Going the Other Way: Lessons from a Life in and Out of Major-League Baseball

After reading this book, and going through a box of Kleenexes, I made the call to my parents and told them who I really was....thank you!

Billy Bean is pretty brave. Even after he left the Bigs, he still cared about kids, baseball and THE GAME. Sure he could have named names and outed some big leaguers who were better than him, made more money and got endorsements but that's not his style. He was a lunch bucket type player. No errors, very few HR's always hustling and taking extra BP each day. He would gladly take bullets for the team (sacrifice fly etc.) and kept his mouth shut about goings on by married players. He played the fundamentals well. He disguised lots of things like his affection towards men. He even married. There were probably more sexual escapades while he played with men than he lets on in the book. The few listed are tantilizing. In the end he did the right thing. He told the truth. He did it because he was proud of his accomplishments and he wanted to make it easier for the next guy. Or the next kid playing High School baseball. Imagine how much better a player he could have been if his mind wasn't always trying to cover up a secret. Concentration is 80% of game (Yogi says baseball is 90% more than half mental-it's also ironic that Billy Bean's book is in the Sports Section next to Yogi Berra's book). Think of how much fun he could have had. Billy Bean is a small time modern day hero in a big time world. No it's not earth shattering journalism but a good story and a good read. Conflict make good journalism. It's a good sports book to buy and read and wonder-how many Billy Bean's are still out there between the lines every day. Spittin tobacco, cussing Umpires and acting macho. And how much better of a player, these closeted players would be if they could feel comfortable with their feelings if baseball was open and friendly to all. 2nd irony is how MLB was first sport to advance Racial Equality with Jackie Robinson and others and so far behind when it comes to elimininating homophobia attitudes and "hostile work environments based on sexual orientation". Buy the book-I did and I enjoyed reading it twice.PS.Just met Billy at Booktour signing at Powell's in Portland Or. I bought another book for a friend. Class act all the way. As Tommy Lasorda was quoted in the book "every dad's daughter would love to meet Billy" well Every dad's son should meet him also. We need more Billy Beans in this world.

When I first saw an ad for this book, my eyes swept right over it without a pause. I'd never heard of Billy Bean, and know little about baseball (more of a hockey fan), so it really didn't grab my attention. However, a couple days later I saw that he was signing his book at the local gay bookstore, so thought I'd pop in to see what the big deal was . . . and grab a copy just in case. I was not disappointed.In "Going the Other Way," Billy Bean takes you through his sports career, from humble beginnings as a kid in several sports (like most of us) to the ups and downs of a major-league career in baseball. The first half of the book does not deal much with his sexual orientation, but you see hints of his inner struggle. Later on, Billy explains the fear, shame, questioning, and hiding that most gay men face at some time in their lives. He is very honest about the difficulties he faced as he attempted to deny being gay, later tried to live two different lives, and finally gave up sports to find love and happiness. And even then his struggles were not over.I wish that everyone could get to meet Billy Bean, hear him read his story, and just listen to him for a short while. From the short bit I saw in person, the honesty and feeling in the book are truly reflected in the author himself. His is a story that both straights and gays, athletes and non-athletes can enjoy. And it's a story that needs to be told.

Just when you thought you didn't need to read another story about someone struggling with coming to terms with being gay.. along comes Billy Bean.While Mr. Bean's story is fairly "common" in the sense that many, many men have gone through similar things, they did not have the dubious honor of going through them all on the MLB scene. Imagine the average level of homophobic jerks on the playground in school and multiply it by 1000 and you may have the idea of what it must be like to go through life as a gay man in our completely heterosexualized sporting environment.I've read a number of articles written about and by Billy in the last few years, and was hoping that one day he would put it all into a book. Thankfully, he has. You can never get too much inspiration or encouragement, and even for those of us already out of the closet, it's an affirming story that reminds us why we did it in the first place.Highly recommended.(May also want to check out "Becoming a Man" - the autobiography of famed gay fiction/poetry writer Paul Monette.)

Billy's generation lost some of its best to AIDS, and as he explains in his book he only escaped it by sheer luck. Perhaps it was for the best that the social stigma against homosexuality was powerful in the 80s, before men learned how deadly unprotected sex could be. At least a few, like Billy, had less exposure than they would have had if sex between males were as accepted as it is today.Then again, without the anti-gay attitudes of late-20th century America, perhaps the disease -- and the means to avoid it -- would have been discovered more quickly, and lives would have been spared. This is a debate about which I've not reached a conclusion.It is safe to conclude, however, that Billy's book will do a lot of good if it gets the readership it deserves. The daguerreotype of an All American, Billy grew up in what would ordinarily be considered a challenging family situation to become everyone's hometown favorite. He subjugated his sexual desires to his compulsion to please in a manner rare among straight and gay alike. That he felt the need to stay in the closet as long as he did is not surprising. The number of men of his generation and older locked in even tighter closets would surprise a lot of people.What is surprising is the sympathy Billy and his co-author, Chris Bull, generate from simply telling the facts of Billy's life. Billy assiduously avoids portraying himself as a victim -- he got to live out his childhood dream for more than a decade, he enjoyed love, and he remains today surrounded by more love than ever before. Yet the facts in "Going the Other Way" show that he was, indeed, the victim of anti-gay bias, in countless ways and for his entire baseball career.It is the compelling reporting of those facts that will make Billy's book invaluable to young men struggling with their sexuality, particularly in communities where tolerance remains an unfulfilled aspiration. The book could be of service to straight young men who need to realize that sexual orientation is relevant to neither personal friendship nor professional collegiality. This book speaks to Billy's generation about changing views of sexuality; to Billy's elders about the nation they created for us; and to Billy's juniors about the people they can become, if they learn that it isn't the gender of someone who is loved that is important. It's the love that's important. Although the game is mentioned on almost every page, and gay baseball players and fans will therefore appreciate it as a good baseball book, this isn't a book about baseball. It is a book about love. It's a good baseball book, but it's a great book about love.