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

By Billy Bean and Chris Bull

From major league baseball’s only openly gay former player—and now its first-ever Ambassador for Inclusion—the intimate chronicle of a man who, in the prime of his career, had to make a terrible choice between his love of the game and the love of his lifeMore than ten years after its original publication, Going the Other Way remains deeply moving, and more timely than ever. By virtue of a relentless work ethic, exceptional multi-sport talent, and a quick left-handed swing, Billy Bean made it to the majors, where he played from 1987 to 1995—an outfielder for the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Diego Padres. But as a gay man in the brutally anti-gay world of baseball, closeted to teammates and family, Bean found himself unable to reconcile two worlds that he felt to be mutually exclusive. At the young age of 31, in the prime of his career, even as he solidified his role as a major-league utility player, Bean walked away from the game that was both his calling and his livelihood. At once heartbreaking and farcical, ruminative and uncensored, this unprecedented memoir points the way toward a more perfect game, one in which all players can pursue their athletic dreams free of prejudice and discrimination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781615192649

Book preview

Acclaim for Going the Other Way

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 Bean’s 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 career—a paltry .227 average in the majors—and his wrenching struggle with his sexuality. . . . Bean’s 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. It’s a major contribution to the literature of sport, straight or gay."

—Richard Greenberg, author of the Tony Award–winning play Take Me Out

It took a lot of courage for Billy Bean to play baseball in the major leagues—and even more to write about it—with insight and humor.

—Peter Lefcourt, author of The Dreyfus Affair and Eleven Karens

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Going the Other Way

An Intimate Memoir of Life In and Out of Major League Baseball

Billy Bean

with Chris Bull

justcolophon

NEW YORK

To my mom, Linda

For too long, I made the terrible mistake of leaving you out of my life.

This time around, you’re 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 Experiment’s 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 [e-mail]. 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

Frontispiece: Putting It Together, 1982 ~ Center fielder/pitcher for the Santa Ana Saints, my high school varsity baseball team; we won that year’s 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

Contents

Preface to the 2014 Edition

Introduction ~ For Love of the Game

PART ONE ~ Suiting Up

1 • Fields of My Dreams

2 • Myth of the Golden Boy

3 • Layanaland

PART TWO ~ First Pitches

4 • The Bushes

5 • The Long, Slow Walk

6 • Babyface Bean

7 • Playing to the Home Crowd

8 • Dodger Blues

9 • Lasorda’s Lament

PART THREE ~ Seventh-Inning Stretch

10 • Bedhop or Drop

11 • The Big Show

12 • High, Hard Ones

13 • In a Pinch

14 • Baseball Players Don’t Cry

PART FOUR ~ Closing the Door

15 • Nothing Left to Lose

16 • Riding Pine

17 • Safe at Home

PART FIVE ~ Extra Innings

18 • The Level Playing Field

Billy Bean’s Glossary of Baseball Slang

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Preface to the 2014 Edition

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 Baseball’s 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, I’d 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. I’d 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.

I was so proud of Jason. It was as if my own brother was playing.

And for the first time in my baseball lifetime, there is hope for baseball, too. The Supreme Court struck down bans on gay marriage, reflecting a major cultural shift in acceptance that had been underway for some time. And players are feeling freer to express themselves at the college level, where a handful of baseball players have come out publicly over the last year. Athletes, from all levels, have reached out for advice, shared their struggles, and vented about the unfairness of it all.

At the Third Annual Nike LGBT Sports Coalition Summit this year in Portland, I met four amazing young men who played college baseball, out and proud. They were full of optimism, asking lots of questions about life in the majors. They are taking advantage of resources created by many amazing people in the LGBT community, and it was wonderful to meet young athletes with healthy coming out stories instead of tragic ones (something that was much more common, not so long ago).

Most important, it seems MLB is itself ready to create a level playing field. I’ve always thought that coming out as a pro athlete is less a matter of the bravery of individuals and more a commitment from the game to make the process as smooth as possible, a process that does not penalize the player’s ability to compete. This year, a few weeks before the all-star game, I received a call from MLB’s Paul Mifsud. He told me that he felt this phone call was about thirteen years late, which caught me off guard. He asked if I would consider coming to New York City to have a conversation with a few of the people who help run major league baseball. I agreed, though I didn’t know of their intentions. A week later I headed to the commissioner’s office; we sat down in the Bowie Kuhn Conference Room and talked for four hours. I returned home, and a week later I was asked whether I was interested in becoming the very first MLB Ambassador for Inclusion.

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Dawn of a New Era ~ At the July 15, 2014 news conference that followed the 2014 All-Star Game, where MLB commissioner Bud Selig had just announced my new Ambassador for Inclusion position. (© Major League Baseball)

Many things have changed since the first edition of this book was published in 2003. In 2004, at the young age of 37, my sister, Colette, was killed in an accident. My family and I will never heal entirely from her loss. I had my heart broken with the end of a fourteen-year relationship in 2010, and I had to say goodbye to my sweet dog Paco, who lived to 17. I left Miami Beach, where I’d lived since retiring from baseball, and returned to Los Angeles, my hometown, to be closer to my family. I’m obsessed with tennis and my daily CrossFit workouts. I often go to Dodgers Stadium, where I once roamed the outfield, and where I recently threw out the ceremonial first pitch alongside Jason Collins (mine was a strike). And now, I travel around the country representing MLB, building relationships with each big-league club, bringing the powerful message of equity and fairness.

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Brothers in Arms ~ Throwing out the ceremonial first pitch with NBA center Jason Collins at the first annual LGBT Night Out at Dodgers Stadium, September 27, 2013. (© Harry How/Getty Images)

The irony of all this is not lost. The game that forced me out brought me back to make sure what happened to me never happens to another player. It’s a bittersweet development, to be sure, after I’d sacrificed so much. But it’s also an opportunity even bigger than a superstar’s contract. It’s a chance to make this great game better than ever, and to help others like me in the process.

—Billy Bean, August 2014

Introduction

IT WAS MY SUREFIRE cure for the blues. Around noon, I threw on my tank top, shorts, and Nike training shoes and headed to the seashore, where the cloudless sky and the vast expanse of blue-green Atlantic—along with the endorphins coursing through my body—usually acted as Valium to my nerves, no matter how frayed. My body took on the rhythm of the velvet-voiced companion on my Walkman, Natalie Merchant. A cool breeze swept off the ocean. I watched cruise ships, veritable floating cities, head out of port for Caribbean fun.

It was March 1996, my first spring without Cactus or Grapefruit League* training camp. The clock of my life was set to baseball’s schedule, and I was lost without it. As I turned around and headed back home, my shirt already drenched, I switched on the radio and turned the dial to 560 WQAM, the Florida Marlins’ radio station, thinking maybe a little baseball was what I needed.

The Marlins’ Robb Nen was facing the Braves’ Chipper Jones in the ninth inning. As I listened to the sounds of the game, the crack of bat against ball, the shouts of fans, the banter of the play-by-play announcers, I saw myself standing on second base after lining one into the gap.

I could still do that, I thought. I should still be out there mixing it up with the greatest players around. I’m no quitter.

I wanted to race over to Space Coast Stadium, the Marlins’ training facility, and beg the team to let me suit up and take my familiar position in center field. Even the bench, the source of so much frustration during my playing days, suddenly seemed like the best seat in the house. After ten years with the Tigers, Dodgers, and Padres, any team would do, as long as I could be back in the show.

Had I left too soon? At the age of thirty-one, I was haunted by the notion that I still had many years of baseball left in me. On the beach, the length of my stride increased as I tried to stifle the voice of regret in my head.

I reminded myself of why it had to be this way. I’d sacrificed my love of the game to another kind of love. Four months earlier I’d fallen for a wonderful man, Efraín Veiga. We were building a life together. I’d finally achieved the sense of security and stability I lacked while locked in the big-league closet. There was no way I was going back to hiding. I just couldn’t bear any longer the constant fear of exposure, the anti-gay remarks of teammates and coaches, and the exhausting, grinding pressure of being someone I wasn’t.

Baseball, I knew, wasn’t ready for a guy like me, no matter how well I played. The game wasn’t mature enough to deal with a gay ballplayer, and I wasn’t in an emotional state to take it on by myself. It was time to change course. I had a good life. I had my health. I had a partner who loved me. I wasn’t a victim or a hero, but I was tired of being a pawn.

My last conversation with my agent, Dennis Gilbert, just a few weeks earlier, ran through my head like a scene from a horror flick. Despite the fact that I’d torn up the Pacific Coast League the previous season in between three trips back and forth to the majors, he was having no luck securing a major-league contract. Six teams were offering minor-league contracts with a chance to make the big club out of spring training. This was standard for a reserve like me, basically an inexpensive insurance policy for a team, but this year I was determined not to settle for so little.

Dennis, if I don’t get a good deal, I’m not going back, I told him.

I’m sick of the bushes.

I was sick of a lot more than that. Dennis was puzzled by my attitude, and he let me know it. He wasn’t afraid to point out that I was inconsistent at the big-league level and that I’d created my own problems.

Every ballplayer is told to play until he drops. It’s a testament to our commitment for the game and how lucky we are to get paid to play it. I was about to break a cardinal rule.

My anger and frustration got the best of me, and I just couldn’t listen to him.

Dennis, you just don’t know how hard it’s been, I said. You can’t even imagine.

It was true. I hadn’t confided my secret to him, and a baseball guy like Dennis never would’ve guessed what I was harboring. This was uncharted territory. There was no map by which a gay ballplayer could navigate toward stardom and happiness.

I wanted my agent to fight for me and for my career, but it really wasn’t his fight. He’d heard me complain bitterly for years about the uncertainty of my status in the game, and the constant ups and downs.

You’ve got to put up some numbers, he said. If you put up some numbers on the field, I can get you some numbers in your contract.

Fair enough. But just then I was looking to him to talk me out of quitting.

I wanted him to persuade me to stay in the game. But all Dennis could come up with was a limp, Do whatever makes you happy.

My triple-A manager Tim Flannery, a terrific baseball guy who’d also played in the big leagues, was the one guy who had really leaned on me to give it another shot.

Make them rip the uniform off your back, Beaner, he’d said. You can’t give it up now. But then Tim didn’t know about my facade either.

On the radio, Robb Nen threw a slider. Chipper Jones went down on strikes. Game over.

I slowed to a jog as I reached Efraín’s house in Coral Gables. I walked around to the backyard to cool down from my run and sat on the steps. Since I was eight, I’d always had a baseball season to look forward to. I buried my face in my hands and had my first real cry since I’d retired. What am I gonna do now?

It would be three more years before the story I was determined to keep private made national headlines. The truth is I’d never wanted to be a star anywhere but on the field. I never set out to be a role model for gay ballplayers or for anyone else. I couldn’t figure out why all the attention had come to me.

For twenty-five years, I had only wanted to play ball. But something surprising had happened along the way. I discovered there was more to life than hitting .300. Perhaps my life was meant for other things.

With the perspective the last several years had provided, I felt ready to tell my story, in my own words, so that others might avoid the cruel dilemma I’d faced. Going the Other Way is not just a ballplayer’s story. It’s for anyone who has ever wanted to make their parents proud, play for the team, reach a goal, and be their best. It’s for parents who want to understand the struggles faced by their children. It’s for athletes who are not sure they can deal with a gay teammate. It’s for gay athletes who may feel, as I did, that no one else walked in their cleats or high-tops.

My story is about feeling alone in a crowded room. It’s about embracing the notion that our lives don’t always turn out the way we thought they would. It’s about realizing that while we may not all be alike, or come from the same place, we can survive and thrive as long as we learn to play together as a team.

This is the chronicle of a journey, an arduous voyage made possible by the great game of baseball. To take you on this trip, I must start at the beginning, on the dusty playing fields of my youth.

* Cactus League and Grapefruit League, as well as other baseball terms, are defined in Billy Bean’s Glossary of Baseball Slang.

Part One

Suiting Up

1 Fields of My Dreams

ACTION HEROES AND SUPERMOM ~ FATHER IN A FARAWAY LAND ~ MUDVILLE ~ NOTHING MORE THAN A BULLY ~ THE SILKIEST ATHLETE ~ SLURPEES AND FRED LYNN ~ NEVER LET US DOWN

EVEN AS A KID, I lived to wear a uniform. But my first choice might have been a little ambitious. At my fourth birthday party, I’m tearing open a present from Mom, a full-body Superman outfit. Pulling it on over my clothes, I race out of the house and around the block, hoping the momentum will lift me off the pavement and into the blue sky. Why can’t I take off? I scamper back into the house, jumping from couch to armchair to floor.

Starting with this first conscious memory, my childhood fantasy life revolved around action heroes. I never cared about toy guns or cars like other boys. I couldn’t wait for the comic books Mom would bring home. When I got home from school each day, I’d plop myself down in front of the television with a glass of chocolate milk to watch the Dynamic Duo.

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A Superhero is Born! ~ My fourth birthday, May 11, 1968.

On weekends, Mom let me watch SuperFriends cartoons, and I’d spend the rest of the day mimicking my heroes. I ran like Flash, swam like Aquaman, flew like Superman. I imagined myself having the strength of Popeye, the courage and guile of Batman, the loyalty of Robin. When rescuing someone from danger, I morphed back into Superman. Unlike the other kids, I wasn’t satisfied with admiring my heroes from afar. I actually strove to acquire a fantastic amalgam of their powers, and as a result I was always running headfirst into walls, jumping off the highest point I could climb, and generally causing havoc. I never slowed down. Remember those old newspaper stories about kids eating canned spinach like Popeye, and then standing in front of speeding trains?

Well, I wasn’t that stupid. But I was a daredevil. In one crazy stunt, my friends and I would stand on the cement wall in our backyard and jump into the small pool just before the train that ran behind our house rumbled by. Then there was the time I took a running start and leapt off grandpa’s truck, hands outstretched, trying to fly. Catching some major air, but a lot more pavement, I shattered my collarbone.

Mom says I taught myself to read before my fourth birthday by devouring those dog-eared comic books. I created elaborate scenarios in which I saved the day, winning the undying love and affection I always longed for. Even though I was just a pint-sized kid, I always managed to kill the intruder, foil the bad guys, and save Mom from danger.

~

LINDA JANE ROBERTSON and William Joseph Bean grew up on Camile Street in Santa Ana, just three houses from each other. Massive oak trees shaded manicured lawns and yes—quite literally—picket fences.

They met in junior high. Two years later, in tenth grade, they began dating. Mom has often described the strong physical attraction between the two, and by her senior year in high school, when she was seventeen, she’d become pregnant with me. It was an ominous start to a relationship in an era when premarital sex was taboo.

The trouble began, as it often does, with religion. My dad’s mother, Carmela Caruso Bean, converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and kept strict tabs on her five children.

The Robertsons, who weren’t particularly religious, were skeptical of the Mormon faith. I remember Mom angrily dismissing it as a cult.

After learning about the pregnancy, the Bean family hastily arranged a marriage at a local mortuary, presided over by a Mormon bishop. The morgue became a running family joke, but at the time it was anything but funny. Carmela refused to embrace the union, perhaps because I was conceived before vows were exchanged, at least of the official kind.

Grandma wanted to name me after her husband, Joseph William Bean, and to baptize me in her newfound faith. But even at an impressionable age and under intense pressure, Mom stayed true to herself.

Over my dead body, she said succinctly, adding that I would be christened Timothy John Bean, if only to spite her overbearing mother-in-law.

They eventually compromised on William Daro Bean, after my father and my mom’s father, Daro Robertson. I hadn’t even been born, and hardly anyone was on speaking terms.

By the time I arrived, on May 11, 1964, my grandmother had barred her daughter-in-law from the Bean home. When I was still an infant, under the guise of taking me to the park, she smuggled me into the temple for baptism. When Mom found out about this, it marked the last time I got to see Carmela for a long, long time.

The baptism stuck for about as long as my parents’ marriage. I consider myself a spiritual person, but I grew up viewing organized religions as hypocritical. In my childhood at least, religion gave people an excuse to mistreat others and then take refuge in the church’s teaching. There were plenty of human failings as well. My father failed to defend and protect his wife and newborn. After about a year of marriage, at his mother’s urging, he left on a two-year assignment as a Mormon missionary in Canada. It would be years before he

Reviews for Going the Other Way

[mtilleman07_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Man, this book was written a long time ago (in gay time). I was just coming out when it was, and it reminded me how different the world was then. That being said, at no time did anyone need to be reminded how dependable a baseball player Bean considered himself this many times. Merciful heavens.