entire region. And if as the
Players have since kind of indicated they just kind of want to move on from this. if you don’t understand the fact that this is your doing that that caused all of this anger and appropriate anger and appropriate vitriol in your direction, again, that is on you for not doing the work you needed to do when you joined the Giants organization and agreed to play in
k3nd477 (23:22) and I th like I think that there’s a bit of I don’t even know if it’s like a miscalculation, but like the Giants
Basically was were very hand wavy in their response. And then Buster Posey comes out a few days later with his media appearance and says, I just want to t take baseball questions. And he looks completely lost. And it it to me, it’s like I have a small bit of compassion for him, but also like
Ken Schultz (23:38) Mm.
Mm-hmm.
k3nd477 (24:00) You’re the president of baseball operations. Like, stand up and say, Yeah, we fucked up. And like it’s it would be so it would have been so easy for him in particular. He has so much goodwill with the Giants fans, so much goodwill. And for him to just be like, Yeah, we fucked up. Sorry. Like we like we see it and we know it. We’re sorry. And
That clearly did not happen. And then Larry Baer who’s the president and CEO, comes out and is like, Yeah, we acknowledge the deep feelings that people are having. And, you know, no apology, no, you know, no kind of admission of fault or what accountability or anything like that. And and then that that he wants to move on and be able to talk about other things. And I think that for me, that was just
like a lesson in obviously how to not do it, but also a lesson in
I guess maybe misunderstanding the amount of care and love that this community has for baseball in general, but also the Giants in particular.
Ken Schultz (25:15) the Giants historically have been one of the first organizations to reach out wholeheartedly to the gay community and to the LGBTQ community in San Francisco that until there’s a cure day goes back to is it earl ninety early nineties, I wanna say. I don’t have the date off first one off the top of my head, but I’m pretty sure it is early nineties. and I remember when I
Researched a story I wrote about it a couple years ago. Like one of the first ceremonies they did for Until There’s a Cure Day is they had the entire roster come on the field to hold the red ribbon, like a giant red ribbon, to kind of show solidarity with the gay community and for everyone who had been touched by the AIDS crisis in San Francisco. And a detail of that story that I remember really wedged its way in my head was Barry Bonds
Of all people, like waving the color opposing Colorado Rockies onto the field, saying, Yes, join us in this right now. This is the right thing to do. So if you are below Barry Bonds level in not knowing the right thing to do, what the fuck is going on, Buster Posey? like I heard what I I first saw Buster the story about Posey on when we wrote about it on Outsports, and Jim Basinski, one of my co-editors, kind of wrote it, the
Transcript of his remarks straight up, and it kept seeing that phrase, I’m here to talk about baseball, or I just want to answer baseball questions, or whatever it was he used. And immediately the first thing that came to mind was Mark McGwire on the stand before Congress in 2005, just trying to stonewall everyone with I’m not here to talk about the past. And in both instances, I mean that is someone who is clearly just trying to run out the clock and not.
k3nd477 (26:44) Yeah, yeah.
Ken Schultz (27:05) Providing any answers at all, and just hoping that we can move on to something else in the news cycle because this is really uncomfortable. And in that moment, that is the last thing that the gay community and gay fans wanted to hear from a hero of the Giants organization like Buster Posey. That you just want some acknowledgement, especially from one of the titans of the organization, some humanity there that you understand.
Why this is so wrong, and everyone is this outraged. And instead, all you get is the same I’m I’ll answer baseball questions talking point over and over and over. And it’s it’s it’s almost like asking the worst version of Chat GPT, which is just Chat GPT. But it it you you don’t want just a human AI answer in that. You want some humanity, and and it’s it’s an epic fail by Posey. And
k3nd477 (27:50) Yeah.
Ken Schultz (28:03) I I have to imagine it’s it’s a massive turnoff to every gay fan and for most allies. I I would hope that that’s kind of diminishes him in their eyes for a while and and he’s due for the Hall of Fame next year. And I I I don’t think that will ruin the Hall of Fame celebration, but it’s certainly it should be brought up when he goes into the Hall of Fame and and he should be asked questions about this again.
It it’s gonna be tough and he’ll stonewall it again, but but this is kind of the bed you’ve made for yourself.
k3nd477 (28:36) Yeah, it’s interesting. Like you mentioned back before about Krukow talking about getting to know this the city that you live in and that you play in. Like Buster can’t use that excuse. You know, he knows he’s been there. Like he’s been on the field, he’s been in the parades through the city when they won the World Series. So just okay, maybe the pitchers from this year are ignorant. Maybe.
Ken Schultz (28:51) Mm-hmm.
k3nd477 (29:06) Like said, that’s the most generous explanation. Buster Posey does not get that. Sorry, he doesn’t. And so I think that that’s such to me, like like you mentioned, baseball’s pretty conservative sport. A lot of baseball players come from a lot of places where there’s not a big gay community. They don’t have a ton of exposure. I get that.
When you show your ass the way that they did, they will they get what’s coming to them in terms of blowback for sure.
Ken Schultz (29:38) Mm-hmm. And
and I have to wonder too, like, I mean, the CEO of the Giants is Charles Johnson, who is, as Charlie Pierce, my favorite political writer, would say, a major source of the money power behind MAGA right now. And I have to wonder if that is part of the tightrope that Posey is trying to walk by being so robotic publicly, because if he says something that’s too human in regards to the gay community, does that upset?
The money power behind the giants at this point.
k3nd477 (30:10) Right. Yeah, I mean you you would have to assume that, you know, like it’s coming from somewhere and there’s not that many steps ahead of on you know on the org chart on top of Buster Posey. So I think that that’s a very reasonable conclusion to come to. So we’re recording this on June 29th It is still Pride Month. Happy Pride, Ken. some of your writing I’ve so I’ve read
Ken Schultz (30:15) Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Happy Pride.
k3nd477 (30:37) writing about this that you’ve done and others for outsports and others kind of across the industry. But you talk about not letting the homophobic bigots win. And can you talk a little bit about what that looks like to you to not let them win, both institutionally within baseball, but then also personally?
Ken Schultz (30:57) Yeah, it’s when we have gains, especially within the sport of baseball, it’s making sure we don’t ever fall back. And if someone attacks even a symbolic gain like the rainbow caps in the field, to me, not letting the homophobes and the bigots win means next year the Giants bring back. That regardless of how much things went to shit this year, and
The Rainbow Caps clearly upset several of the players in the bullpen. Tough, tough shit. That this is a night that is about reaching out to our community and making the community feel welcome. And it and it should be, as it is in most places, a celebration. And if next year they decide to hold the celebration with regular caps, that’s gonna be the story again. And it’s gonna be okay, you decided to let those.
four bullpen pitchers dictate how our community is gonna celebrate that night. So a a big part of it to me, especially in baseball, is is just once we make a gain, we don’t go back. And and in the Rob Manfred era, that’s gonna be tough because Manfred, I’m sure, wants to give into his inner Gary Bettman and just be like, let’s avoid the PR nightmare with this and and just
⁓ but let’s not do any rainbow caps anywhere like the NHL did with Pride jerseys. But but if if we’re up to me, no. We’re double down. Let’s let’s fucking go. and yeah, in in terms of not letting the homophobes win on the grand scale, like I mean, right now in this environment, again, it’s it’s not giving an inch in any way. outside the sports world too. I mean it’s
With with so many attacks on people like transgender athletes, for example, not letting them use transgender athletes as a cudgel to enact transphobic legislation against that entire community is is vital. So standing up for every trans athlete you can and giving them your full throated support is also how we don’t let the homophobes and transphobes and the bigots win.
k3nd477 (33:16) And then for you personally, what is what does it look like it as you continue on in your life and your writing and your work to fight the fight, to
provide that example both I don’t know I guess maybe I want to ask you about this is like there’s there’s some level of representation that you present as a gay man who’s a sports fan, who’s a writer, who’s writing about this professionally. how do feel about that? Like,
That’s a that’s a big deal in something that you didn’t have, something that I didn’t have. maybe talk about how that feels and and what you think about that.
Ken Schultz (33:59) Yeah, I mean that’s a lot of hyphenates for one thing. That’s so I yeah, I think I mean it it’s interesting how often it comes up in the stories we write for the site specifically, but just also for the queer community in general, the the sense of responsibility of trying to be that person that you were looking for when you were a kid.
or when you were kind of figuring things out or repressing certain things as as the case might have been. and yeah, I I I think maybe the pithiest way I can think of to say it is trying to put out work that in some way makes it easier for future little me’s out there. That’s either you feel like, you’re seen in some way, that this is not an aberration, ⁓
or empowering in some way. I mean that that’s maybe expecting too much of what is essentially being snarky about baseball for most of my professional life. making it so that people I mean there’s always going to be struggle and trauma when you’re a part of a marginalized community like we are. But
⁓ lessening that in some way and helping people get to that place where they find both self acceptance and acceptance among other people quicker. that’s yeah, that’s kind of the ideal, I
k3nd477 (35:31) maybe if there’s anybody out there who needs help or is struggling, like find somebody to talk to who is safe. There’s a great huge community of people who love you and care about you. You are not alone in this w life and in this world
what are places that we can find you? What do you want to hype?
Ken Schultz (35:54) yeah, I I mean you can find me at at Out Sports two or three times a week, Queerty periodically. Instagram is probably the social media platform I use most, @kenthinguy is my handle on that. and I occasionally post about my running journey there, which is something that I’ve just taken up over the past year and a half. and I occasionally will run 10ks now. So it’s I just
k3nd477 (36:16) Amazing.
Awesome.
Ken Schultz (36:22) Yeah, I just had a whirlwind of a week, two weeks ago that started with Cubs Pride at Wrigley Field on Monday, flew into Boston for Red Sox Pride at Fenway Park on Tuesday, which in and of itself back to back nights there, and those places are my favorite places in the world. So that’s phenomenal in and of itself. And then s on that Sunday ran the Boston Athletic Association 10K through through Boston and Cambridge. And it was like if
k3nd477 (36:38) Yeah.
Okay.
Ken Schultz (36:52) Anybody else has had a better Pride Month this month? you know, then you are probably having constant sex with Tom Daley So good job. Good on ya.
k3nd477 (37:01) Amazing. That’s so awesome. what just picked up running, thought it’d be fun? Like what w is there something like what drew you to running?
Ken Schultz (37:09) ⁓ yeah, actually
inspired by another profile I wrote at Outsports, I think three years ago now, it was I think summer 2023 I got introduced via the site to a mountain climber/slash distance runner named Aidan Hyman, who at the time was setting out to become the youngest known queer mountain climber to climb to K2 Base Camp. and then did the damn thing that summer. And so I
wrote a before and after story about his journey and then in the meantime we talked he was also running marathons in between climbing mountains because you know a as you do, I suppose. and came to Chicago to run the marathon that fall. And so we met in person and kind of became friends outside of outside of the profiles I wrote for him and kept in touch. And at one point he
k3nd477 (37:50) Mm. Why not? Why not? Yeah.
Ken Schultz (38:07) challenged me and said, Hey, you should we should run a race together sometime. And I thought, yeah, you know, I I had been kind of wanting to do something fitness related for a few for a little while. I’d been kind of gradually zhuzhing all of this up. Like the hair is pink right now, the ears are pierced. and I thought, yeah, maybe something fitness related is the next step. And so that kind of became the the motivation for that. and so just started doing a
k3nd477 (38:23) Yes.
Awesome.
Ken Schultz (38:35) Little running program on the Lakefront Trail here in Chicago. ran my first 5k race last September, ran my first 10k this past
k3nd477 (38:43) That’s amazing. Ken, I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you the work that you do and for showing up as yourself.
Ken Schultz (38:50) Thank you, Kendall. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
k3nd477 (38:52) Thank you again to Ken for coming on. You can find Ken’s work at outsports.com. I will link that up as well as on Instagram. Appreciate the conversation
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