The calender will soon read 2003. But when it comes to tolerance for gay people, it's more like the Stone Ages in the sports world.

In Major League Baseball, New York Mets superstar Mike Piazza held a press conference last season to announce he was heterosexual.

Julian Tavarez, a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs at the time, responded to boos from paying customers in San Francisco by saying: "Why should I care about the fans? They're a bunch of faggots here."

John Rocker set the bigot bar very high in 1999 with his infamous Sports Illustrated interview. Then a member of the Atlanta Braves, he expressed the following feelings a few months after a heated playoff series with the Mets:

"Imagine having to take the 7 train to (Shea Stadium in New York) looking like you're (in) Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids.

"It's depressing."

In the NBA, Philadelphia's Allen Iverson, a former league most valuable player, took the time to write down and record his anti-gay sentiments in lyrics on his rap album. An NBC microphone also caught him calling a heckling fan "faggot."

Jason Williams, while playing for the Sacramento Kings in a Bay Area game at Golden State, asked a front-row fan of Asian decent: "Are you a fag? Are you gay? Do you remember the Vietnam War? I'll kill y'all just like that."

Williams then pretended to be aiming a rifle and emitting a "rat-a-tat-tat" sound, according to witnesses. "Just like Pearl Harbor," he is said to have added.

This season the NFL — currently the most popular of the four major professional sports leagues in America — had a chance to make a change, to open a dead-bolted door to openly gay players.

In an October episode of HBO's "Real Sports," Esera Tuaolo — now retired after a nine-year NFL career that included stints with five different teams — became only the third player in the league's history to acknowledge his homosexualtiy. All three came out after their playing days were over.

The story prompted the question around the league: Would an openly gay player be accepted in your locker room?

Needless to say, the responses were not what the gay community had hoped for.

In San Francisco, a city with a large gay population, 49ers running back Garrison Hearst told the Fresno Bee point blank: "I don't want any faggots on my team."

In New York, tight end Jeremy Shockey was asked if there were any gay players on the Giants.

"I hope not," the rookie out of Miami said. "I mean, if I knew there was a gay guy on my college football team, I probably wouldn't, you know, stand for it. ... They're going to be in the shower with us and stuff, so I don't think that's gonna work. That's not gonna work, you know?"

Locally, when members of the Denver Broncos are asked about the hot-button issue, eyes get wide, faces turn serious and a conscious effort is made to keep foot out of mouth.

When the name Esera Tuaolo is mentioned, the immediate response is often: "Who?"

Given added information, that Tuaolo is the former player who came out this year, the next words are usually — "Oh, THAT guy."

The main obstacle most players have in accepting a gay teammate is the locker room dynamic. They can't seem to get past the idea of showering, dressing or sharing a hotel room with a homosexual.

"That's an awkward situation," Broncos free safety Izell Reese said. "True enough, this a job, and it's like any other job in that we are professionals. At the same time, our job is a little bit different.

"It's a physical sport and you're taking showers together, and being in the locker room with guys. So it makes it kind of awkward when you consider something like that in sports, especially a team sport."

Players maintain there is a difference between allowing female reporters in the locker room, which they are, and having a gay teammate. The media only has behind-the-scenes access on a very limited basis, and players know when those times are. Teammates, however, spend as much time with one another as they do with family during the season.

Denver rookie wide receiver Ashley Lelie had a hard enough time adjusting to NFL life this season. He can only imagine what it would be like for the first active openly gay player.

"That takes a lot of guts," Lelie said. "It's a really masculine sport. I think if somebody did come out on this team or something, I think most people would accept it and get used to it. As long as he's not trying to hit on anbody or anything like that. ...

"But the NFL as a whole, I think there will always be somebody that will step up and be against it. Somebody will say something negative and that will kind of kill the whole drive. I don't think the NFL (is) ready for it yet."

Tuaolo said he considered suicide during his career because he was reduced to being an actor, afraid to be himself. The gay jokes that are routine in locker rooms didn't help.

"They made me go further and further into that shame," Tuaolo said during the HBO interview.

Tuaolo's former teammate in Green Bay, Sterling Sharpe, the older brother of outspoken Broncos tight end Shannon Sharpe, said a gay teammate would not have been tolerated.

"He would have been eaten alive," Sharpe said. "And he would have been hated for it."

Obviously, not much has changed since Dave Kopay became the first former NFL player to come out 27 years ago.

"It seems now that the sports world is the last protector of the faith to be bigoted and discriminate," Kopay said in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article on the 25-year anniversary of his bold admission. "It's certainly breaking down everywhere else. We have become mainstream in terms of politics. Maybe (it will happen in sports) in the next 20 years. I didn't think it was going to take this long."