GORHAM – After he talks and engages his young audience, provoking questions and answering them, Dave Pallone returns to his hotel room. He pops open his laptop computer and starts reading the emails that already are streaming to his online address.

Messages that relieve overburdened souls. Messages that are cries for advice. Messages that come to him because they dare not get sent to someone else.

Male or female, they tell Pallone they are tired of living two lives on campus and in the locker room. The world sees them as straight student-athletes when in fact they are gay. They turn to Pallone because he can relate to their feelings even though he is now 60 years old and they are so young.

Thursday night it undoubtedly happened again. Pallone spoke to University of Southern Maine student-athletes on its Gorham campus. Hours earlier he had lunch with Athletic Director Al Bean and the coaching staff. Yes, he heard questions, not that he had all the answers.

What, the Pallone name doesn’t ring any bells? His college audiences are too young to remember when a young National League umpire was outed as a gay man by the New York Post in 1988. Major League Baseball told him to take some time off that fall and never asked him back.

Ten years of strong performance reviews were dismissed. Suddenly he was ranked among the league’s worst. Bye-bye.

Two years later his autobiography, “Behind the Mask: My Double Life in Baseball” earned a place on the New York Times best-seller list. With prompting by Bean, I recalled it. But is Dave Pallone relevant in 2012? Hasn’t American culture moved away from the worst of gay discrimination in locker rooms?

The conversations and emails tell Pallone there has been change but there’s still a long way to go. Speaking to USM coaches, he holds up a small box, maybe 2 inches by 6 inches. “I know what it’s like to live in a box. It’s a very dark place to live. No matter how open this campus is, there is someone living in this box on campus.

“You just don’t know who they are.”

No one picked at their salad or went to the buffet table for more pasta. A day earlier on the University of Maine campus, I had asked Jack Cosgrove, the veteran head football coach, if he ever had a gay player.

Cosgrove stared at me for long seconds. He has coached hundreds of football players and wasn’t aware of one gay player. He couldn’t think of a player who might have wanted to confide in him and Cosgrove seemed unsettled by that. What if there was and he didn’t see it?

Student-athletes don’t want to lie to their coaches, said Pallone at USM. “(If) they’ve chosen you to reveal their innermost secret, it’s something they haven’t even told their parents. Their trust in you is a gift. All they want is your respect.”

Pallone hears from more males than females. Males are much more reluctant to speak in an open forum. Relatively speaking, gay females can find a comfort zone in their locker rooms. Gay male athletes can feel they’ll lose everything if they make known their sexual orientation.

“Americans fixate on the sexual word, Europeans don’t,” Pallone said when we talked afterward. “It isn’t about the showers in the locker room. Any guy just wants to shower, get out of there and go home.”

Fewer gay athletes would quit living double lives if just one active professional male player came out of the box. Pallone believes one example would “start a ripple effect. I spoke to one baseball player in 1994 or 1995 who I thought was ready to come out. He changed his mind. In fact, he got married.”

Pallone says he can put together an all-star team of gay major league baseball players. One general manager is gay, he says, and three umpires. The culture or the environment has not changed enough for male athletes to risk all they might lose or see what they might gain.

Tim Evens, a USM senior, stopped to talk after the coaches’ workshop broke up. The Fryeburg Academy graduate is an exceptional miler on USM track teams, a music major and popular on campus. He couldn’t speak for the baseball or lacrosse or wrestling teams, but believes there is more acceptance of gay student-athletes on campus and on the track teams in particular.

“You could be gay, straight or Martian and I don’t think we’d care,” said Evens, 22. “It shouldn’t have to be relevant.”

He grinned. “I run around campus in spandex or in short (running shorts) and I’m a music major. I know some people assume I’m gay. I’m the only straight in some of my music classes. Does it bother me? Not at all.”

Pallone wishes there was no more need for him to speak on college campuses. He does connect easily. His talks are uncluttered and direct. Years of interacting with straights and gays on homophobic issues have given him clarity. He calls it his gift and he’s right.

“Maybe I’ll have to pass the torch. It’s sad to say I’m still doing this.”

Staff Writer Steve Solloway can be contacted at 791-6412 or at:

ssolloway@pressherald.com

Twitter: SteveSolloway