At Pride Night, Dodgers Embrace Glenn Burke, Who They Once Shunned

“He could jump out of a stadium,” said Rick Monday, Burke’s former Dodgers teammate and now the club’s radio analyst. “With his vertical leap, he could have been one of Santa’s reindeer.”

But Burke was also a man so far ahead of his time that the times didn’t — wouldn’t — recognize him. He was traded by the Dodgers, shunned by the Oakland Athletics and, eventually, ostracized from baseball. He wound up lost, alone and alienated. He was briefly homeless and turned to cocaine and crack. He did a short stint in prison for drug possession. He contracted AIDS and died from its complications at 42 in May 1995.

That’s where the story could have ended. But today, the credits continue to roll.

“The most unique human being, the most dynamic person, that I’ve ever met,” said Larry Corrigan, a minor league teammate of Burke’s (1973 to 1976) before working more than three decades as a scout and executive, mostly for Minnesota. “He was built like a god. He was funny, witty and semi-loud if he knew you. But he could be quiet, too.”

Burke made his debut with the Dodgers in 1976 and mostly backed up their great outfield of that era — Baker, Reggie Smith and Monday. In the 1977 World Series, between the Dodgers and the Yankees, he started Game 1 in center field while Monday nursed a sore back.

Only seven months later, the Dodgers shipped him to Oakland in a trade for Bill North. It was a baffling, mid-May deal that didn’t add up unless you knew about Burke’s personal life. The Dodgers’ players did, but most say they didn’t care. As the shock of the trade plowed through the clubhouse, several say they shed tears.

“I tell you, he was the life of the party,” Baker, now managing Houston, said from Seattle over the weekend. “He’d get out and dance; he could dance his butt off. He’d crack on anybody, and we loved having Glenn around. Glenn was a big part of our team, man. And he was a hell of a ballplayer who was learning how to hit.”