The hateful email was a surprise, but for Eric Bach, it was not entirely unexpected.
The young broadcaster had been anticipating something like it for some time. Three years earlier, while he was studying journalism at Michigan State University, he had publicly come out as gay in an essay he wrote for Outsports.
At the time of the essay, he braced for a backlash, but nothing materialized. He worked his way up from internships to full-time broadcasting jobs, and while anyone with an internet connection could learn he was gay, nobody asked, and he did not say so again publicly.