Billy Bean, a former Major League outfielder who made national headlines in 1999 when he announced he was a homosexual, recounted his experiences in front of an audience in Moulton Union on Tuesday.
Bean, who hails from a Catholic family, was a three-sport athlete in high school before attending Loyola Marymount University, where he was a two-time All American outfielder. Bean then pursued a professional baseball career, playing for the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San Diego Padres between 1987 to 1995.
Bean devoted most of his lecture to his decision to come out publicly in 1999 after years of hiding his homosexuality.
"I was so frightened by the reality of getting caught and sacrificing my dream that I lived in secret and lost my soul completely," said Bean. "I knew I had to tell someone so that I could someday look in the mirror and feel like a person again."
Before coming out in an interview with Diane Sawyer, Bean was married for five years. However, he had secretly kept a partner for three years, an Iranian man named Sam who knew nothing about baseball. Sam died suddenly in 1995 of a ruptured pancreas. One year later, Bean quit baseball.
"I couldn't stand pretending that nothing was wrong while dealing with the trauma of losing someone I loved," Bean said. "I couldn't tell my teammates because I didn't want to be treated differently. I wanted to just be a baseball player and nothing else. The secrecy and the grief were a lot to juggle at once."
Bean, who now runs a real estate company in Miami Beach with his partner of nine years, said he hopes Bowdoin athletes will consider his message.
"I was just like all of you guys," he said at the lecture. "I know what it's like to be an athlete, the pressures that come with that. Sometimes though, not putting out the fire is just as bad as starting it. And who knows, maybe someday in the future a former teammate will tap you on the shoulder and say, 'Hey, thanks for what you did that time back then,' and then you'll know you made a difference."
Assistant Professor of English Guy Mark Foster spearheaded the effort to get Bean at Bowdoin. Foster was intrigued by Bean's book, "Going the Other Way: Lessons from a Life In and Out of Major League Baseball," and connected it to a class he taught last fall on masculinity.
"One of the things the class explored was the relationship between dominant forms of masculinity and things like homophobia and misogyny," Foster said. "I wanted some insight into the world of professional sports and homosexuality, so I read Bean's book and found it really fascinating to read."
Foster secured funding for the talk from a variety of departments, including Athletics, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Lectures and Concerts, Gender and Women's Studies, Health Services, Counseling Services, Bowdoin Queer Straight Alliance, the Queer-Trans Resource Center, and the English Department.
According to Foster, Bean's message will continue to be relevant until society ceases to have a problem with same-sex relationships and sexual identities. Too often, Foster said, society inculcates men with the "be bigger, tougher, stronger than the next guy, win at all costs, I-don't-feel-pain brand of humanity.
"The challenge before us that I wanted to lay down by inviting Billy Bean here to speak, was for all of us to recognize how intrinsic such thinking is to our culture," said Foster. "Only then can we begin the process of unlearning that thinking. Until then, I'm afraid Billy Bean's right: We won't have an openly gay male athlete in any of the big sports, and if we don't unlearn our old way of thinking, we won't deserve to either."