Former New Orleans Saints quarterback Archie Manning reportedly once said he gladly would wear a dress if it got linebackers to stop teeing off on him.
Some aren't so demanding
Last week, macho slugger Barry Bonds dressed up like Paula Abdul for a San Francisco Giants rookie initiation in which the players were required to stand on the top of the dugout and sing in an American Idol-like competition. The move, which appears designed to soften Bonds' image — or give Abdul's ex, Emilio Estevez, nightmares — is nothing new. Male athletes have long been dressing up as women, and they haven't always been able to pull off the look.
• Ricky Williams posed in a wedding dress for the cover of ESPN The Magazine in the spring of 1999, two years after Dennis Rodman showed up at a signing for his book "Bad as I Wanna Be" wearing white.
• Cross-dressing on road trips has long been a staple of rookie hazing in baseball. Among the more memorable looks: Marlins rookie Josh Beckett wearing only a grass skirt and coconut bra and Royals rookies Franklin Gutierrez as Goldilocks and Jason Dubois as Marilyn Monroe. The new trend is to dress the rookies as Hooters waitresses. In 2004, Red Sox rookies Lenny DiNardo and Kevin Youkilis wore the Hooters halter top and orange shorts back from a road trip to Toronto. Then-Mariners rookie Ichiro Suzuki so enjoyed his stint in Hooters regalia, he wore the outfit home to his wife. "I didn't feel strange," Suzuki said.
• In 1998, English soccer star Dwight Yorke of Manchester United secretly videotaped a drunken sexual encounter with a teammate and four women at his house. The video featured both players wearing women's clothing and giving thumbs-ups to the camera. Yorke tossed the video in his trash, but a reader of the Manchester Sun found it and shared it.
• On Sept. 29, 2004, Cleveland Indians pitcher Kyle Denney was wearing a Southern Cal cheerleader outfit, complete with blonde wig and white go-go boots, while riding on the team bus to Kansas City International airport after a game. A stray bullet hit Denney in the calf, and doctors agreed the boots slowed the projectile's velocity and prevented further damage.
• Paparazzi caught English soccer star David Beckham wearing a black vest and sparkly designer silk sarong to what he thought was a private dinner with his wife, Victoria, in 1998. Victoria later told reporters her husband frequently wore her undies, and Beckham offered this explanation: "My dad, who's a real man's man, thought it looked all right. And I liked it at the time."
• When 1932 Olympic gold medalist Stella Walsh finished second to American Helen Stephens in Berlin four years later, she groused that Stephens must be a man, forcing Games officials to examine Stephens. Everything was where it was supposed to be. In December 1980, Walsh was shot to death in a Cleveland parking lot. An autopsy revealed that she had male and female chromosomes and male genitalia, earning her the nickname, "Stella the Fella." After her death, her ex-husband, Harry Olsen, told a reporter he and Stella had sex only "a couple of times, and she wouldn't let me have the lights on."
newsletters
