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MLB spreads message of inclusion on #SpiritDay
- Updated: October 20, 2016
Billy Bean still has the $10 ticket stub from his first visit to Dodger Stadium on Oct. 15, 1977. It was Game 4 of the World Series against the Yankees, and on that Saturday afternoon, he sat high in the Reserved Green Level among 55,995 fans in aisle 54, row EE, seat 3.
“It was easy to keep when you love baseball,” Bean said. “I remember I lived in Santa Ana, and I don’t think I’d ever been to Los Angeles before. Tim Bruce was my buddy and Joe Bruce was his dad, and Joe got us tickets. The Dodgers were on TV every day, Vin Scully, I grew up in all of that. Steve Garvey, Bill Russell, Ron Cey … that was my team. It was larger than life and the chance to go to the World Series was something I’ll never forget, even up there in the top deck in right field. I remember the sun setting in our face, and we couldn’t see.”
• National League Championship Series Game 5: Tonight at 8 ET on FS1
Thinking back now to those halcyon dreamer days, back to that sunny Saturday when Reggie Jackson hit the first of five World Series homers to help the Yankees end an uncharacteristic 15-year title drought, Bean smiles wistfully and thinks how many things about baseball remain the same — but also how much they have changed.
Thursday is #SpiritDay, a day during which MLB takes a stand against bullying and supports the LGBTQ community by symbolically going purple. Bean will be right there again for a postseason game at Dodger Stadium, the sun beaming on that seating area in right that he once occupied, casting shadows on the same field as the Dodgers host the Cubs for Game 5 of the National League Championship Series. This time he will be there as Major League Baseball’s vice president of social responsibility and inclusion, a former Major Leaguer and a Dodger outfielder and subsequently the only openly gay former big leaguer, and he will be wearing a purple #SpiritDay T-shirt and continuing to spread a message that makes a real difference in people’s lives.
“I feel really grateful that we have a chance to not only go to the game, but to be a part of it and support Game 5 of the NLCS, a great series with the Cubs and the Dodgers,” Bean said. “People might see an image, someone wearing a purple shirt like this one, and they may just ask a question: ‘What does that mean?’ And you can say, ‘You know what, baseball is just standing up for kids and taking a stand against bullying, which is something we do not endorse.’ A parent might be sitting next to their child, and the child might ask their parent, ‘What does that mean?’ And then they can have a conversation about bullying.
“It could be as simple as that, where you see a child learn that picking on someone else because they’re not as tall as you, or they don’t have the same clothes as you or they’re not as good as you in baseball — that’s not the kind of person that we want to be. Then the parent will …
