A trip to your local bookstore these days can be awfully confusing, what with the piles of new Billy Beane/Billy Bean books. Even the Jolly Green Giant might have difficulty separating one from the other.
Which is why we come today to offer the official Bird's Eye, CliffsNotes guide to discerning what you're looking for from that which might confuse you.
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| Billy Beane (left) is perhaps wrongly viewed around baseball as egotistical.(AP) |
Billy Bean, former major-league outfielder-turned-author, wrote his own memoirs in Going the Other Way, a memoir detailing his struggle to balance his sexuality with his career.
And if you think that's confusing, you should have been hanging around Toledo during the summer of 1988, when 2/3 of the Triple-A Mud Hens' outfield was, yes, Billy Beane and Billy Bean.
The cross-pollination of these books on current store shelves is only the latest in a series of odd coincidences that seem to keep occurring over the years, causing some poor, befuddled souls to seek out one of them ... when they actually wanted the other.
"It's not that common of a name," Beane -- the Athletics' executive -- said the other day, chuckling. "It's no big deal. It certainly happened quite a bit, people mixing us up.
"It was usually a quick, 'Wrong one.'"
Both books are causing a stir, and for very different reasons.
Other general managers -- most notably, the Chicago White Sox's Kenny Williams -- have been critical of Beane, perceiving his ego is running amok.
Other people -- most notably those who are pathologically homophobic -- have been critical of Bean, perceiving him as a threat to the sanctity of locker rooms, clubhouses and everything that is masculine.
The real story in each instance is the criticisms are coming from people who become nervous and insecure when others break away from the pack and forge ahead on their own trail.
In the case of the Oakland executive, it's true: Lewis paints a highly flattering profile of Beane, portraying him as smart, savvy, forward-thinking and as someone who has gotten the best of other GMs in several trades.
As most folks know by now, Oakland's budget is miniscule and Beane is at the forefront of a movement in the game in which he and his staff attempt to identify and acquire diamonds in the rough overlooked by other teams based on certain statistics (such as on-base percentage and walks) over the subjective opinions of scouts.
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| This Billy Bean's book is self-written.(Provided to SportsLine) |
As it is, the book contains anecdotes that don't flatter Beane, stories of him belittling colleagues in his own organization. And you don't hear him complaining things were taken out of context -- for which he should be commended.
"I'm surprised at the unwarranted attacks on the assumption that I wrote, edited and profited from the book," Beane told me this week. "None of which is true. In many cases, people have to separate the writer's opinion from the rest of it.
"I find the attacks humorous at times. I don't think I should be on the defensive."
The other Bean, who came out of the closet to the Miami Herald in 1999 -- three years after his retirement from professional baseball -- did write his own book and is currently touring this country's bookstores to promote it.
"It's really weird," Bean, who spent eight years playing professional baseball, mostly in the minors, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution . "A below-average baseball player tells one reporter he's gay, and he becomes a bigger celebrity than when he was playing.
"Only in America."
Which, really, also would be a fine title for either of these books.
"I think it's getting to the point where people can no longer pretend that gay and lesbian people are not playing baseball or any other sport," Bean said. "The stereotypes are ridiculous to repeat, because they just aren't true."
Still, on the whole, right or wrong, it isn't as if the inhabitants of America's locker rooms -- male, at least -- are ready to stand aside and accept gays as one of their own.
Just as the many inhabitants of baseball jobs throughout the nation are not willing to stop doing things the way they've always been done.
"I was able to skim through most of his book, and what I read was fascinating and interesting," Beane, the Oakland GM, said. "He's a good guy, a great guy. I've known him, so it was easy to read and match up names."
While on a trip to Oakland with his White Sox last week, Williams spoke with Beane and backed off of his harsh, earlier statements (among which he accused Beane of developing a case of "ego-itis"), saying he regretted making them. Beane also has spoken with at least one other GM since, smoothing things over.
So far, Beane, mostly reluctant to talk about the great buzz generated by Lewis' book, is purposely keeping a low profile and doing his best to avoid the limelight. Just as, for years, Bean did -- albeit for different reasons.
No word, yet, on any movie deals.
