Billy Bean
| Billy Bean | |
|---|---|
| Outfielder | |
| Born: May 11, 1964 Santa Ana, California |
|
| Batted: Left | Threw: Left |
| MLB debut | |
| April 25, 1987 for the Detroit Tigers | |
| Last MLB appearance | |
| July 8, 1995 for the San Diego Padres | |
| Career statistics | |
| Batting average | .226 |
| Home runs | 5 |
| Runs batted in | 53 |
| Teams | |
William Daro "Billy" Bean (born May 11, 1964 in Santa Ana, California) is a former Major League Baseball player who made news in 1999 when he made his homosexuality public.
Contents |
[edit] Career
Bean was an outfielder, and left-handed hitter, with 487 at bats with a .226 batting average in a career that lasted from 1987 through 1995: Detroit Tigers 1987-1989, Los Angeles Dodgers 1989, San Diego Padres 1993-1995. He played for the Kintetsu Buffaloes in Japan in 1992. Bean tied a major league record with four hits in his first major league game.
After acknowledging that he is gay, Bean went on to write a book, Going the Other Way: Lessons from a Life in and out of Major League Baseball.[1]
Bean is only the second former major league player to reveal his homosexuality. Los Angeles Dodger and Oakland Athletic Glenn Burke is the only other ex-player to have acknowledged his homosexuality.
[edit] Appearances
He was a panelist on GSN's I've Got A Secret revival in 2006, and is a board member of the Gay and Lesbian Athletics Foundation.
In the summer of 2007, it was announced that he had been hired as a consultant by Scout Productions, the team of David Collins and Michael Williams, who produced Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, for their next project with Showtime entitled The Beard. The project is a romantic comedy about a gay professional baseball player who enters into a relationship with a woman in order to survive in the sports world.
Bean starred in a MTV episode of Made, he was an actor in an episode of the sitcom Frasier[2] and appeared as himself on the HBO series Arli$$ in the 2002 episode "Playing it Safe".
[edit] Personal life
He attended Santa Ana High School.[3] For 13 years, Bean was the partner of Efrain Viega, the founder of Yuca restaurant in Miami. They broke up in July 2008.[4][5]
Bean lives in Miami, Florida and sells real estate. He appeared in a 2009 episode of Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, showing Griffin several homes.
[edit] References
- ^ Sean Bugg (15 May 2003). "Out of the Park: Former pro-baseball player Billy Bean pursues a new field of dreams". Metro Weekly. http://www.metroweekly.com/feature/?ak=472. Retrieved 2008-03-16.
- ^ See http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1467905/
- ^ http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2011/10/billy_bean_beane_moneyball_pit.php
- ^ Buzinski, Jim (June 29, 2008). "Billy Bean, partner split". OutSports. http://www.outsports.com/jocktalkblog/?p=1172. Retrieved 2009-08-21.
- ^ "Bean-Viega Split Accompanied by Tragedy". The Advocate. July 11, 2008. http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid57462.asp. Retrieved 2009-08-21.
[edit] External links
- Billy Bean.com
- Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference, or Fangraphs, or The Baseball Cube
- Baseball Library page
- 1964 births
- Living people
- People from Santa Ana, California
- Major League Baseball outfielders
- Detroit Tigers players
- Los Angeles Dodgers players
- Loyola Marymount Lions baseball players
- Kintetsu Buffaloes players
- San Diego Padres players
- Gay sportspeople
- LGBT sportspeople from the United States
- Baseball players from California
- American expatriate baseball players in Japan
- Glens Falls Tigers players
- Toledo Mud Hens players
- Albuquerque Dukes players
- Edmonton Trappers players
- Las Vegas Stars (baseball) players
