Former Main League Baseball participant and govt Billy Bean has died at age 60.
MLB launched a press release confirming his loss of life, indicating he died at residence on Tuesday after a yearlong battle with acute myeloid leukemia.
“We’re deeply saddened by the passing of our pal and colleague Billy Bean, MLB’s Senior VP for Range, Fairness, & Inclusion and Particular Assistant to the Commissioner,” MLB wrote on X. “Over the past 10 years, Billy labored passionately and tirelessly with MLB and all 30 Golf equipment, specializing in participant training, LGBTQ inclusion, and social justice initiatives to advance equality within the sport for all.”
“Commissioner Rob Manfred known as Billy ‘one of many kindest and most revered people I’ve ever identified’ and somebody who ‘made Baseball a greater establishment, each on and off the sphere,’” the publish concluded.
The previous baseball participant — whose groups included the Detroit Tigers, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the San Diego Padres — was the second former MLB participant to come back out as homosexual in 1999 earlier than turning into the game’s senior vp for range, fairness, and inclusion.
We’re deeply saddened by the passing of our pal and colleague Billy Bean, MLB’s Senior VP for Range, Fairness, & Inclusion and Particular Assistant to the Commissioner. Billy, who fought a heroic year-long battle with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, was 60.
Over the past 10 years,… pic.twitter.com/dCfFM6hQlE
— MLB (@MLB) August 6, 2024
In 1999, The New York Instances famous he was the “first main league baseball participant to publicly focus on his homosexuality to this extent” when he got here out as a member of the LGBTQ group.
“I used to be at all times little Billy Bean, small however bighearted, a gamer, play damage, stick it out,” Bean—who was born in Santa Ana, California, in 1964—advised The Instances. “My mother labored two jobs, and I began a brand new elementary college yearly. As a result of it was largely the 2 of us, I at all times felt grown-up, accountable. I used to be exact and methodical like her. And really emotional. I wished to please individuals, make them pleased with me.”
Bean’s father left when he was simply 6 months previous, however his mom remarried a police officer, Ed Kovac, who was supportive of his stepson.
”A handshake is binding in our home,” Kovac mentioned. ”And that’s Billy. All the time been a credit score to the household, the sport, and it’s not for me to say, after all, however in all probability to the homosexual group as nicely.”
In 2014, Bean printed a memoir, Going the Different Means: An Intimate Memoir of Life In and Out of Main League Baseball. That 12 months, MLB named him their first ambassador for inclusion, a job that may let him help LGBTQ+ individuals in baseball.
“I’ve realized making an affect on somebody’s life is extra necessary than a lifetime .300 batting common,” Bean advised the Los Angeles Instances again in 2001. “The extra optimistic function fashions that folks see, the much less sensational the entire thought of various sexuality turns into.”
