Former Dodgers Outfielder Loses Battle With Leukemia

Former Dodgers outfielder Billy Bean, who made history in retirement as Major League Baseball’s first Senior VP for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, has died, the league announced. He was 60.

MLB said in a statement Tuesday that Bean fought “a heroic year-long battle with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.”

Bean played for three teams over parts of six major league seasons (1987-95), including the Dodgers for 51 games in 1989. He came out as gay after retiring as a player, and became a vocal advocate for athletes in the LGBTQ+ community.

Primarily an outfielder in his career with the Dodgers, Detroit Tigers (1987-89), and San Diego Padres (1993-95), Beane hit .226 with five home runs and 53 RBIs in 272 games.

With the Dodgers, he hit .197/.250/.254 while seeing time at all three outfield positions after finishing the 1989 season in Los Angeles. The Dodgers acquired Bean from the Tigers in a trade for two minor league players, Steve Green and Domingo Michel, neither of whom reached the major leagues.

“Our hearts are broken today as we mourn our dear friend and colleague, Billy Bean, one of the kindest and most respected individuals I have ever known,” commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “Billy was a friend to countless people across our game, and he made a difference through his constant dedication to others. He made Baseball a better institution, both on and off the field, by the power of his example, his empathy, his communication skills, his deep relationships inside and outside our sport, and his commitment to doing the right thing. We are forever grateful for the enduring impact that Billy made on the game he loved, and we will never forget him.

“On behalf of Major League Baseball, I extend my deepest condolences to Billy’s husband, Greg Baker, and their entire family.”

Bean was a regular presence at Dodger Stadium and other major league parks on the occasion of Pride Night, spreading a message of inclusivity on the league’s behalf.

In an interview with the Miami Herald in 1999, Bean became the second MLB player ever to come out as gay.

“I went to Hooters, laughed at the jokes, lied about dates because I loved baseball,” Bean told the Associated Press in a 1999 interview. “I still do. I’d go back in a minute. I only wish that I hadn’t felt so alone, that I could have told someone, and that I hadn’t always felt God was going to strike me dead.”

In a 2015 interview, he said the sport had become a more inclusive place since his retirement.

“The players for the first time are seeing a different ideology then when I was playing,” Bean told the Los Angeles Daily News . “When I was playing, the other players talked about gays and lesbians, it wasn’t something you would put in public press.”

In 2000, for example, Dodger Stadium security guards asked a lesbian couple to leave the park in response to a fan’s complaint that the two had kissed after a home run. The team issued a public apology to the couple and donated 5,000 tickets to gay and lesbian organizations.

Today, 29 of the 30 MLB teams celebrate some version of a “Pride Night” to welcome the LGBTQ+ community to the ballpark.

Bean joined MLB’s front office July 14, 2014, first as then-Commissioner Bud Selig’s Ambassador for Inclusion. As a senior advisor to Commissioner Manfred, Bean’s role focused on player education, LGBTQ inclusion, and social justice initiatives, according to MLB’s release.

Before he was drafted by the New York Yankees in 1985, and the Tigers in 1986, Bean was a two-time All-American outfielder at Loyola Marymount University. According to MLB, he graduated from LMU with a degree in Business Administration, and the valedictorian of his graduating class at Santa Ana High School.

Photo Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

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