From major league baseball’s only openly gay former player—and now its first-ever Ambassador for Inclusion—the intimate chronicle of a man who, in the prime of his career, had to make a terrible choice between his love of the game and the love of his life
More than ten years after its original publication, Going the Other Way remains deeply moving, and more timely than ever.
By virtue of a relentless work ethic, exceptional multi-sport talent, and a quick left-handed swing, Billy Bean made it to the majors, where he played from 1987 to 1995—an outfielder for the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Diego Padres. But as a gay man in the brutally anti-gay world of baseball, closeted to teammates and family, Bean found himself unable to reconcile two worlds that he felt to be mutually exclusive. At the young age of 31, in the prime of his career, even as he solidified his role as a major-league utility player, Bean walked away from the game that was both his calling and his livelihood.
At once heartbreaking and farcical, ruminative and uncensored, this unprecedented memoir points the way toward a more perfect game, one in which all players can pursue their athletic dreams free of prejudice and discrimination.
I’m not really a sports fan outside of gymnastics. However, I am really interested in the stories of LGBTQ+ professional or high level athletes. Billy Bean was closeted to his family, friends, and teammates when he played for Major League Baseball in the late 80s and early 90s. He ended up retiring from the sport at a young age because he felt like he couldn’t truly be himself while still playing.
There were definitely some moving moments in Billy’s story of realizing his sexuality during the height of the AIDS crisis, the struggles of keeping his relationship hidden, and the culture of homophobia that was pervasive in sports and wider culture at the time. However, there was a lot of really bland, play by play coverage of different games that wasn’t all that interesting. Yes this is a sports memoir so talking about the game itself is important. But it just seemed like that took up more page time than Billy’s personal journey, which I think was the more compelling part of the book.
The quality of writing was also pretty mediocre and it was hard to keep track of when things were happening. Because even though the book was mostly told in a linear format it would sometimes skip around in years between paragraphs without much explanation of the dates or timeline. Overall this wasn’t a spectacular book, but I’m glad I read it. Hearing about what it was like being a closeted major league baseball player was interesting even if the book as a whole wasn’t that great.
I've always been besotted by the game of baseball, which can be weird for an Australian, but I blame it on a childhood love of Peanuts, and the films "Bad News Bears" and "Field of Dreams". There is a romanticism inherent in baseball, but I guess I also feel the same way about our AFL.
This is an interesting read because Bean clearly shows his love of baseball on every page. Unfortunately, he didn't feel that baseball loved him back as much. He freely admits it is not the game's fault, but the restrictions of society and the machismo of professional sport, as it was in direct conflict with his sexuality and ability to just simply be himself.
There is a real sense of poignancy here - Bean left the game before he was really ready to, because he found love and wanted to make a go of it. It is sad that 20 years later (in baseball, at least) we are still waiting for a baseball player to be openly out whilst still playing. Robbie Rogers, Jason Collins and Michael Sam are paving the way in soccer, basketball and football - hopefully the successor to Billy Bean will be along sooner rather than later.
The real surprise of "Going the Other Way," Billy Bean's account of life in the big leagues as a closeted gay man, is what a fresh and insightful baseball book it turns out to be. Bean spent parts of six seasons with the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres between stints in the minors. He kept himself in great shape (pudgy pitchers would kid him about his lean stomach) and played hard but had only sporadic success. What Bean did, as he likes to joke, was spend a lot of time on the bench, rooting for his teammates and watching the action from up close. He was an insider who always privately felt like an outsider.
"People forget that athletes are as emotionally fragile as anybody else," he writes. "The relentless pressure to perform gets to you after a while, and the riches involved simply up the ante. There was little of the camaraderie that I had experienced in college; this was a game, but it was also a business,
and a brutal one at that." He muses about how "fooling around was about much more than sex" for his teammates and describes sexual adventures as being another facet of ballplayer competition. "I was always shocked at how brazenly guys who professed to hate 'homos' strutted around the locker room, showing off their well-toned muscles and flopping c--."
Bean might cast a wry eye on ballplayers' strange ways, but mostly he admires them, especially rare figures such as his Padre teammate Tony Gwynn, a great hitter with a less-than-great body. He's a fan of the game, and not shy about it at all.
"I had not seen the fabled Tiger Stadium before, and when we finally made it inside it actually looked like one of those old grainy black-and-white photos from the early days of the game, as though it were suspended in time," he writes of his first days in the big leagues. "There is nothing more beautiful than a major-league clubhouse."
Bean, with ghostwriter Chris Bull, excels at capturing the rhythms of the game. "Baseball is as much mental as physical, and you spend a lot more time thinking about your next play than you do actually making it," he notes. Or, elsewhere: "Baseball is the most languid of team sports. There's endless strategizing, constant chatter, practicing, stretching, standing around -- and simply waiting for the next pitch. You get enough time to know the char-
acter of your teammates. Which may be why you find so many memorable personalities."
That sounds almost like Roger Angell, but the difference is, Angell never had a chance to sit in the dugout taking in the action with figures like Sparky Anderson, Tommy Lasorda, Felipe Alou, Kirk Gibson and Steve Garvey. Bean takes each of these men at face value and shows a sense of humor in describing his dealings with them.
Bean dressed for his first team flight in jeans and sneakers, and the grandfatherly Anderson glares at him in the elevator of the team hotel, then orders him upstairs to put on a jacket and tie. "Imagine a gay man, even a closeted gay man in denial, taking fashion tips from Sparky Anderson, and you'll know how green I really was back then," he writes.
He's less impressed with Lasorda, the large-bellied Dodger manager known for being crude. Bean tells of being summoned to talk to the manager, only to find him on the toilet, noisily conducting his business and carrying on a conversation with Bean at the same time.
Bean can forgive hazing rituals like that but has a tougher time accepting Lasorda's attitude toward his son, Tommy Jr., known as Spunky, who was gay and died of complications from AIDS. "My son wasn't gay," Lasorda told GQ. "No way. "
"Glenn Burke wasn't traded because he was gay," Bean then writes. "Tommy Lasorda Jr. didn't die of AIDS. Spunky was straight. Billy Bean was the boy of every girl's dream."
The anger at the heart of that paragraph makes perfect sense. Bean spent years worrying that if his teammates knew the truth about him, they would turn their backs on him. He believed that his career would instantly be over, which leads to some heartbreaking scenes with his Iranian-born lover, Sam, who dies suddenly and terribly.
The fear was understandable, given the number of "faggot" jokes and so forth one hears from ballplayers. But once Bean has retired from baseball, he decides to come out, in a Miami Herald article, and hears mostly positive messages from his former teammates. Brad Ausmus, for example, told a reporter: "It wouldn't have made any difference to me when we played together, and it doesn't matter to me now."
Bean is right to insist that Major League Baseball do more to reach out to gay fans and to make it easier for any ballplayers who might decide to come out while they are still playing. But something is wrong when he writes that the "malicious, anti-gay climate of the game forced me to make a cruel choice - - between love of the game and love of a man."
In fact, based on what Bean has written, no one forced him to make such a choice. It would have been difficult, and possibly even dangerous, for him to have chosen both baseball and open love of a man, but he could have done it. He could have taken those risks and maybe been both a better ballplayer and a better man because of it. He will never know how that would have been. But in telling his story, Bean has lent a hand of support to other ballplayers who might now be facing the same decision.
Steve Kettmann is the editor of "Game Time," the new collection of Roger Angell's baseball writing.
Even today, 12 years after this book was written/published, it still takes courage to publish this kind of story. And that's just plain sad. And ridiculous. But it's nice to know that this world will progress, no matter what. Baseball is, and always has been, my favorite sport, and this is a very good book about baseball and about a person facing challenges. Congrats to Billy Bean for owning up!
Combines two of my favorite things—baseball and LGBTQ issues—in one book, with plenty of insights about both. Wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to a non-baseball fan.
I'm not sure what is harder to believe--that the perennially youthful looking Billy Bean has just turned 50 or that Major League Baseball still doesn't have an openly gay player a decade after Bean's groundbreaking book. Bean and Chris Bull's book remains as relevant as ever, not only in detailing the homophobia in professional and non-professional sports, but in illuminating how closetedness is so self-destructive to gay athletes. Bean doesn't try to set himself up as a groundbreaking hero, just as someone who was surprised to find that his honesty was a help to so many others. And as a baseball memoir, "Going the Other Way" provides a welcome perspective on the stresses and strains on the short career of a journeyman MLB player. Recommended.
I have never been so intrigued by the life story of an individual that was so active in professional sports, but had the secret life of a homosexual. This book kept my interest from page 1 through the end of the book. It educated me on the stigma that goes along being gay in professional sports, and just how Billy Bean overcame the challenges.
I appreciate any kind of honest autobiography of a life fully lived, and certainly there are a lot of remarkable noteworthy landmarks in this one. But the collection of memories was arranged in simple chronological order and shifted in tone from baseball mentor, to coming out, from sports elder statesman, to activist and mentor. It sometimes just felt like a stream of consciousness narrative which made the more reflective LGBTQ rights voice occasionally feel forced and out of place. Still a courageous and ultimately hopeful and uplifting story.
What a great look at life as it had to be lived during a time when you had to keep your true life a secret in order to keep you work life. Glad things have begun to change.
Another intriguing baseball biography I can recommend. It does a fine job of telling the story and getting the reader on the inside of the pressure Bean faced. I really enjoyed it.
I think more baseball players write books than those of other team sports. Why I don't know. My first was Sparky Lyle's Bronx Zoo years and years ago, and still continue to read books written by former mlb players.
This is the second memoir I have read from former Los Angeles Dodgers players. The first being Steve Howe's book a few years ago. The two players a baseball generation apart, Billy Bean starting out his career in baseball, just as Steve Howe was ending his. And, if my recollection is correct, they both tell the same story about Tommy Lasorda.
That said, the Los Angeles Dodger portion of the book is a minor part of it. It's more of an autobiography of Billy Bean, an overacheiving pre-mlb player, who came up to the majors with high expectations, and then retired from the game on his own terms.
What sets this book apart from the others is that Bean is gay, and in that respect, it's a unique perspective on the game. Baseball broke the color barrier for team sports, it is probably the most international of all team sports played in the United States - and to Bean, it should be the sport that leads the way in accepting openly gay players.
It's written in an easy to read conversational style. It is very opiniated, with both positive and negative observations about the institution of baseball and some of the personnel he dealt with. The message of the book is obvious - it's time for MLB to acknowledge that some players are gay and policies should be in place so that those players do not feel threatened by the attitude of those who are not accepting.
However, without reading anything into it, it's just like any other baseball memoir, which covers the player's off field life as well as on field experiences, whithout the dramatic recollections of a Game 7 of the World Series and such. And in that, we are treated as readers, in what we like best, we are taken on a journey of the best kind - one of tragedy and inspiration,low-points and high-points, sadness and happiness - the ingredients of life, and the hero survives and continues fighting.
This book is a family legend. Why? Well, one winter a few years ago, I was really into Moneyball, about Billy Bean and his successful strategies as GM of the Oakland Athletics. My dad was sick of hearing about this book, but he kept on listening. I think.
Anyway, Christmas morning comes, and I gently open a wrapped present, and it's this book. Going the Other Way. About being a gay baseball player. I'd heard of it, but never had read it.
I instantly recognized it and kept a blank look on my face, trying to figure out what to say. My dad grins at me and says, "That's the guy that wrote Moneyball, Drew." And he had the nicest, most genuine smile on his face.
I let it slip that this wasn't the same Billy Bean(e).. this was the gay journeyman outfielder, and the title "Going the Other Way" wasn't a reference to front office trades and signings. He laughed harder than ever before in his life.
So after this, my brother decides to read it, and tells me a handful of the anecdotes, most involving Tommy Lasorda, a Dodgers manager. So, a couple years later, I pick it up, and you know what? It's not too bad. Sure, it's got its "handjob in the gym's locker room shower" passages, but there's a lot about living your life in secrecy. It's a page turner in the sense that you constantly wonder if people will catch him or not.
Recommended if you're looking for something easy to read and yet strangely interesting.
Incredibly poignant, terribly sad and ultimately inspiring. It is not a book about baseball, although both baseball fans and non-fans will learn something about the inner workings of the sport. It is a book about a gay professional sportsman who was forced to hide himself from everyone, to the heartbreaking point of having to pretend that nothing happened on the day his partner's death.
Amazing to me was the sympathy Billy Bean generates from simply telling the facts of his life. Billy avoids portraying himself as a victim -- he got to live out his childhood dream for more than a decade, he enjoyed love, and he remains today surrounded by more love than ever before. Yet the facts in "Going the Other Way" show that he was, indeed, the victim of anti-gay bias, in countless ways and for his entire baseball career.
The greatest lesson to be learned from this book,(for *everyone*) is to realize that sexual orientation is irrelevant to personal friendship, professional aptitude or collegiality. 5 stars all the way.
"It wasn't my sexuality that bothered her. She felt wounded because I hadn't trusted her enough to turn to her for support, instead of suffering in silence for all those years."
Billy Bean on coming out to his mother. This quote made me tear up a bit. And it made me happy that the world is changing, and being queer no longer has to be a shaming, damaging, secret.
This book reminds us, in these days of growing equality, about the homophobia that has made people miserable and ruined lives. Bean's discussion of how his secret hurt the woman he genuinely loved and married, how it hurt his lover and his family, was heart rending. And when he finally came out, the relief he felt at having that burden lifted was an amazing payoff.
In his closing letter to the Commissioner he commends baseball for erasing racial barriers, and urges a similar stance on openly gay players. I hope baseball can leave up to his dream for it.
As a gay baseball fan this book spoke to me on two levels; as a lover of the sport, and also of my appreciation for coming out stories. Being familiar with many of the players named, and specific instances in the Game as experienced by a player was fascinating in itself, but Billy's struggles on & off the field were both heartbreaking & uplifting. I am happy for him that he now serves as MLB's first "Ambassador for Inclusion". Well deserved.