High Five Pork Medallions

Tonight's meal is to honor a sports hero named Glenn Burke, a gay professional baseball player who happened to invent the “High Five”. Read more in a short article after the recipe.

Juicy pork medallions in a sour cream sauce with grapes served over pasta. A wonderful way to banish the cold wet weather from your home. Simple to make one skillet meal will be just the thing for a fancy dinner for two! Light the candles and take your medication! :-)

Ingredients

• 2 large pork medallions cut from a roast
• salt & fresh ground pepper
• 1 tbsp olive oil + 1 tbsp butter
• ½ cup chopped onion
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 small can sliced mushrooms
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1½ cups chicken broth
• ¼ cup half & half cream
• ¼ cup sour cream
• 1 cup seedless grapes

Instructions

I had a couple of medallions left over this week and used these, you can use any boneless pork chop as long as it is thick! Marinate the pork for at least 2-4 hours in a simple bath of 1 TBS salt and 1 Tbs maple syrup. Then drain, rinse and pat dry with paper towels.

Do your cutting first: chop or slice the onion and mince the garlic.

In a skillet, heat up 1 tbsp olive oil over medium to high heat.

Season the pork chops generously with salt and fresh ground pepper on both sides. Add the pork chops to the skillet and sear on all sides, about 3 minutes per side. Remove the chops and transfer them to a plate. 

 

To the same skillet melt 1 - 2 tbs butter. Add the onion and sliced mushrooms. Cook until soft and the moisture from the mushrooms has cooked off. Add the minced garlic, dried thyme and flour to the onion mixture and cook for 1 minute.

Stir in the chicken broth and simmer until the sauce thickens. Make sure to scrape up and stir in all the good brown bits from the bottom of the skillet.

Stir in the half & half and sour cream. 

 

Add the pork chops and simmer for about 10 - 15 more minutes, or until the chops are cooked thoroughly. The very last step is to stir in the seedless grapes to warm.

Serve over your favorite pasta with a green vegetable. 

 

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Glenn Burke

Before Jason Collins, before Michael Sam, there was Glenn Burke. By becoming the first—and only—openly gay player in Major League Baseball, Glenn would become a pioneer nearly thirty years after another black Dodger rookie, Jackie Robinson.

Burke was an accomplished high school basketball star, leading the Berkeley High School Yellow Jackets to an undefeated season and the 1970 Northern California championships. He received a Northern California MVP award. Burke was named Northern California's High School Basketball Player of the Year in 1970.

Burke was considered capable of being a professional basketball player, but his first offer came from Major League Baseball. Burke was declared by scouts as the “next Willie Mays.” 

Burke was recruited by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1972, and sent to play in the minor leagues in Utah, Washington, Connecticut, and New Mexico, before becoming an outfielder for the Dodgers in 1976.

Burke once said, “They can’t ever say now that a gay man can’t play in the majors, because I’m a gay man and I made it.” He was dubbed King Kong by his Dodgers teammates for his size and strength. Burke was always open about his sexuality. When he debuted with the Dodgers he threw a party at the Pendulum, a neighborhood gay bar.

 
 
Burke, while never publicly out with the media while playing, did nothing to hide the fact to his teammates that he was gay. 

The high five

On October 2, 1977, Burke ran onto the field to congratulate his Dodgers teammate Dusty Baker after Baker hit his 30th home run in the last game of the regular season. Burke raised his hand over his head as Baker jogged home from third base. Not knowing what to do about the upraised hand, Baker slapped it. Thus the High Five was invented! 

 

The story of that was detailed in the ESPN 30 For 30 film The High Five directed by Michael Jacobs. After retiring from baseball, Burke used the high five with other homosexual residents of the Castro district of San Francisco, where it became a symbol of gay pride and identification.

Burke was a starter on the 1977 Dodgers team that lost the World Series to the Yankees and was very popular in the clubhouse.

Burke’s association with the Dodgers was difficult. According to Burke’s 1995 autobiography “Out at Home,” general manager Al Campanis offered to pay for a $25,000 honeymoon if Burke agreed to get married. Burke refused to participate in the sham, allegedly responding, “to a woman?”

Burke decided to hang out more and more with Tommy Lasorda Jr. (“Spunky’), himself a gay man and the son of the team's manager, Tommy Lasorda. Whether the two dated or not is never clear, but their relationship was a direct defiance of Lasorda and the Dodgers, who presented a wholesome “family values” image.

The Dodgers eventually dealt Burke to the Oakland Athletics for Billy North, by some accounts a much less talented player, suggesting to many that homophobia was behind the trade. Lasorda knew how much of a homophobe the Oakland manager was. 

The trade, in 1978, was not a popular move in the Dodger clubhouse. One teammate recounted, “He was the life of the team, on the buses, in the clubhouse, everywhere.”

In Oakland, manager Billy Martin introduced Glenn Burke as a “faggot” in front of his teammates. When Burke returned for spring training with Oakland in 1980, Billy Martin made public statements about not wanting a homosexual in his clubhouse.

He was given little playing time on the A’s, and after he suffered a knee injury before the season began, the team sent him to the minors in Utah, and eventually released him from his contract. 

Burke would play his last professional baseball game on June 4, 1979. He would later write that it was more important to be himself than be a professional baseball player.

Life after Major League Baseball

Burke continued his athletic endeavors after retiring. He won medals in the 100 and 200 meter sprints in the first Gay Games in 1982 and competed in the 1986 Gay Games in basketball. Burke played for many years in the SFGSL (San Francisco Gay Softball League), playing third base for Uncle Bert's Bombers.

While “out” to many of his teammates and friends, Burke appeared to have been unwilling to come out publicly, fearing the stings of discrimination and criticism of his personal life. But threatened with disclosure by media sources, he became the first former professional baseball player to come out of the closet when he discussed his sexuality in a 1982 “Inside Sports” magazine article, “The Double Life of a Gay Dodger,” written by Michael J. Smith, with whom Burke had been lovers for six years. He also was interviewed for a landmark news story by Bryant Gumbel on “The Today Show.”

While still active in amateur competitions, Burke turned to drugs to fill the void in his life. An addiction to cocaine destroyed him both physically and financially. In 1987, his leg and foot were crushed when he was hit by a car in San Francisco. After the accident, his life declined rapidly. He was arrested and jailed for drugs and lived on the streets of San Francisco for a number of years.

He spent his final months with his sister in Oakland. He died May 30, 1995, of AIDS complications at Fairmont Hospital in San Leandro, California, at age 42.

Glenn Burke helped to break the stereotype about same-gender loving men in professional sports. His pioneering courage and honesty is often cited as inspiration by other athletes who are struggling to be open about their sexual orientation.

We remember Glenn Burke in recognition for his pioneering honesty, his impressive athletic accomplishments, and his many contributions to our community.