Billy Bean has died at the age of 60. In 1999, the former baseball player — whose teams included the Detroit Tigers, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres — was the second former Major League Baseball player to come out as gay. Bean became the league’s senior vice president for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Bean's death was confirmed by the Major League Baseball, which posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) that the former player "fought a heroic year-long battle 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," the MLB wrote.

"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," the league continued, before sharing a quote from Commissioner Rob Manfred, who said Bean was “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.”

Bean was born in Santa Ana, Calif., in 1964. His parents married when his mother, who was 18 at the time, got pregnant, but his father left when Bean was 6 months old.

''I was always little Billy Bean, small but bighearted, a gamer, play hurt, stick it out,'' he told The New York Times in 1999. ''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.”

When Bean was 9, his mother married Ed Kovac, a police officer. They would give Bean five younger siblings. Bean was a talented basketball player in addition to his baseball skills. During his junior year at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, he was drafted by the New York Yankees, but he’d promised his college coach he would return. 

''A handshake is binding in our house,'' Kovac told the Times in 1999. ''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.''

After his senior year, during which his team played in the College World Series, he was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in 1986. He made his debut for the club in 1987. “Walking on a major league field has always been my goal,” he told the Los Angeles Times at the time. “Now my goal is to do it tomorrow and the next day and the next and the next.” He was sent back down to the minor leagues that summer and married his college sweetheart during this time.

Bean was traded to the Dodgers after underperforming with the Tigers. Playing for his hometown team was overwhelming, but, he told The New York Times, he was pleased when Dodgers legend Vin Scully nicknamed him “Guillermo Frijoles.” Bean also had a hard time breaking out because there was another player in the league with a similar name — Billy Beane, whose time with the Oakland Athletics would be immortalized in the film Moneyball.

Bean’s biological father died in 1991, and as the player began to cope with his sexuality, he and his wife divorced. ''Something was just drawing me to that other side,'' he told The New York Times. ''I've had good sex with women and good relationships, but something was missing, even with my wife. I wasn't fulfilled. I had a fear of not being understood, not being totally accepted. I was looking for a soul mate, someone I could let my guard down with. I only found that with men.''

Bean spent a year in Japan before signing with the San Diego Padres in 1993. At the time, he was living with a male partner, and he was worried others would find out about their relationship. “I lived 20 miles from the stadium to keep people from that casual drop-by,” he told PEOPLE in 2014. “My partner had faith that everyone would be fine with it, but I didn't. The double life was exhausting.” 

In 1995, just before the start of his third season with the Padres, Sam died. Bean didn’t tell his teammates. “Think if you lost your wife or partner, went to work and didn't tell anybody?" he told PEOPLE. "But I thought the world would stop spinning if I came out.” Bean retired after that season.

Bean came out to his family that November. He came out publically in 1999, first in an article in the Miami Herald and then in The New York Times. At the time, he was in a relationship with Efrain Veiga; they split in 2008.

He was the second former player to come out after Glenn Burke, who had been out to teammates but came out publicly in 1982. Burke died in 1995. Bean developed a relationship with Burke’s family and advocated for MLB and the Dodgers (Burke's former team) to embrace him in a larger way, per The New York Times.

Bean told PEOPLE in 2014 that he realized he wanted to use his platform in a larger way after meeting Judy Shepard, whose son Matthew was murdered in 1998 in an antigay attack. “She said, ‘Matthew would've loved you, and he loved baseball.’ I realized there's a responsibility. Sports can help people to become more accepting. I feel I've been a part of that, and I'm proud of it.”

“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 in 2001. “The more positive role models that people see, the less sensational the whole idea of diverse sexuality becomes.”

Bean published a 2014 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. Then commissioner Bud Selig said at the time, "I wish that our game had someone in place to whom Billy and Glenn could have turned when they played; a friend, listener, a source of support. That's why I am so delighted to make this announcement today."

In 2017, he was named a special assistant to the commissioner, and in 2022. he became the senior vice president for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. That year, a third former player, TJ House, came out. 

In December 2023, Bean revealed he had been diagnosed with leukemia. “I’m not angry; I’m hopeful," he told USA Today at the time. “But it hit me really, really hard. I spent 21 days in a hospital with my immune system compromised, I couldn’t have visitors. It was a very isolating experience, especially when you don’t know what the outcome is."

He was upset that his work with the MLB would slow down because of his illness. “Nobody knows all of the work he does with teams and individuals," Patrick Courtney, MLB’s chief communications officer, told the outlet. “He has made such an impact for us. He just didn’t want anything to slow down his momentum."

"It was a different time and place when I played, when Glenn Burke played," Bean told The Advocate in 2022. "Culturally, it was acceptable to perpetuate all those stereotypes that other people were defining our community by. We never had a chance to author our own biographies, and now we do because we have fought and persevered. And so I feel great responsibility and pride to be an example of my community to baseball."

He added, "I just think that each and every year, each and every day, I'm in this seat, I am more humbled by the opportunity to bring people together.”

In a 2016 interview with Philadelphia Gay News, he noted that when others wrote about him, they always wrote “gay” first. He said, “It’s the first word they define me as for the rest of my life. I will always be the gay player. I’m an out and proud gay man now, so I’m fine with that.”

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