In a lifestyle piece about a new restaurant, the Miami Herald had outed one of the owners, Billy Bean, a former major-league outfielder. Kulaga thought Bean would be an excellent guest for a series of panels on gay athletes that I was moderating for the Times. I’d been back at the paper since 1991. I called Bean on August 19. He was pleasant but hesitant at becoming a public spokesman while he was barely out of the closet. He had allowed a gay reporter to include his sexual orientation in her story because he could no longer live a furtive life. A former college teammate had recently died in a car crash, and none of their mutual friends had been able to call Billy in time for the funeral. No one had his telephone number or e-mail address. He had pulled away from them to preserve his secret. We talked about his baseball career. “The whole nine years,” he said, “I had one foot in the major leagues and one on a banana peel.” We made a date to talk some more. Two days later, I called again.
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