Oakland A's closer Sean Doolittle and his girlfriend Eireann Dolan aren't just gearing up for the start of the regular season. They're already looking ahead to June, when the team will host its first LGBT Pride night.
But, in response to what she cites as negative feedback at the event's announcement — bigoted season ticket holders writing that they wouldn't attend the Pride night and would sell their tickets for that evening — Dolan had a plan.
As she wrote in a personal blog post picked up by Out Sports,
If you’d like to sell your tickets to June 17th’s LGBT Pride Night game, I will buy them from you at face value. As many as I can. No judgments. No questions asked... From there, I will donate any tickets I purchase to the Bay Area Youth Center’s Our Space community for LGBTQ youth.
Dolan thanks her two moms — who lived in the Bay Area but have since moved and are big A's fans — for the loving family they gave her. She even signs the post, "Love, Eireann and my hella gay moms."
After the blog post generated an overwhelmingly positive response, Dolan and Doolittle put together a gofundme page, where even after upping the ante to $10,000, they blew past their goal and currently stand at $18,000 raised. "We will use the donations to buy tickets to the 6/17 Pride Night game and donate them to Our Space LGBTQI Community Center for teens and young adults," writes Dolan.
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