Why so little proof of discrimination against gay ballplayers?

Who was even worse? Gay Billy Bean or "Moneyball" Billy Beane?

Aug 17, 2024

Is there evidence of a gay major league baseball player having had his career cut short by discrimination?

The sporting press repeatedly points to a couple of players who came out as gay after retirement and implies they had to quit due to homophobia: Glenn Burke, who died of AIDS in 1995, and Billy Bean, who died of leukemia this month after serving as major league baseball’s senior vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

From the Washington Post:

Billy Bean was a safe space for a sport that couldn’t find a safe space for him
The openly gay former Major Leaguer and senior vice president dedicated himself to making baseball more inclusive. Where does it go from here after his death?
Billy Bean, MLB’s senior vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion, died Aug. 6.

Note that the article confusingly fails to mention that gay Billy Bean and Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics general manager who was memorably played by Brad Pitt in Moneyball, are wholly different people, even though their career statistics as ballplayers are weirdly similar, as I shall document below.

By Chelsea Janes
August 15, 2024 at 6:07 a.m. EDT
Billy Bean’s death, while not a surprise to those who knew he was ill, still stunned a generation of baseball officials who spent the last decade relying on him.
Bean played six seasons in the major leagues. …
Later that year, weary from the secrecy, Bean decided to step away from his dreams and his baseball life.

In 2014, Bean was named MLB’s first ambassador for inclusion. By 2022, he was a senior vice president, focused on diversity, the man charged with helping dull the edges of the same long-standing clubhouse prejudices that slashed his dreams. …

While this makes for a narrative that fits The Narrative, a glance at Bean’s stats in Baseball Reference suggests a more mundane story: turning 32, having played in 272 big league games from age 23 to age 31, the evidence was pretty clear by then that he didn’t have the talent to be more than a mediocre minor league player.

As a utility outfielder and first baseman (i.e., he couldn’t play key defensive positions), he batted .226 with 5 homers and 53 RBIs in the Bigs. He stole only 3 bases in 11 attempts, so he wasn’t very fast.

As a Triple AAA minor league, he was adequate, slashing .287/.366/.423 across 764 games. But coming into his age 32 season, there was little evidence he’d ever prove a useful major leaguer, so like countless not-quite-good-enough ballplayers before and after him, he decided to move on with his life.

His big league career total was -2.0 Wins Above Replacement, meaning he had cost the teams that played him 2 games that they would have won if they had only played a generic replacement level player instead of him.

Interestingly, the gay Billy Bean and the Moneyball Billy Beane were about big equally bad big leaguers. Gay Bean’s OPS+ (on-base percentage plus slugging adjusted for park effects and relative to the league with average as 100) was a poor 55, while Moneyball Beane’s was an even worse 49.

In 272 games across 6 seasons, gay Bean was -2.0 WAR, while in 148 games across 6 seasons, Moneyball Beane was -1.6 WAR. (To make the Hall of Fame, you typically need around +60 WAR for a career.)

Gay Bean retired when he was going to turn 32, Moneyball Beane retired when he was going to turn 28.

But the Moneyball Beane’s innate flaws at getting on base leading to his failure to live up to his first round draft choice potential is a big part of the Moneyball story, while the gay Bean’s comparable weaknesses (lack of power and speed) tend to get covered up by the media’s emphasis on homophobic discrimination.

To this day, the phrase “openly gay former Major Leaguer” has applied to only three people. Late Dodgers outfielder Glenn Burke came out after he retired in 1982. Bean followed 17 years later. In 2022, after he retired, former pitcher T.J. House joined them.

Similarly, Glenn Burke is often portrayed as the victim of discrimination who would have been a star if only given a chance. But my recollection of the Los Angeles Dodgers 1977 season is that they gave this rally-killer too many chances before trading him for the much less inadequate Bill North. Across 225 big league games, Burke was -2.4 WAR.

In contrast to the seemingly high potential, low accomplishment Burke, Bean was more of a career triple AAA player. Not bad, but in a number of chances, he never showed that he quite belonged in the big leagues.

The third out of the closet gay former big leaguer, pitcher T.J. House, had a mildly promising rookie year at age 24: 5-3 3.35 ERA in half a season. But he didn’t do much after that (arm problems?) and retired with a career +1.3 WAR.

So, it doesn't look like there was much discrimination against these three in terms of playing time.

My impression is that there haven't been that many gays, in or out of the closet, who have been fanatical about baseball.

The acid test of gay male proclivity for a career is what percentage of top performers died of AIDS in the 1980s-1990s. Only two big leaguers died of AIDS: Burke, who was gay, and Alan Wiggins, who was a drug addict. Compare that to the huge toll that AIDS took on male figure skaters, dancers, and fashion designers.

Keep in mind that baseball players are extremely well-studied by a huge number of baseball hobbyists.

The best known gay big leaguer was likely the late Rusty Staub, who played for 23 seasons, and was popular everywhere he went. He wasn’t officially out of the closet, but as an extroverted man about town who was always getting his name in the newspapers for admirable off-field reasons — his philanthropic projects, learning French in mid-life to popularize baseball in Montreal, his gourmet restaurant (perhaps the most serious quality restaurant ever personally managed by a retired American jock) — he wasn’t trying hard to cover up either.

But his life hasn’t elicited much journalistic interest, in part because he wasn’t a tragic victim of discrimination (he was in the majors from 19 through 41) nor a sexy brute like Burke (he was a little pudgy for an athlete). Instead, Staub seems like the embodiment of positive gay male stereotypes. And that’s a conversation we aren’t ready to have.