PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia Phillies will join the growing list of Major League Baseball teams reaching out to gay fans when the team hosts “Gay Community Day.”

Three Philadelphia-based gay and lesbian professional associations hoped to fill part of the upper deck along the first-base line in Veterans Stadium for the game against the Milwaukee Brewers on Aug. 12.

The San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers and Minnesota Twins have played host to gay and lesbian groups in the past. The Chicago Cubs sold almost 2,000 tickets for their annual gay community game in June, and the Florida Marlins co-sponsored an AIDS awareness night with a weekly gay newspaper, also on Aug. 12.

The Atlanta Braves received hundreds of e-mails and phone calls in 2001 criticizing the team for selling a block of tickets to a group leading the bid to bring the 2006 Gay Games to the city.

Phillies officials said stadium security will be prepared to deal with any anti-gay bias, but members of the gay and lesbian community are optimistic about the group’s reception by Philadelphia’s fiery fans. “Philadelphia is a passionate city — passionate about their sports, passionate about their teams, and I’m hoping all the fans just embrace each other and be passionate about the game,” said Sue Gildea, a season-ticket holder who will attend the game with about 100 members of the City of Brotherly Love Softball League (CBLSL).

“The CBLSL is an ever-growing organization,” said Cliff Gibson, tournament director for the softball leagues’ Liberty Bell Classic Tournament, which will feature over 28 teams from across the country. “We constantly look to getting more people, especially early 20s, involved to continue to expand the league and secure its future. That is a hard group to market a Sunday morning softball league to. This kind of coverage could even mean getting to those people not yet out of the closet, but close enough that they can join our league and build that support net that makes coming out so much easier.”

“Gay people aren’t perceived as being sports fans, and this would break that stereotype,” said Larry Felzer, chair of the Gay and Lesbian Lawyers of Philadelphia, which joined the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association and the local chapter of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association in sponsoring the event. “I didn’t expect (Phillies management) to be welcoming and open, and they have been incredible.”

Prior to the game, Kathy Killian, the Phillies’ director of group sales, said she expected the group to sell between 400 and 500 tickets; 492 tickets were sold as of Aug. 7. The corporate night for the gay community may become an annual event if all goes well, Killian said. “What we started here is just an open door policy, regardless of what your beliefs are,” she said.