Billy Bean, Second Major League Baseball Player to Come Out as Gay, Dies at 60

Billy Bean died at the age of 60. In 1999, the former baseball player — whose teams included the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres — was the second former Major League Baseball player to come out as gay. Bean became the league’s senior vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Bean’s death was confirmed by Major League Baseball, which announced on X (formerly known as Twitter) that the former player had “fought a heroic year-long battle with acute myeloid leukemia.”

“We are deeply saddened by the passing of our friend and colleague Billy Beane, MLB’s Senior Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Special Assistant to the Commissioner,” MLB wrote.

“Over the past 10 years, Billy has worked passionately and tirelessly with MLB and all 30 clubs, focusing on player education, LGBTQ inclusion and social justice initiatives to advance equality in the game for all,” the league continued previously than she shared a quote from Commissioner Rob Manfred, who said Bean was “one of the kindest and most appreciative individuals I have ever known [and someone who] made baseball a better institution, both on and off the field.”

Bean was born in Santa Ana, California in 1964. His parents married when his mother, then 18, became pregnant, but his father left when Bean was 6 months old.

“I’ve always been a little Billy Beane, small but big-hearted, player, play hurt, hang on,” he told The New York Times in 1999. “Mom worked two jobs, and I started a new elementary school every year. Since it was mostly just the two of us, I always felt grown-up, responsible. I was precise and methodical like her. And very emotional. I wanted to please people, make them proud of me.”

Billy Beane in 1990.

AP Photo/Richard Drew

When Bean was 9 years old, his mother married Ed Kovac, a police officer. They would give Bean five younger siblings. Besides his baseball skills, Bean was also a talented basketball player. During his junior year at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, he was drafted by the New York Yankees, but promised his college coach that he would return.

“In our house, a handshake is binding,” said Kovač times 1999. ”And that’s Billy. It was always an honor for the family, the game, and it’s not up to me to say that, of course, but probably also for the gay community.”

After his senior season, during which his team played in the College World Series, he was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in 1986. He made his debut for the club in 1987. “Walking on the major league field was always my goal,” he said. Los Angeles Times in that time. “Now my goal is to do it tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the next and the next.” He was sent back to the minor leagues that summer and during that time he married his college sweetheart.

Bean was traded to the Dodgers after underperforming with the Tigers. Playing for his hometown team was overwhelming, but, he said The New York Times, was pleased when Dodgers legend Vin Scully nicknamed him “Guillermo Frijoles.” Bean also had a hard time breaking through because there was another player in the league with a similar name — Billy Beane, whose time with the Oakland Athletics would be immortalized in the movie Moneyball.

Billy Beane 1994.

B Bennett/Getty

Bean’s biological father died in 1991, and as the player came to terms with his sexuality, he and his wife divorced. Something was just pulling me to the other side, he said The New York Times. “I had good sex with women and good relationships, but something was missing, even for my wife. I was not fulfilled. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be understood, that I wouldn’t be fully accepted. I was looking for a soul mate, someone with whom I could let my guard down. I found that only in men.”

Bean spent a year in Japan before signing with the San Diego Padres in 1993. He was living with a male partner at the time and worried that others would find out about their relationship. “I lived 20 miles from the stadium to keep people from dropping by,” he told PEOPLE in 2014. “My partner believed everyone was going to be fine, but I wasn’t. The double life was exhausting.”

In 1995, just before the start of his third season with the Padres, Sam died. Bean didn’t tell his teammates. “Imagine that you lost your wife or partner, went to work and didn’t tell anyone?” he told PEOPLE. “But I thought the world would stop spinning if I got out.” Bean retired after that season.

Billy Bean.

Stephen Lovekin/FilmMagic

Bean came out to his family that November. He announced himself publicly in 1999, for the first time in an article in Miami Herald and then inside New York Timess. At that time he was in a relationship with Efrain Veiga; they broke up in 2008.

He was the second former player to come forward after Glenn Burke, who dated teammates but came out publicly in 1982. Burke died in 1995. Bean developed a relationship with Burke’s family and advocated for MLB and the Dodgers (Burke’s former team) to embrace him in a bigger way, per The New York Times.

Bean told PEOPLE in 2014 that he realized he wanted to use his platform in a bigger way after meeting Judy Shepard, whose son Matthew was killed in a 1998 anti-gay attack. “She said, ‘Matthew would love you, and he loved baseball.’ I realized that there is a responsibility. Sports can help people to accept them more, and I feel that I was a part of it.”

Billy Beane 2015.

Monica Schipper/Getty

“I learned that impacting someone’s life is more important than a lifetime .300 batting average,” Bean told Los Angeles Times 2001. “The more positive role models people see, the less sensational the whole idea of ​​diverse sexuality becomes.”

Bean published a memoir in 2014. Going the Other Way: An Intimate Memoir of Life in and Out of Major League Baseball. That year, MLB named him its first ambassador for inclusion, a role that would allow him to support LGBTQ+ people in baseball. Then-commissioner Bud Selig said at the time, “I wish our game had someone Billy and Glenn could turn to as they played; a friend, a listener, a source of support. That’s why I’m so thrilled to make this announcement today.”

Billy Bean at the 2016 MLB All-Star Legends and Celebrity Game in San Diego.

Rob Leiter/MLB/Getty

In 2017, he was named Special Assistant to the Commissioner, and in 2022 he became Senior Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. A third former player appeared that year, TJ House.

In December 2023, Bean revealed that he had been diagnosed with leukemia. “I’m not angry; I hope so,” he said USA Today in that time. “But it hit me really, really hard. I spent 21 days in the hospital with a compromised immune system, unable to receive visitors. It was a very isolating experience, especially when you don’t know what the outcome is going to be.”

He was upset that his work with MLB would be slowed down by his illness. “Nobody knows all the work he does with teams and individuals,” Patrick Courtney, MLB’s chief communications officer, told this newspaper. “He made such an impact on us. He just didn’t want anything to slow his momentum.”

Billy Beane 2016.

Cindy Ord/Getty

“It was a different time and place when I played, when Glenn Burke played,” Bean said Advocate 2022. “Culturally speaking, it was acceptable to maintain all these stereotypes by which other people defined our community. We never had the opportunity to write our own biographies, and now we do because we fought and persevered. And so I feel a great responsibility and pride to be example of his community to baseball.”

He added: “I just think that every year, every day that I’m in this place, I’m more humbled by the opportunity to bring people together.”

In a 2016 interview with the Philadelphia Gay News, he noted that when others wrote about him, they always wrote “gay” first. He said: “It’s the first word that defines me for the rest of my life. I will always be a gay gamer. Now I’m an open and proud gay man, so I’m fine with that.”

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Source: HIS Education