Billy Bean

Gay Major League Baseball Player

UPDATE: Billy Bean succumbed to leukemia on August 6, 2024 at age 60.

Original post from August, 2011: Forty-six year old Billy Bean was a high-scoring outfielder in a baseball career that lasted from 1987-1995. He played for the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. When he joined the Detroit Tigers in 1987, he tied a MLB record with four hits in his first major league game.

He acknowledged that he was gay in a front page story in the New York Times in 1999. Bean went on to write a book, “Going the Other Way: Lessons from a life in and out of Major League Baseball.” Bean is only the second former major league player to reveal his homosexuality; the late Los Angeles Dodger and Oakland Athletic Glenn Burke is the other.

When Bean left behind his life as a professional baseball player, he let go of a dream he had pursued since childhood. But his life as a closeted gay man created so much stress that he chose to give up his career. As a closeted player (not even his agent knew he was gay), he had divorced his wife and secretly moved in with his lover, Sam. When Sam died of AIDS, Bean was so frightened of his secret being revealed that he didn't attend his lover's funeral, a tragic decision that ultimately led to his coming out. He became the center of attention of a gay and lesbian community looking for ways to break down barriers of homophobia in sports. Bean, however, was blunt about how strong that barrier remains – he doesn't foresee any professional baseball player coming out while continuing to play.

He says of his book, "This is not a sad story about a victim of homophobia, or baseball mistreating me. It's about what it's like to live in the closet and try to realize a dream under those restrictions." Throughout the book Bean also reveals his love of the sport, while exploring some of the darker side of baseball, especially the humiliation of being sent to the minors. It is a tale of self denial turned around into self acceptance.

Bean now has a successful career in real estate in Miami, Florida. He is also a board member of the Gay and Lesbian Athletics Foundation.

A tip from a blog reader: Bean was one of the panelists on GSN's 2006 revival of "I've Got A Secret", where the open secret was that all four panelists were gay. He later became a MLB diversity executive.
 

 

Going the Other Way review by Brad Ausmus (all-star catcher, Houston Astros):

"Millions of American boys dream of playing Major League Baseball. Just when Billy Bean's dream was coming true, self-realization and tragedy came crashing down on him. Through it all, he had a remarkable will and the mental fortitude to withstand both the nightly pressures of playing in front of 35,000 fans and living a secret 'forbidden' life. In the end, this gut-wrenching story is an amazing triumph of character over consequences. Billy Bean is an inspiration."

280 pages. Da Capo Press (2003).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1569244863/ref=kinw_rke_rti_1

Carl Hester to compete in 7th Olympic Games

UPDATE: Carl just won a bronze medal in Paris for the Great Britain 2024 dressage team. 

Dressage master Carl Hester is headed to his SEVENTH Olympics competition in Paris later this month. As such, he will be among the oldest athletes competing (Hester turned 57 a few days ago). When he was on the Great Britain dressage team that took gold at the 2012 Olympics in London, he was the sole "out" gay athlete representing GB. The home crowd was best pleased. Team Great Britain had never before won a gold medal in dressage. He was subsequently named a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE).

When Carl Hester (b. 1967 in Cambridgeshire, England) decided to take up the sport of dressage in the early 1980s, he was already a natural. Only 18 months after he began training for the sport, Hester won the National Young Rider Championship (1985) as a teenager. He quickly landed on the British Young Rider team in 1988, and he hasn’t looked back.

At the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Carl and Escapado (his horse) placed higher than any other Briton – the same thing at the 2005 European Championships, where the pair ended up in 6th place. On the run up to the 2007 European Championships, Carl was injured and had to back out at the last minute. Bad luck continued into 2008. His two promising horses for Beijing’s Olympic Games, Lecantos and Dolendo, both suffered injuries, so he missed competing.

Hester was soon given an opportunity to ride a new horse, Liebling, and the two formed a quick, strong bond and won an international grand prix. A host of other great results would lead the British team to select Carl for the European Dressage Championships in 2009. Carl’s riding helped Team GB win a silver medal in that event, and he would repeat those results a year later with another silver medal.

The 2012 Olympic dressage gold medal was won with his champion horse "Uthopia." Hester's GB dressage team also won a silver Olympic medal at Rio in 2016 and a bronze at Tokyo 2021. Currently there are plans to make a biopic film of his life story, produced by UK-based filmmakers Drew Curtis and Richard Conway.

Hester will mount "Fame" (photo below), a horse with whom he first competed last year, for the Paris Olympics dressage team events to be held at the Palace of Versailles July 27-August 6, 2024.