Bean, Billy 1964–

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Bean, Billy 1964–

PERSONAL: Born 1964, in Santa Ana, CA; son of Bill and Linda (Robertson) Bean; stepson of Ed Kovac (a police officer); married (divorced); partner's name Sam (died 1995); partner of Efrain Veiga (a restaurateur and businessman), 1995–. Education: Loyola Marymount University, degree (business administration), 1986.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Marlowe & Co., Avalon Publishing Group, 245 West 17th Street, 11th floor, New York, NY 10011-5300.

CAREER: Professional baseball player, commercial real estate agent, vintage home restorer, restaurateur, human rights advocate, and actor. Major League baseball player for Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Diego Padres, 1987–95; Mayya (restaurant), Miami Beach, FL, co-owner; Gray & Associates Properties, Inc., Miami Beach, real estate agent. Appeared in an episode of Arliss, Home Box Office; and in play The Nature of the Beach.

WRITINGS:

(With Chris Bull) Going the Other Way: Lessons from a Life in and out of the Major Leagues, Marlowe & Co. (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: Billy Bean played major-league baseball for six years before making the decision to quit and come out as a gay man, first in a 1999 interview for the Miami Herald. The New York Times ran a long article about Bean's life, and Diane Sawyer filmed a segment about Bean and his business and life partner, Efrain Veiga, for ABC's 20/20. Bean wrote his memoir, Going the Other Way: Lessons from a Life in and out of the Major Leagues with journalist Chris Bull.

Bull also was the first to interview Bean for a gay publication, the Advocate and noted that, after he first came out, Bean was overwhelmed with calls, cards, and messages from gay and nongay fans and friends. "Many lauded Bean for his gutsiness," wrote Bull. "Others commended Bean's decision to retire in order to deepen his relationship with Veiga, a story so romantic it seems lifted from a movie script."

Bean was raised by a single mother, his father having left when he was a baby. Their lives became more stable with her marriage to Ed Kovac, a former U.S. Marine and a policeman. Bean was an outstanding high school athlete, as well as valedictorian of his class. He won a full scholarship to Loyola Marymount, a Jesuit college in Los Angeles. The New York Yankees drafted him in his junior year, offering him a substantial bonus, but Bean stayed at Marymount, as he had promised his coach he would. He later signed as a third draft pick with Detroit, started in the minors, then debuted in the majors in 1987. Bean was a good all-around fielder and hitter who was well liked by his managers and teammates, but in 1989, he went hitless. He was dropped back to the minors, then traded to the Dodgers, managed by Tommy Lasorda, whose own gay son died of AIDS.

As Bean said in the Advocate interview, "I loved playing for Tommy. He was a great guy. I was such a peaches-and-cream-faced kid when I played for him. Tommy would walk by and say, 'Every father wants his daughter to marry Bill Bean.' I always thought, why do they have to talk about me like that? Why am I this apple-pie kid when here I am harboring this thing inside me? God's playing tricks on me. It simply reaffirmed that there was something wrong with me. Tommy told a lot of fag jokes, but he joked about everybody. Nobody ever talked about his son. It was something you just didn't talk about." But Bean could never relax as a gay man in a very anti-gay environment. Not knowing what the reaction would be if he came out while he was playing, he chose not to.

Although he had relationships with young women and was in a marriage that lasted nearly four years, Bean finally faced his homosexuality after his natural father died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four. He left his wife and had his first homosexual experience at the age of twenty-eight. He played ball in Japan for a year in 1992, then joined the Padres where, for the first time, he felt like he belonged. His best year was 1993, but in spite of his relative success, he was always on guard around teammates who often invited Bean to join them in their search for women. Bean had his own sexual encounters, after which he felt the guilt of his Catholic upbringing, and when he met Sam, an Iranian man, in a health club, they began a monogamous, but secret, relationship. When teammates came to their house, Sam sat in the car, and Bean refused to let his brothers stay at the house.

On April 24, 1995, Sam died of cardiac arrest, and Bean, unable to openly express his grief, played ball on the day of his lover's funeral. It was then that he vowed that if he ever fell in love again, that relationship would take precedence over all else. Later in the season, while Bean was in Florida playing the Marlins, he met Efrain Veiga, a sophisticated, Georgetown-educated Cuban who owned the trendy restaurant Yuca, in Miami Beach. Bean kept his promise to himself. He came out to his mother and his policeman stepfather over Thanksgiving, and they embraced him and his lifestyle without reservations. One of Kovac's partners had been gay.

Bean did not return to baseball. He moved to Miami, and he and Veiga became business partners, as well. He agreed to the Miami Herald interview with Lydia Martin after his former Loyola roommate, Cincinnati Reds pitcher Tim Layana, was killed in an automobile accident. The story that was to be about his major league experiences became his coming-out story. As he told the Advocate interviewer, Martin "got me to do something I needed to do. I thought I could handle it better than I did. I felt naked in front of everyone. But it turned out great. The relationships I've repaired have been incredible. I had to be shown examples that life would go on okay."

In reviewing Going the Other Way, Booklist critic Ray Olson said that Bean's testimony "is as much a tribute to baseball as it is an argument for accepting gays, and better for that." A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that "professional sports, like life, is messy and complex, but Bean has done athletes a service by relieving them of the gay-bashing mantle."