My main awareness of ex-Major League player Billy Bean before I read of his death yesterday was that he was always getting confused with Billy Beane, with an “e,” the Oakland A’s executive credited with inventing “Moneyball” and who was played by Brad Pitt in the movie of the same name. Yesterday I read about No-E Billy dying at 60 of a dread disease:

“Former MLB outfielder Billy Bean, who has served in the commissioner’s office as senior vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as a special assistant to the commissioner, died at his home today following a battle with acute myeloid leukemia per an announcement from the league… Following the end of his playing career, Bean followed in the footsteps of former Dodgers and A’s outfielder Glenn Burke in 1999 to become just the second MLB played in history to publicly come out as gay…After playing 272 games in the majors with three organizations across six years, Bean returned to baseball in 2014 when he was appointed as the league’s first ever ambassador for inclusion by then-commissioner Bud Selig. He continued to serve in the commissioner’s office under Rob Manfred and was eventually promoted to the senior vice president role he held until his death. In his role with the league, Bean worked with all 30 organizations and is credited with instrumental roles in developing education programs and expanding mental health resources available to players all across affiliated ball.

The New York Times obituary in its captive sports publication is no more revealing. This may sound harsh, but it appears that Billy Bean was given a lifetime sinecure with baseball for no other reason than because he had sex with men. After that, MLB could always point to the fact that it had a VP of “inclusion” to show it was properly woke and “with it.”

The previous Commissioner of Baseball, used-car-dealer-to-the core Bud Selig, hired Bean to deflect negative publicity from LGBT activist groups (there was no “Q” then) for no other reason than that Bean had written a briefly sensational book about being a closeted gay in the Major Leagues and was now “out.” The current, marginally less slimy Commissioner, Rob Manfred, naturally had to keep Bean around, and why wouldn’t he, especially as the George Floyd Freakout, DEI Madness and The Great Stupid devoured the land?

The tributes coming from baseball and the media keep calling Bean “courageous,” but if he was truly courageous he would have come out as gay while he was playing. No, he came out as gay to cash in with a book, then became a professional gay guy (not that there’s anything wrong with that.) The jobs he held with the Commissioner’s Office sound like make-work: “credited with instrumental roles in developing education programs and expanding mental health resources available to players all across affiliated ball.” What does that mean in the context of baseball? There still aren’t any openly gay players in the game, 20 years after Bean agreed to be exploited as part of the the baseball brass’s virtue-signaling.

Baseball at all levels is a perfect example of a system that operates on pure merit. It makes no sense to have anyone in a role on a baseball team who is there because of skin shade, ethnicity, gender or sexual proclivities rather than skill and demonstrated success. Educating anyone in baseball on “inclusion” must mean educating them on the perils of bias, not on “why we need more gays in baseball.”

I’m sorry that Billy Bean died at the relatively early age of 60, and I’m happy for him that he was able to turn a mediocre baseball career into an executive job and salary for 20 years for no other discernible reason than because of who he chose to have sexual relations with. However, Bean was part of a cynical PR exercise by Major League Baseball taht we have seen duplicated all over corporate America, government, and sports. I’m not going to pretend that the tributes to him now are anything but part of the stunt.