I owed my sister Celia a huge hug the next time I saw her. Without her encouragement, there was a good chance Aaron and I would still be at odds. She called me as soon as she heard they selected me to be on the All-Star squad.

She said, “You don’t sound like a guy who just found out he’s an All-Star.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I am pretty down. Aaron and I broke up.”

I heard the sound of utter disbelief coming through the phone. Celia asked, “You broke up with Aaron? I thought you said you loved him.”

I groaned. “It was stupid. It was ugly, and now he’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Don’t you read the sports news? I thought you said you read about me in the news.”

“I watch the games,” said Celia. “I don’t think they talk about assistant batting coaches during the game broadcasts. Did he do something important?”

I tried adopting my announcer’s voice and said, “The Charlotte Yellowjackets lost their assistant batting coach yesterday. They fired him without cause, and San Antonio snatched him up quicker than you can blink.” I sighed. I was too upset. I couldn’t speak with the enthusiasm that sports announcing demanded.

“He’s in San Antonio?”

“Yep. It’s a promotion. He’s head batting coach there.”

“Does he like it there?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him.”

I heard Celia take a deep breath. She said, “I’ll try and be respectful and all, but what the hell is wrong with you, little brother? Didn’t you say you loved him? If that’s true, you can’t just let him go so easily.”

“I do love him. It didn’t stop when he left. I can’t get him off my mind.”

“So what are you doing sitting on your butt not going after him? I’m going to hang up now because you have work to do. If you don’t try and patch it up, I’m coming out there to Charlotte, and you know that won’t be pretty.”

I laughed weakly and started to respond, but she hung up the phone as promised. Twenty minutes later, Eric called me and asked, “Where did your sister get my phone number?”

I said, “Oh, I gave it to her for emergency purposes. Did she call you?”

He sounded evasive as he said, “Oh, yeah, um she called because she’s concerned about her little brother. I told her you’re okay. I promised to let her know if you took a turn for the worse. I think she’s feeling better now.”

Giving my best friend a call was enough. I didn’t know that Celia started plotting with Eric and encouraged him to send a text message to Aaron. I was sitting in my apartment trying to decide how to work on getting back together when Aaron called.

I didn’t have anything to say but, “Yes!”

The reconciliation call kicked off a series of calls every night before bed. Sometimes the calls were just newsy chit-chat. A few of them were a little more erotic than that. Two days before the All-Star game, Aaron said, “I’m going to see you in a couple of days.”

The excitement rose in my voice as I asked, “You’re coming to the game?”

“Teams of wild horses couldn’t keep me away. I have to see my boyfriend on his big day.”

“Aw, damn. I agreed to room with Mo. I had no idea that you would be there.”

“I’m staying by myself. Unfortunately, my room is more than half an hour out of town because I was so late getting my reservation. Do you mind if we don’t get there until after midnight?”

“I’ll happily stay up all night. You know that. I don’t fly back to Charlotte until 11:00 a.m.”

“Mine leaves at 10:00.”

I said, “Then we’ve got about eight hours together. That’s plenty of time.”

“That’s what you think.” Aaron laughed wickedly as he said, “Goodnight,” and, “I love you.”

I agreed to an interview with a local Charlotte newspaper the day of the last Yellowjackets game before the All-Star break. They told me they were particularly interested in talking about how my parents and coaches encouraged me while I was growing up. I did my best to be helpful for the media people who treated me well. We arranged a meeting at the stadium an hour before I planned to show up for batting practice.

The reporter was a young woman with a severe expression on her face. I tried to lighten the atmosphere by telling her about getting pranked by Eric in the locker room, but she was all business. She had her goals for the interview, and I wasn’t likely to sway her. She said, “Let’s talk about your career. It is impressive, and I’m sure that’s what my readers want to read.”

I sat down with her at a table in the Yellowjackets’ press conference room. I thought many of her questions were exceedingly dull, but I did my best to play along. I said, “My high school coach helped shield me from an avalanche of scouts, and, to be honest, the media. That was helpful. I got to concentrate on my playing and not worry about reporters.”

She frowned. I added, “I don’t say that to talk the media down, but too many people can get in the way.”

My comment encouraged a slight smile. She said, “That’s why I’m talking to you now instead of on opening day.” She clicked on her recorder and pulled out a pad of paper to take additional notes.

The rest of the interview seemed to go well until I made a mistake. The reporter was asking innocuous questions about leisure time for a big league player. Somehow, I blurted out a comment that my boyfriend and I used to love walking through the parks together.”

She looked up. “Can you back up a little bit, Chase. I want to make sure I heard that last comment right.”

I held my hand to my mouth, and then I said, “I think I was talking about walking through parks. They have some great ones here in Charlotte. You know the players Eric Hinsdale and Javier Gonzalez. We hang out together and sometimes explore the city.”

She pointed at her pad of paper where she was taking notes. “With a boyfriend.”

“I didn’t say that. Did I?”

“Do you want me to play the tape back?”

I shook my head. “No, and yes, that’s right. I’ve had more than one boyfriend. You can print that if you want to, but I would appreciate some privacy. I’m not sharing any details beyond that.”

The local reporter was decent to me. I was outed in her article, but it was in a short sentence near the end of the piece. She wrote only, “Chase is one of the few out gay baseball players in the big leagues.”

I hoped most readers wouldn’t notice the sentence. I was wrong. The newspaper came out in the morning, and by the time my plane was landing in New York City that night, the media was going nuts. Police officers were holding back the crush of reporters at LaGuardia airport when I arrived.

Three different reporters asked in quick succession, “Are the reports true, Chase? Are you gay?”

I said, “Yes, that’s true,” and I attempted to push my way toward the luggage carousels. I followed closely behind a policeman who helped split the crowd.

“Are there more gay players that we don’t know about?” asked another.

I said, “That’s none of my business.”

They continued to pepper me with common and occasionally ignorant questions. One asked if I thought I was an excellent role model for LGBT youth. I said, “I’m not the first gay player. I wouldn’t expect them to only look at me. There are plenty of LGBT athletes to admire. If they want to play baseball, maybe they will want to follow me like any young player follows his favorite big leaguers.”

One player asked, “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

I swept my arm around encompassing the horde. I said, “No one asked me, and I think this is why I didn’t volunteer the information.” Several of them laughed.

“Who are your boyfriends? Do you have one now?” asked another.

I gruffly responded, “That ’s my business. If I want the world to know, I’ll tell you. For now, I’m protecting my privacy.”

Fortunately, they stayed out of my way while I retrieved my luggage. I lost Mo in the crush, and I hailed a taxi solo. The most troublesome question came as I was climbing into the back seat of the cab.

I heard a scratchy male voice ask, “Is this the reason the Yellowjackets fired Aaron beck? Was he your boyfriend, Chase? The firing was abrupt. Is this the real explanation at last?”

I slammed the door behind me without answering and gave the driver the address of my hotel.