Billy Bean - Going the Other Way: An Intimate Memoir of Life In and Out of Major League Baseball

BILLY BEAN played major league baseball from 1987 to 1995 for the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Diego Padres. Born in Santa Ana, California, in 1964, Bean was a multi-sport star at Santa Ana High School, where he was selected valedictorian of his graduating class and went on to become an All-America outfielder twice before graduating from Loyola Marymount University in 1986.

On July 15, 2014, Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig announced the appointment of Billy Bean as MLBs first Ambassador for Inclusion, in which role he is at the fore of the Leagues efforts for a fair and equitable workplace throughout all of baseball. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

billybean.com | facebook.com/billybeanMLB | @billybeanball

~

CHRIS BULL is cofounder of Gay Cities: Your Travel and City Guide and editorial director of Queerty.com, the most popular LGBT blog in the world. He lives in San Francisco, California.

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A passionate memoir of the challenges Bean faced as a closeted gay athlete.

Sports Illustrated

The courage Bean shows in telling his story is incredible.

Los Angeles Times

A fresh and insightful book... Bean excels at capturing the rhythms of the game.... In telling his story, Bean has lent a hand of support to other ballplayers who might now be facing the same decision.

San Francisco Chronicle

This gut-wrenching story is an amazing triumph of character over circumstances. Billy Bean is an inspiration.

Brad Ausmus, manager of the Detroit Tigers and former MLB all-star catcher

A story [told] with oral immediacy and winning personality. Sports claimed [Bean] long before homosexuality did, and his love of baseball gives the book its powerful charm.

Booklist

Billy Beans book is candid, generous, and courageous. It adds a new dimension to the world of sports literature. Nice going, Billy.

Jim Bouton, former MLB pitcher for the New York Yankees, Seattle Pilots, Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves, and author of Ball Four

Reads more like an Everyman tale than a manifesto, and is more effective for it.

New York Daily News

[Bean] tells a remarkable story of his unremarkable careera paltry .227 average in the majorsand his wrenching struggle with his sexuality.... Beans candor, self-effacing humor, and brutal honesty will win him... new [fans].

Entertainment Weekly

Fluently written and compulsively readable, Going the Other Way is at once a briskly paced account of life in baseball and the fiercely moving chronicle of a divided heart. Its a major contribution to the literature of sport, straight or gay.

Richard Greenberg, author of the Tony Awardwinning play Take Me Out

It took a lot of courage for Billy Bean to play baseball in the major leaguesand even more to write about itwith insight and humor.

Peter Lefcourt, author of The Dreyfus Affair and Eleven Karens

NEW YORK

To my mom, Linda
For too long, I made the terrible mistake of leaving you out of my life.
This time around, youre coming along for the ride.

Going the Other Way: An Intimate Memoir of Life In and Out of Major League Baseball
Copyright Billy Bean, 2003, 2014
All photographs courtesy Billy Bean except as noted.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no portion of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The Experiment, LLC
220 East 23rd Street Suite 301
New York, NY 10010-4674
www.theexperimentpublishing.com

Originally published in 2003 by Marlowe & Company, an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, Inc. Some names of people in this account have been changed to protect their privacy.

The Experiments books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk for premiums and sales promotions as well as for fundraising or educational use. For details, contact us at . Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and The Experiment was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been capitalized.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-61519-263-2
Ebook ISBN 978-1-61519-264-9

Cover design by Christopher Brian King
Cover photograph courtesy Billy Bean

: Putting It Together, 1982 ~ Center fielder/pitcher for the Santa Ana Saints, my high school varsity baseball team; we won that years state championship.

Manufactured in the United States of America
Distributed by Workman Publishing Company, Inc.
Distributed simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen and Son Ltd.
First paperback reissue printing September 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

IN 2004, SHORTLY AFTER my book tour for the original edition of this book, I sent a long, heartfelt letter to Bud Selig, Major League Baseballs commissioner, detailing what I believed must happen to pave the way for the first player to feel comfortable enough to come out while competing at the highest level of the game.

It was a cause dear to my heart. After all, Id had to make a terrible choice between my love of the game (and livelihood) and the chance for a life that was truthful, honest, and open. Id ultimately followed my heart, and quit the game to settle down with my partner in Miami Beach. It was an excruciating decision no one should ever have to make. It was a choice made under duress, and it has haunted me ever since.

I received a polite, thoughtful response to my letter, but to this day baseball players, from little league to the big leagues, are almost as closeted as ever. Fans still shout antigay epithets from the stands, and closeted players still keep their lives hidden from teammates, a kind of dangerous double life that absolutely keeps them from playing their best. Even football and basketball, stereotypically more homophobic sports, have successfully integrated their first two openly gay players, Michael Sam and Jason Collins.

Collins, my good friend and twelve-year NBA veteran, came out on the cover of Sports Illustrated last year. It took longer than it should have, but on February 23, 2014, in his very first game since his announcement, I witnessed history from the stands at Staples Center in Los Angeles, when the Brooklyn Nets played the LA Clippers. For years, I had predicted that I would find a way to be at whatever event the moment it took place, and it actually happened.