As I mentioned in my post The World's Loneliest Man (Part I), recently I’ve been reading Billy Bean's autobiography, Going the Other Way: Lessons from a life in and out of Major League Baseball. Bean played major league baseball from 1987 through 1995, and is the only living former major league baseball player to publicly "come out" as a homosexual.

Throughout Bean's time in baseball he was closeted, and in fact not even any of his friends or his own mother and father knew that he was gay. Bean was a marginal player, and he lived in fear that if he revealed (or if someone discovered) his homosexuality, it would have killed his baseball career.

This is the second excerpt from the book I've posted on my blog. In the first one, Bean has finally acknowledged his homosexuality to himself, and has fallen in love with Sam, with whom he secretly lives. In the excerpt below Sam dies of AIDS and Bean is sent to the minor leagues.

Excerpted from Going the Other Way: Lessons from a life in and out of Major League Baseball

After I spent several agonizing hours pacing and fretting, Sam was still deteriorating, I again demanded that the staff “do something.” The medical technician brought over a syringe, placing it in his IV tube.

“This will allow him to rest more comfortably,” he said.

But Sam was calm, eerily so; I was the one who needed sedation. About fifteen minutes later, at about 6 A.M., Sam and I were alone inside the curtain when his breathing became labored. Then he bucked up and down. A beeper sounded.

The medical staff finally leapt into action, Slamming his chest with electric panels and forcing a tube down his throat.

“What the hell is going on?” Now I was screaming.

“He’s in cardiac arrest,” the nurse said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

I knew Sam was gone when I saw the vacant look in his eyes. They kept trying to resuscitate him, but as time went on, their pace slowed. After they pronounced him dead, I sat in a chair next to him for what seemed like an eternity. I hadn’t even had an opportunity to say good-bye. The “doctor” had failed to take any decisive medical action before it was too late. He said something about an infection, or a ruptured pancreas, mumbled condolences, and went back to his rounds as if this kind of thing happened every day.

It was the only time in my life I wasn’t overjoyed to be in the starting lineup. Bochy had me hitting second and playing right. They say some guys are good enough to play in their sleep. I’m not sure that phrase ever applied to me, but that’s what the game felt like. I drifted in and out of a nightmare, waking only when the ball came hurtling toward me at what seemed like the speed of light. Though I’m not sure I really focused on many pitches, I managed a bloop single to left and a four-pitch walk. I handled perhaps five putouts in the field without an error.

It was a relief to be toweling off after the game. Then one of our clubhouse kids said Bochy “wants to see you.” It is the most hated line in sports. Every player knows exactly what it means. Given the events of the last twelve hours, I just couldn’t believe it was happening to me.

I threw on a T-shirt and my long underwear. Then I made one of the longest walks of my life, toward the smaller chamber in the visitors’ clubhouse. Bochy and GM Randy Smith were waiting for me. After stammering through some pleasantries, Smith proceeded to spin out excuses about why he had to “send me down.” Bochy was the kind of guy who hated delivering bad news. He stared at the floor the entire time. It seemed nobody could look me in the face that day.

The news made me feel like I’d been punched while already knocked out. Suddenly feeling exposed in my underwear, I insisted they were making a “huge mistake.” In as steady a voice as I could muster, I told them that I brought something special to the table, that I’d been productive for two years, never missed a day of practice, let alone a game, and that they would regret it, blah, blah, blah. Then I stopped in mid-sentence.

“You know what?” I said. “Screw this. Something horrible happened to me this morning. The worst thing ever. Nothing you can say to me right now can make me feel any worse than I already do. I’m getting out of here.”

Expressing my anger felt better than groveling. And it had the added benefit of obscuring the pain of rejection. News travels fast in the locker room. Brad Ausmus, Trevor Hoffman, Archi Cianfranco, Phil Plantier, and pitcher Andy Ashby were waiting for me at my locker. They were pissed. They assured me I’d be back in a few days. Even though most of those guys were stars, they insisted I deserved to make the club as much as they did.

“Management doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing," Brad declared.

However predictable they may have been, these sentiments were the greatest gift I could have received: simple empathy from players who had stood in my cleats. Maybe they couldn’t understand my personal life, but at least they could understand the hard knocks.

I let them know I’d had a “really tough day”--the understatement of the century--and that I loved them like brothers. Brad and Trevor reached over to hug me. Since I knew the gentlest touch was sure to unleash a humiliating torrent of tears, I pulled back and started jamming my gear into my duffle bag. I told them I hoped they would understand why I had to get out of there. I pulled on my jeans and favorite gray sweatshirt and flipped the clubhouse kid a $100 bill, telling him to make sure my gear found me wherever I ended up...

On my way to the parking lot, I wondered what else could go wrong. Not knowing whether to feel hurt or angry, I rode both emotions, alternately bawling and grinding my teeth. For a moment, I found myself consoled by the notion that I’d soon be in Sam’s embrace, only to get hammered again by the grim reality. I ducked into a maintenance room inside the stadium so that nobody could see the tears that flowed down my face. I’d been awake for about thirty-six hours. I was exhausted, my head felt numb, and all I wanted was to hold Sam one last time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 11:23 am and is filed under Baseball/Sports, Gays, Gay Marriage, Gender Issues (Misc.). You can trackback from your own site.