OutSports
http://www.outsports.com/columns/gaymetboydbean20020524.htm
 
Out With the Out Guy
Why Billy Bean Is a Lousy Spokesman
 
By Randy Boyd
Special to Outsports.com

We might be able to start setting our clocks by it: the annual mini-media spotlight on the question: Is there a real catcher in baseball?

Last year, an Out magazine op-ed piece allegedly written by the lover of a gay player ignited the fury. This year, it's another New York based publication that dishes out a heavy dose of insinuation and innuendo, and for a few days anyway, the NBA playoffs, NHL playoffs and everything else in the sports world is on hold while we speculate on the answer to The Biggest Question and Challenge in Professional Sports: Can naked grown straight men function in the same enclosed space as naked grown not-so-straight men?

Cue the speculation, theorizing and gay sports fans' hopeful fantasies. Cue the homophobic players saying they're afraid to let anyone who's gay see their penis. Or their backstops, for that matter (cause Lord knows, all it takes is five seconds alone with a naked straight man to make him forget his wife and/or girlfriend and switch to "our team." We're that persuasive or they're that weak and inclined, take your pick). Cue the rumor mill. Cue the denials. Cue Billy "Please Don't Hurt Me" Bean, our poster boy and media expert when it comes to the subject of homos hiding out in pro sports.

Bean became "a qualified expert" by default when he came out of the closet after his short-lived baseball career, and to my knowledge, has never had anything positive to say about the prospect of someone being same-gender loving in the world of sports. His negative demeanor on the topic doesn't just cover the prospect of someone being an active player and openly gay. No, sir, if you listen to Doomsday Billy, a homo couldn't make it in pro sports in any capacity, in or out, because there's just too much pressure to be a hetero pig with the rest of the boys. If I were a young, gay or questioning kid with aspirations of 360 slam dunks or grand slam homers or hat tricks, I'd run the other way from the playing fields after listening to Bean.

Could the dude be more fatalistic?

If that's what his own experience was like, fine, but hey, don't rain on everybody's parade. Attention, Billy: your experience as a queer journeyman in baseball is not the sum total of all experiences by all homos in sports. Common sense would dictate that, if nothing else. But not to CryBaby Bean. Sometimes he sounds like the PR rep for an organization trying to keep gays outta sports.

Maybe that's why he's the media darling; he helps them feed on their fears.

With this latest flare-up of New York Met gossip, expert Bean appeared on expert Jim Rome's show and reiterated what expert Bean has said from Day One about gays in sports: Coming out and being da man in the pros mixes like oil and water, like baseball contraction and good will, like the Cleveland Cavaliers and wins.

"The people who run sports don't want distractions," he told Romey.

People running sports don't want distractions?

Since when is getting laid a distraction?

Since when is loving with dignity a distraction?

Since when is being accepted and respected for who you are a distraction?

People are fighting and dying all over the world at this very moment because they want to be treated fairly (whatever their version of "fairly" is).

SPORTS is the distraction, CryBaby.

Halfway across the globe, young men (and women!) are walking into bakeries and onto bus stops blowing up themselves and strangers, and now, just about every security official in the US with something at stake is warning us that that road show is coming our way sooner than Star Wars III.

Yeah, it's nice for Shaq et al. to make millions dunking baskets and pitching burgers and cheese fries, and therefore they gotta take sports, e.g., their jobs, seriously if they want the dough. But children starving, restaurant-goers exploding, people feeling generally alienated from society for a billion reasons (AIDS, poverty, lack of affordable housing to name a few)--that's the real world. The half-assed efforts these athletically gifted men provide on the court and fields (see Chris Webber rebounding) is NOT.

Sports is nothing BUT distraction, which is why it's only natural and fitting that reporters have feeding frenzies over things like Chuck Finley in a shoe fight with his skanky rocker wife; Michael's gambling ways; Ray Lewis's borderline(?) criminal ways; Barry Bonds' and Mark McGwire's supplement ways; Webber's model girlfriend; questions like, who's dating Toni Braxton?; who shot the limo driver?; who punched whom in the locker room?; which French judge made which deal?; which city gave out the best bribes to land an event?; and on and on and on to the break of dawn.

Dear Crybaby: Don't try and tell us there's no room for one more ring in the infinite ring circus that is sports.

Dear Gay Man in Pro Sports Who Might Be Entertaining the Idea of Going Public: Here's the best reason of all for you to come out: So we can fire Doomsday Billy as our spokesperson.

http://www.outsports.com/columns/gaymetcittbean20020528.htm

Billy Bean Did the Right Thing
Marginal Players Can Be Replaced Easily

By Charlie in the Trees
Outsports.com columnist

``I don't think any player would be strong enough to handle that persecution, shrug it off, then deal with Randy Johnson. The pressure would mount. It could be a frightening experience. I would hate to see a great player screwed up without fully understanding the ramifications.''
-- Billy Bean, quoted in USA Today (May 24, 2002)

Why is Billy Bean so pessimistic? Why does he think it would be "professional suicide," in his words, for a major league baseball player to come out as gay?

Because we all view everything through the prism of our of own life experiences and it would have been professional suicide for a marginal, journeymen outfielder to have come out as gay in the late `80s or early `90s.

Bean's professional baseball career always had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. In seven major league seasons, his career numbers were as follows:

Bean's best season was 1993 with the Padres:

He did not have a superstar career. These are not Hall of Fame numbers. He only had 487 at bats in his entire major league career. Ichiro had 692 at bats last year alone.

Put Bean's numbers in perspective. From 1987 to 1995, he was one of the 150 or so people best suited to be a major league outfielder, in the whole world. But Bean's a bright guy. He saw that the gap between himself and the next 150 best outfielders (all panting for a shot in the majors in AAA ball) was a whole lot smaller than the gap between himself and baseball's superstars. Like most of us in our jobs: he could be replaced.

Let's do a comparison between Bean and three outfielders whose 2001 seasons were most comparable to his 1993 season:

(1) Mark Smith, outfielder, Montreal Expos

(2) John Mabry, outfielder, Florida Marlins (82 games) and St. Louis Cardinals (5 games)

(3) Mike Kinkade, outfielder, Baltimore Orioles:

Doubt that Bean could have been replaced easily? Of those three, whose 2001 compare very favorably with Bean's best, only John Mabry has played in the major leagues this season. Kinkade and Smith are gone, even without the complication of coming out. Mabry, just traded from the Philadelphia Phillies to the Oakland A's, has been averaging two teams per season the last three years. And that's using Bean's best season.

It's just as ugly if we use Bean's career averages. Comparing the three outfielders whose 2001 numbers most closely mirrored Bean's career averages:

(1) Todd Dunwoody, outfielder, Chicago Cubs:

(2) Robin Jennings, outfielder, Oakland Athletics (comparing only his AL numbers):

(3) Quentin McCracken, outfielder, Minnesota Twins:

Again: two of the three most comparable players have not been on a major league roster in 2001. And McCracken, as with Mabry in the best-year comparison, is on a different team as he is now a Diamondback. Think I selected specific players to reach the conclusion I wanted? You can go to majorleaguebaseball.com, go to the historical stats page and run your own comparisons. I omitted a player whose 2001 statistics more closely compare with Bean's career numbers, centerfielder Alex Sanchez of the Milwaukee Brewers, because he was a rookie in 2001.

My conclusion is simple: Billy Bean's right. I know these comparisons are not perfect, given the offensive explosion of the last few years, but I think they put Bean's career into context. For Bean to have come out, it would have been career suicide. For him. Players with stats comparable to Bean often do not return to the same team and likely find themselves out of work from season to season. That's reality. Even without the whole naked-in-the-shower issue as complicating things.

The second lesson: if Mabry or McCracken are gay, don't come out either. The water is ice cold. The atmosphere is poisonous on this planet. It's easy for us to say that Bean should have been more courageous, but his professional livelihood was constantly on the line.

Bean Situation Not Universal

Does that mean it would be professional suicide for any major league ball player to come out as a gay? Not exactly.

There are two ballplayers who I occasionally hear rumored to be gay. I'm not "outing" any of them. I can't. I have no first hand knowledge. I'm rumor-mongering for the sake of making a point. Would it be professional suicide for one of them, a terrific infielder, to come out? Every team, no matter how conservative, has room on its roster for a sure-thing Hall of Famer.

What about the other, who has played on a World Series winning team? Everybody's loved him and his teammates showered with him for years. They know he can exercise the necessary restraint in the locker room.

The lesson is clear. If you are the fourth of fifth outfielder on your team, you are probably the most replaceable component on any major league roster. You could be replaced any day, for any reason. Why risk it?

While it would have been wholly inappropriate for a marginal major leaguer like Bean to make a spectacle of coming out, his experience applies only to Billy Bean and other utility outfielders. Bean made arguably the correct choice for himself and he should not be criticized for it. But that also means that his deep pessimism is not warranted in every instance.

Close Window to Return to TBC Web Site