1
And, you're out!
From high-five lo down and out
Major league baseball’s Billy Bean tells all
The real first openly gay mstfor league baseball player
by
F loyd S klaver
ou think you’ve had a had day? C om
pare your worst to major league base
ball player Billy Bean’s. Still closeted
in 1995, he watched hts first lover,
Sam, die o f A ID S complications and then
went to the ballpark that afternoon to
learn he had been sent down to the minors.
Less than a year later, the boyishly hand
some Bean quit baseball altogether, came
out to his friends and family and settled
down with a new partner in Miami. Going
the O ther W ay: Lessens from a Life In and O ut
o f Major-League Baseball is a compelling first-
person account of trying to fit jn to the
homophobic world of professional sports.
Bean was horn in California’s conserva-
• tive Orange County. His father married his
18-year-old mother after she became preg
nant, then left when Bean was 6 months
old. Despite being small and slight, he per
sisted to become a star athlete— high schcxil
fixitball quarterback, full athletic scholarship
to college and then drafted by the New York
Yankees during his junior year.
But Bean was not considered fast or
strong enough to he a starting player, and
the next 10 years saw him bouncing
between major, minor and winter leagues.
During this time he “earned a reputation as
one of the biggest lover boys’’ and married his
college sweetheart. But he also began having
sexual feelings toward men.
He finally began acting on those feelings at
the age of 28, escaping from the other baseball
players to find out-of-the way bars while the team
was on the road. “This was clearly no phase,” he
realized after finding yet another man attractive.
He met Sam in the shower of a health club
where, ironically, his wife was waiting in the
lobby; they divorced s<x>n after. Frightened of
being ostracized and rejected, he kept his new
relationship secret, even hiding Sam away in
the garage when teammates dropped by.
Bean left baseball but still didn’t come out.
Living in Miami with his second partner, he
broke all contact and ties with his former life.
W hen he missed the funeral o f his closest
friend because no one could reach him to break
the news, he finally decided to come out. ['Hir
ing an interview with a local reporter he was
asked whether he could he identified as part of
a gay couple. “Why not?" Bean replied. “It’s
time to grow up."
Brutally honest, G oing the O ther W ay discuss
1 was gay and were wor
omg the O ther Way
ried aHxjt how the aver
promotes Billy Bean
age father would feel
as “the only openly
aHxit taking his son to a
gay former major
baseball game to see some
league baseball player.”
fag shagging fly balls in
That campaign is mislead
center field." The Dixlgers
ing. The real first openly
offered him a Hxieymoon
gay former major league
bonus if he’d find a
baseball player died in 1995.
In 1972 G lenn Burke,
woman to marry, but he
refused. At the end of his
then 20, was recruited by
second season he was
the Los Angeles Dixlgers
traded to the Oakland As.
and sent to play in the
But Oakland was no
minor leagues before being
called on for “the show.”
more welcoming, despite
Weighing 220 pounds with
being directly across the
17-inch biceps and “built
bay from San Francisco,
where Burke was a fixture
like a fucking tank," his
in the Castro bars. Other
teammates nicknamed him
King Kong.
players began wearing
towels in the locker nx»m
Burke’s four years in the
majors were mediocre. He
G lenn Burke was finally drummed out of and making predictable
jokes about not bending
had a .237 hatting average
the majors in 1 9 8 2 because he was gay
over in the shower.
with 35 stolen bases, Hit he
In 1980 the A s hired macho Billy Martin as
made a lasting mark on the game by inventing
manager, who proceeded to make Burke’s life
the high-five. In 1977 the Dodgers were playing
miserable by announcing during spring training
the Hixiston Astros, and teammate Dusty Baker
that
“no faggot was going to play on my ball
sent his 30th home run of the year over the right
club.” W hen Burke hurt his knee, the As sent
field wall. T he enthusiastic Burke raced out to
him down to the minors.
meet him at home plate. He raised his hands and
A t 28, with no other team willing to sign
Hiker matched him— allegedly the first high-five
in history.
him, Burke was essentially blacklisted for being
gay, and his career was over. He became a
Although Burke didn’t come out publicly
heavy cocaine user and spent 17 months in San
until after he left the majors in 1982, he didn’t
Quentin on several charges. He died o f A ID S
keep his sexuality secret from his teammates,
complications in 1995 at the home o f his sister.
even going so far as to befriend the effeminate
gay son o f Dixlgers manager Tommy LaSorda
“They can’t ever say now that a gay man can’t
(a notorious bigot).
play in the majors," Burke said in a 1993 inter
view, “Hcause I’m a gay man, and 1 made it.”
Burke put it bluntly in his 1995 autobiography,
Out at H om e: The Glenn Burke Story: “They knew
— f s jn
G
It * 3 J
/
es Billy’s hopes and dreams and how the bur
geoning awareness of his sexuality threatened to
crush his aspirations. “T he reflexive connection
between homophobia and athletics had been
hardwired into me since I stepped onto the fix>t-
hall field at the age of 8," he writes.
Filled with insider information about the
big leagues, this is the tale of a man who went
to extraordinary lengths to hide and now is on
a mission to nudge baseball toward equality for
everybtxly. J H
• -------- — 1
AS
n
Come out, come out, wherever you are
I espite the recent high-profile coming-outs
of ex-baseball player Billy Bean and ex
football player Esera Tuaolo, professional
sports remain extremely homophobic.
In a 1993 interview, Glenn Burke, the first
openly gay professional baseball player, claimed he
knew “at least 10 active or recently retired major
league players who arc gay or bisexual.” He
alleged that of the four major team sports— base
ball, basketball, football and hockey— the Nation
al Football League had the most gay players.
•
D
Just last year, New York Mecs catcher Mike
Piazza denied rumors that he was gay after man
ager Bobby Valentine set off a media frenzy by
saying that players can accept an openly gay
teammate. And in May 2001, Out magazine
publisher Brendan Lemon urged a closeted pro
baseball player (“N ot his team’s biggest star but a
very recognizable media figure all the same”)
with whom he was having an affair to come out.
Athletes in solo sports seem to have an eas
ier time being open about their sexuality. Gay
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