Although the LGBT night in mid-August at U.S. Cellular Field, home of the Chicago White Sox, went off without incident, there were plenty of negative reactions on social media.
"LGBT Pride Night: Out at the Sox"an event co-presented by the major league baseball team and Equality Illinoisturned ugly online before the first pitch was even thrown, with numerous anti-gay comments posted.
Sam Ciaramitaro answered with a near-five-minute film, "Take me OUT to the Ballpark," a profile of five out White Sox fans or allies of the community. Ciaramitaro filmed them before the Sox' LGBT pride game Aug. 16. The fans shared how they just want to go to a baseball game, spend time with their friends, be accepted by others and live their lives the best way they know how.
Charlie Rice-Minosothe son of iconic White Sox player Minnie Minosois featured in the film.
"I felt frustrated with bigotry and closed-mindedness, and I've been around a little too much of that lately," said Ciaramitaro, 44, a film director and producer who now lives in New York and Atlanta, yet spent 23 years living in Chicago. "I just wanted to do something that was good, and I'm really happy with it.
"I've done things in all areasfrom [productions] with multi-million dollar budgets to ones with no budget. I'm really proud of this film; it ranks right up there," with everything from his career, he said.
"It was really nice to do something about a subject that is current and important."
Ciaramitaro said he has heard from the White Sox about the film, and the team "really liked it," he said. In fact, "I have not received any negative feedback at all," he added.
Ciaramitaro, who is straight, said producing such a powerful pro-gay-rights film "in no way [hurts] me or [impairs] me from doing anything that I want to do" in the future.
Ciaramitaro has long been a director and producer of national television commercials, episodic television series and documentaries. In 2001, he was imbedded in basic training with the U.S. Army for three months, directing and producing one of the first television/Internet campaigns"Basic Training: The Making of an Army of One," which was heralded by The New York Times as the most successful advertising campaigns in the history of the U.S. Army, receiving a Cannes Lion and Gold Effie awards.
His episodic and documentary work includes an 18-part television series for The History Channel and a documentary series for Major League Baseball about minor-league baseball players pursuing their dreams of playing in the Majors.
Chicago-based transgender sportswriter Christina Kahrl said the film is "a great reminder that sports bring people together, across the full spread and spectrum of Americans, and that fandom is a shared experience, on Chicago's South Side and in The Cell, [nickname for the Sox' stadium,] as well as in a gayborhood to be named later. The only thing it could have done better was to be trans-inclusive."
To watch "Take me OUT to the Ballpark," visit vimeo.com/106873436 .