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

Bean, Billy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1569244618 ISBN 13: 9781569244616

Publisher: Marlowe & Co, 2004

Synopsis

A memoir by the Major League's only openly gay player illuminates a side of baseball that is seldom seen on television or from the bleachers and details his disillusionment with the sport that shaped his life when he is forced to choose between his love of baseball and the man he loved. Reprint.

About this title

Review

"A passionate memoir of the challenges Bean faced as a closeted gay athlete."--Sports Illustrated

"The courage Bean shows in telling his story is incredible."--Los Angeles Times

"A fresh and insightful book. . . . Bean excels at capturing the rhythms of the game. . . . In telling his story, Bean has lent a hand of support to other ballplayers who might now be facing the same decision."--San Francisco Chronicle

"A surprisingly honest account from a professional athlete . . . . This is a very good book to get a glimpse at what an athlete endures to play the game."--Gregg's Baseball Bookcase blog

"This gut-wrenching story is an amazing triumph of character over circumstances. Billy Bean is an inspiration."
--Brad Ausmus, manager of the Detroit Tigers and former MLB all-star catcher

"A story [told] with oral immediacy and winning personality. Sports claimed [Bean] long before homosexuality did, and his love of baseball gives the book its powerful charm."
--Booklist

"Billy Bean's book is candid, generous, and courageous. It adds a new dimension to the world of sports literature. Nice going, Billy."
--Jim Bouton, former MLB pitcher for the New York Yankees, Seattle Pilots, Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves, and author of Ball Four

"Reads more like an Everyman tale than a manifesto, and is more effective for it."
--New York Daily News

"[Bean] tells a remarkable story of his unremarkable career--a paltry .227 average in the majors--and his wrenching struggle with his sexuality. . . . Bean's candor, self-effacing humor, and brutal honesty will win him . . . new [fans]."
--Entertainment Weekly

"Fluently written and compulsively readable, Going the Other Way is at once a briskly paced account of life in baseball and the fiercely moving chronicle of a divided heart. It's a major contribution to the literature of sport, straight or gay."
--Richard Greenberg, author of the Tony Award-winning play Take Me Out

"It took a lot of courage for Billy Bean to play baseball in the major leagues--and even more to write about it--with insight and humor."
--Peter Lefcourt, author of The Dreyfus Affair and Eleven Karens

Synopsis

Last spring Billy Bean, the only living openly gay former major leaguer, gained national attention with his breakthrough memoir, Going the Other Wayan unprecedented chronicle of America's national pastime that went on to sell more than 25,000 copies. Bean brings us inside the clubhouse and onto the playing field, offering dead-on insight into the game and the physical and emotional demands it makes on players. Bean faced an agonizing choice, in secrecy and solitude, between continuing to play the game he loved and the honesty of a loving relationship. By turns heartbreaking and farcical, ruminative and uncensored, the book culminates in a respectful, deeply felt appeal to Major League Baseball and other professional team sports to live up to their promise of equality and opportunity. A testament to the power of the single voice, Going the Other Way is an exemplary American tale that points the way toward a more perfect game, one in which all men and women can pursue their athletic dreams free of prejudice and discrimination. An eight-page photo insert is featured in this New York Times bestseller.

Edition details

• Publisher: Marlowe & Co
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1569244618
• ISBN 13: 9781569244616
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272