Baseball's Gay Trailblazer Billy Bean Finally Appreciates His Impact
Billy Bean now understands he’s more than just another former pro baseball player who turned a short-lived career into a front office job (officially, he’s the senior vice president, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and special assistant to the commissioner of Major League Baseball), but it wasn’t always that way.
Along with the late Glenn Burke, the 58-year-old former outfielder is one of only two out current or former MLB players and the only one alive today.
It’s a historic distinction but one he didn’t fully comprehend when he came out publicly in 1999.“I was living in a tiny little world of my own,” Bean says, adding he “didn’t understand how important representation was at that time.”Burke played for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland A’s from 1976 to 1979.
Bean played in the big leagues from 1987 to 1995. He came out publicly after his playing career ended. And it wasn’t until he connected with his peers in the LGBTQ+ community that he understood his place in history in the game he loves and how that knowledge would bring him back to it.
