Former Main League Baseball participant and govt Billy Bean has died at age 60.
MLB launched an announcement confirming his demise, indicating he died at house on Tuesday after a yearlong struggle 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. “During the last 10 years, Billy labored passionately and tirelessly with MLB and all 30 Golf equipment, specializing in participant schooling, LGBTQ inclusion, and social justice initiatives to advance equality within the recreation for all.”
“Commissioner Rob Manfred referred to as Billy ‘one of many kindest and most revered people I’ve ever recognized’ and somebody who ‘made Baseball a greater establishment, each on and off the sphere,’” the submit 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 return out as homosexual in 1999 earlier than turning into the game’s senior vice chairman 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.
During the last 10 years,… pic.twitter.com/dCfFM6hQlE
— MLB (@MLB) August 6, 2024
In 1999, The New York Occasions 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 all the time little Billy Bean, small however bighearted, a gamer, play damage, stick it out,” Bean—who was born in Santa Ana, California, in 1964—informed The Occasions. “My mother labored two jobs, and I began a brand new elementary faculty yearly. As a result of it was principally the 2 of us, I all the time felt grown-up, accountable. I used to be exact and methodical like her. And really emotional. I needed to please individuals, make them happy with me.”
Bean’s father left when he was simply 6 months outdated, however his mom remarried a police officer, Ed Kovac, who was supportive of his stepson.
”A handshake is binding in our home,” Kovac stated. ”And that’s Billy. At all times 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 Manner: An Intimate Memoir of Life In and Out of Main League Baseball. That yr, MLB named him their first ambassador for inclusion, a job that will let him help LGBTQ+ individuals in baseball.
“I’ve discovered making an affect on somebody’s life is extra essential than a lifetime .300 batting common,” Bean informed the Los Angeles Occasions again in 2001. “The extra constructive function fashions that individuals see, the much less sensational the entire thought of numerous sexuality turns into.”