‘Ambassador of Inclusion’ challenging stereotypes
There’s a moment about halfway through MLB Network’s documentary on Billy Bean when you truly begin to appreciate the depths of shame and fear he carried during his playing days.
Bean, not to be confused with the Oakland A’s general manager, was a closeted gay man about to begin his sixth major-league season in 1995, while his partner, whom he had desperately hid from everyone in his life, was dying of HIV/AIDS.
On the eve of the new season, Bean found his partner collapsed in their apartment and rushed him to the closest hospital. But as he reached the highway off-ramp, Bean veered the car away. A few weeks earlier he had made an appearance at the hospital as a member of the San Diego Padres and feared he would be recognized and outed. So with his partner struggling to survive, Bean drove a half-hour out of the way to a different hospital, where his partner died the next morning.
Bean showed up at the ballpark later that same day and was informed of his demotion to the minors. He grieved in secret, played that season in a haze and then quit baseball, confusing his friends and family.
“I had alienated myself from everybody in my life,” Bean says in the film, which will be re-aired Sunday at 8 p.m. on the MLB Network.
It was still several years before Bean came out publicly and to this day he is just one of two former major leaguers — along with the late Glenn Burke — to come out as gay after their playing career. But after nearly two decades away from the game, Bean returned to baseball last summer when he was named MLB’s first “Ambassador of Inclusion” and tasked with a broad mandate to help foster a more welcoming environment, both on and off the field.
“I’m sort of a walking example of what we don’t want to happen to other players,” Bean recently told the Star. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation.
How did it feel to watch the documentary?
It was hard to see some of those moments. There’s some conflict in it with some of the decisions that I made at that time that I used as explanations of how damaging the closet can be — revisiting my partner’s passing and just the whole decision to walk away from baseball right when I was starting to get good at it. It was harder than I thought. Seeing my parents, who were really brave to be in it, and a couple of my former teammates. Everybody had good intentions, but I didn’t allow baseball to be there for me, which is really my main message for anyone who’s a stakeholder in the sport — if you have something that is weighing on you outside the lines, there are resources now and baseball is firmly behind that and understands that to get the very best product on the field you’ve got to take care of the people that make our sport emotionally as well.
What does your job as “Ambassador of Inclusion” entail?
My job is basically to start a dialogue that begins to create a culture of acceptance throughout baseball. The goal of fairness and equity is to give everyone a chance to have an opportunity to show that they’re good enough to participate. We believe baseball is the greatest sport in the world and you have to let people know that whether they come from another country, they speak a different language and regardless of their sexual orientation, if you want to try out, if you want to go through the rigours of what it takes, you shouldn’t be diverted away. There’s a lot of young athletes that I’ve spoken to over the last 15 years that flat-out said to me, ‘I never thought I’d be accepted in a team-sport environment so I started running or became a swimmer or played tennis.’ The most important thing is making sure I communicate the message that whether you want to work in baseball, if you want to be a player, you want to work in the front office, you want to start in the marketing department, you want to run a team, it doesn’t matter if you’re a male or a female, or LGBT or heterosexual. If you’re interested and you’re good enough and smart enough and dedicated, there should be an opportunity there for you. The last year has been a major turning point for LGBT athletes, with Jason Collins coming out and Michael Sam getting drafted. Why do you think Major League Baseball has yet to have an openly gay player?
Michael and Jason were very brave, but those are two isolated situations. It doesn’t mean basketball or football are the perfect environments for gay athletes. There’s a lot of work to be done and I think that what’s important is not to focus on a player making it look like we are succeeding or failing. But in just the time that I’ve joined Major League Baseball, you’ve seen a major-league umpire come out, frontoffice employees feel empowered and say, ‘Ever since Billy was nominated I’m ready to do this.’ I just think that we are smoothing out the conversation and taking away some of the trepidation because I know that sometimes for us in the LGBT community we get impatient because we see progress everywhere else and we say, ‘What is the problem in professional sports? Why can’t a player just do this?’ But for me to think my job is only succeeding because one person came out in A-ball for some team, I can’t look at it that way. I have to believe, and this is what MLB believes as well, is that we are empowering people and I feel like at some point collectively we’re going to see the obstacles fall and people are just going to be like, ‘You know what? There is a support group out there for me. I have my little village, my little family.’ Coming out can happen in smaller ways, too. It doesn’t have to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated. If I had come out to just my parents it would have changed my life so much. I never would have quit playing. They wouldn’t have wanted me to quit. They would have said, ‘We can do this.’ Brad Ausmus, Harold Reynolds, Tim Flannery, my coach, all of them said, ‘He should have told us. We had the kind of team that it would have been fine.’ It was my baggage; it wasn’t theirs. We’re changing that environment. It just takes one good day for someone to make that decision, but we want them to do it in a healthy way.
How do you make sure that message that’s coming from the league penetrates at the clubhouse level?
That’s a huge challenge and it’s not perfect. What’s important is that the clubs are on the same page — and every one of them is. We’ve been providing resources to our players for years and years in baseball; my addition just expands the conversation. When I was coming up in the mid-’80s, when a female reporter was in the clubhouse you could hear catcalls and comments. Nobody would say anything to the players. Today, you can’t do that. Women have every right to be a reporter in this sport and you see hundreds of examples of unbelievably talented female reporters now. That’s the difference. You should be allowed the opportunity. It’s not a free chance or a charitable chance; it’s just an equal one. The colour of your skin or where you’re born or your sexual orientation is not going to give you an advantage, but it shouldn’t be a disadvantage and that needs to be explained in a way that a player can understand clearly.
There’s a scene in the film when your father, who is a retired marine, meets
an openly gay former marine and war hero and you talk about how that strengthened your relationship with your father. Do you see that as the biggest roadblock for someone who is homophobic, that they simply don’t personally know someone who is gay?
Absolutely I have found in my own experience the best way to help someone feel connected is to find that common ground. Sometimes it’s hard for me to walk into a big room full of young baseball players, but I was a player and we do have that in common. There is a mutual form of respect for everyone who played in the big leagues, because it is a triumph. It’s a tremendous accomplishment. We all wish we could have the career of Derek Jeter and play 20 years, but that doesn’t happen all the time, so there is a bond there that’s aside from culture, colour, sexual orientation, age. They know that I had to grind it out just like they have had to. There’s a common ground. So it’s just like I felt with my dad, you cannot describe in words the way two former marine corps veterans feel connected. It’s something that’s unspoken. And all of a sudden, my dad, I could see he was one more step closer to total acceptance.
Veteran MLB umpire Dale Scott came out last year. Do you think it’s only a matter of time before a majorleague player does?
If it happens, I won’t be surprised. But I’m not holding my breath for it. My job is not to grade myself on whether a player does or doesn’t do it. The conversation — the positive dialogue — the way the office of the commissioner is seeing this sea change in communication. It feels like our momentum is wonderful. If we have a player come out and he is a great role model, I’ll be so fired up. But that can’t be the determination of whether we’re succeeding or failing. Like I said, we had two great examples in the last year or so of Jason Collins and Michael Sam, but they’re no longer playing. So now we have zero examples. Does that mean what they did meant nothing? I don’t think so. I think it meant everything, because it helped us move forward. It’s a very personal decision in a very electrifying moment in their lives, so there’s a lot to consider. We need to make the environment the best we can. A player who’s in the big leagues or the minors can look at all these things we’re doing and say, ‘I’m not alone. I’m not by myself.’ You build it and then it’s going to happen quickly as opposed to standing around and hoping for one player to say, ‘I’m going to carry the conversation for the sports world.’ We got to do a little work for them, too.
Lastly, I have to ask: How annoying has it been for you since Moneyball (in which Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, the general manager) came out?
(Laughs) We’ve been getting mixed up for a long time. It is what it is. He’s a great guy, a great ambassador for the sport. The irony is incredible that two people with such odd names would both play baseball. We even played on the same team one year (the 1988 Toledo Mud Hens). I know Baseball Reference uses “Bill Bean” for me, but nobody has ever called me “Bill” in my whole life. But you can make yourself crazy trying to control the universe. It’s really not a bad problem to have. We’re both defining ourselves more clearly now.