After a year-long fight with acute myeloid leukemia, Billy Bean, a former big league player who pioneered efforts to change MLB’s relationship with the LGBTQ community, passed away at home on Tuesday. He was sixty years old.
Bean passed away, according to a statement released by the MLB Commissioner’s Office on Tuesday afternoon. Bean has been the Commissioner’s Special Assistant in addition to being MLB’s Senior Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The position was the most recent in a series of two that raised awareness of LGBTQ problems in sports and provided players and front offices with educational programs all during play.
“Our hearts are broken today as we mourn our dear friend and colleague, Billy Bean, one of the kindest and most respected individuals I have ever known,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “Billy was a friend to countless people across our game, and he made a difference through his constant dedication to others. He made Baseball a better institution, both on and off the field, by the power of his example, his empathy, his communication skills, his deep relationships inside and outside our sport, and his commitment to doing the right thing.”
Bean began working for the commissioner’s office in 2014 after Commissioner Bud Selig appointed him to the position of MLB’s inaugural Ambassador for Inclusion, which also includes additional diversity-related responsibilities. Addressing the ongoing homophobia in MLB clubhouses was one of the hiring’s primary objectives.
Four years after playing in his final game for the San Diego Padres, Bean came out to the Miami Herald in 1999. After Glenn Burke of the Los Angeles Dodgers, he was thought to be the second MLB player to come out as gay after finishing their playing career. He first gave away the information inadvertently in a newspaper article about a restaurant he and his partner were then starting. Reporters saw the tale and it made national headlines.
Bean was a major league player from 1987 until 1995. Out of Loyola Marymount University, he was selected by the Detroit Tigers in the fourth round of the 1986 draft. Before being moved to the Dodgers in 1989, he made his club debut in 1987 and participated in three seasons in segments.
During his 272 games with the Tigers, Dodgers, and Padres, he ended up with a lifetime batting average of.226. Throughout his playing career, he maintained his sexual orientation a secret.
“’For nine years,” Bean told The New York Times in 1999, ”I felt as though I had one foot in the major leagues and one on a banana peel.”
Later that year, Bean stated in an interview with the Miami Herald that several of his former teammates had been supportive of his public coming out.
“When I talked to people like Brad (Ausmus) or Trevor Hoffman, it wasn’t like, ‘I can’t believe you told everybody — what exactly do you do in bed?’ It was like, ‘Next time you’re back on the West Coast, let’s go surfing again.”
Bean’s book “Going the Other Way: Lessons from a Life in and Out of Major-League Baseball,” which detailed his 1995 decision to quit baseball, was published in 2003. He eventually turned to public speaking and told his tale to audiences both inside and outside of the athletics world. Bean played for Loyola Marymount and was twice named an All-American before turning pro. According to the MLB commissioner’s office announcement, he was the Santa Ana High School valedictorian for his graduating class.
“We are forever grateful for the enduring impact that Billy made on the game he loved, and we will never forget him,” Manfred said. “On behalf of Major League Baseball, I extend my deepest condolences to Billy’s husband, Greg Baker, and their entire family.”
(Photo of Billy Bean at Pride Night in Los Angeles in June 2023: Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)
