Shortandqueer #10: The Reawakening of My Baseball Fandom

I'd met Kelly of Shortandqueer zine before and found him quite charming and friendly. But what I didn't know is that he's a huge baseball fan. Well, he was the biggest fan as a kid, and when the Phillies went back to the World Series, it reignited his passion for baseball. This issue of his zine is all about that, and has tons of childhood photos of a young Kelly with famous baseball players. He also ties his love of baseball into his taking hormones, and transitioning in a really personal examination of gender and sports. Kelly talks about how his relationship to his father has changed over time, and how baseball helped them cross certain divides. Kelly also discusses his yearning for a safe space where people with different gender identities can enjoy sports, without worrying about bigoted attitudes.

This zine comes with an insert, a quarter-sized zine of a paper young Kelly wrote for school in 1995, called Prejudice in Baseball.