Are you a high school or collegiate athlete who aspires to be a professional athlete? Billy Bean, former pro-baseball player with the Tigers, Dodgers and Padres, and Robert Dover, captain of the United States Olympic Equestrian Dressage Team in 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000, and winner of three bronze medals, discuss the struggles and triumphs of pursuing professional and world-class sports as a gay athlete. This panel was part of the [First National Gay and Lesbian Athletic Conference](http://gayconference.org) held at MIT.
Billy Bean was born in Santa Ana, California in 1964 and graduated from Loyola Marymount University in 1986 with a degree in Business Administration. He played major league baseball from 1987 through 1995, breaking into the major leagues with the Detroit Tigers. Bean tied a major league record with 4 hits in his first major league game. He went on to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the San Diego Padres. Billy came out publicly in 1999 on the front page of The New York Times, and subsequently on a nationally televised story with Diane Sawyer. He is the only living former major league baseball player to acknowledge his homosexuality. Bean is the author of, Going the Other Way: Lessons from a life in and out of Major League Baseball. (Avalon Publishing Group, NYC.)
