all to promote equality on (and off) the court". Among those featured is Gay Games Ambassador Billy Bean:
Imagine having to play a baseball game on the day your lover died. That’s what Billy Bean went through while signed with the San Diego Padres in the late 1990s. Deeply in the closet at a time when no other professional baseball player had ever declared his sexuality, Bean tried to keep his emotions inside—but the stress of the closet was too much. Within a year, he decided to walk away from the sport entirely, leaving at the peak of his career. Then, he did something even more unthinkable. He sat down with 20/20 and the New York Times and confirmed that he was gay. Looking back, Bean believes he could have done things a bit differently. “If only I had told my parents, I probably would have played two or three more years and understood that I could come out a step at a time,” he says. Still, he has no regrets. Since those fateful interviews, he’s become an author, a spokesman for the HRC and an overall activist for LGBT rights, determined to help others feel comfortable coming out and not make the mistakes he did. “The people who are the heroes to me today,” he says, “are those 15-year-olds in junior high school in middle America who are able to look at who they are and tell the truth.”
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