Gay baseball trailblazer Billy Bean dead at 60
He achieved his lifelong dream of becoming a major league baseball player at 23, but Billy Bean gave it all up at 31 because he fell in love with another man.
Bean, MLB’s senior vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion, died at home in New York on Tuesday after an 11-month-long battle with acute myeloid leukemia.
Major League Baseball announced his death. Bean was 60, and leaves a husband, Greg Baker. Bean did not come out publicly until he left the game, in 1999, following an article in the Miami Herald that outed him.
That led to even bigger stories in the New York Times and television interviews about being a closeted athlete. He wrote a book, “Going the Other Way.” For decades, Bean was the only living former baseball player to have come out as gay, following Glenn Burke.
