Former Major League Baseball player and executive Billy Bean has died at age 60.
MLB released a statement confirming his death, indicating he died at home on Tuesday after a yearlong fight with acute myeloid leukemia.
“We are deeply saddened by the passing of our friend and colleague Billy Bean, MLB’s Senior VP for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion and Special Assistant to the Commissioner,” MLB wrote on X. “Over the last 10 years, Billy worked passionately and tirelessly with MLB and all 30 Clubs, focusing on player education, LGBTQ inclusion, and social justice initiatives to advance equality in the game for all.”
“Commissioner Rob Manfred called Billy ‘one of the kindest and most respected individuals I have ever known’ and someone who ‘made Baseball a better institution, both on and off the field,’” the post concluded.
The former baseball player — whose teams included the Detroit Tigers, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the San Diego Padres — was the second former MLB player to come out as gay in 1999 before becoming the sport’s senior vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
We are deeply saddened by the passing of our friend and colleague Billy Bean, MLB’s Senior VP for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion and Special Assistant to the Commissioner. Billy, who fought a heroic year-long battle with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, was 60.
Over the last 10 years,… pic.twitter.com/dCfFM6hQlE
— MLB (@MLB) August 6, 2024
In 1999, The New York Times noted he was the “first major league baseball player to publicly discuss his homosexuality to this extent” when he came out as a member of the LGBTQ community.
“I was always little Billy Bean, small but bighearted, a gamer, play hurt, stick it out,” Bean—who was born in Santa Ana, California, in 1964—told The Times. “My mom worked two jobs, and I started a new elementary school every year. Because it was mostly the two of us, I always felt grown-up, responsible. I was precise and methodical like her. And very emotional. I wanted to please people, make them proud of me.”
Bean’s father left when he was just 6 months old, but his mother remarried a police officer, Ed Kovac, who was supportive of his stepson.
”A handshake is binding in our house,” Kovac said. ”And that’s Billy. Always been a credit to the family, the game, and it’s not for me to say, of course, but probably to the gay community as well.”
In 2014, Bean published a memoir, Going the Other Way: An Intimate Memoir of Life In and Out of Major League Baseball. That year, MLB named him their first ambassador for inclusion, a role that would let him support LGBTQ+ people in baseball.
“I’ve learned making an impact on someone’s life is more important than a lifetime .300 batting average,” Bean told the Los Angeles Times back in 2001. “The more positive role models that people see, the less sensational the whole idea of diverse sexuality becomes.”
