Billy Beane

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There is another former major league player named Billy Bean.

William Lamar "Billy" Beane (born March 29, 1962 in Orlando, Florida) is a former Major League Baseball player and the current general manager of the Oakland Athletics.

Beane, who grew up in the San Diego area, was a first-round choice by the New York Mets in the 1980 MLB amateur draft, and played parts of six seasons as a reserve outfielder in the major leagues, with the Mets, the Minnesota Twins, the Detroit Tigers and the Athletics, from 1984 to 1989. He was on the bench for two World Series wins - with the Twins in 1987, and the Athletics in 1989. He completed his 148-game career with a .219 batting average and 3 home runs.

He then moved into the Athletics front office, becoming an advance scout, and eventually an assistant to then-Athletics GM Sandy Alderson in 1993. In 1997, Alderson stepped down as GM and Beane replaced him. Since then, Beane has crafted the Athletics into one of the most successful regular-season teams in baseball, primarily through the application of sabermetric principles. Despite this, the Athletics have been repeatedly thwarted in their bid to win in the playoffs. They would finally win a series when they swept the Minnesota Twins in the American League Division Series on October 6th, 2006. But they were subsequently swept 4-0 by the Detroit Tigers in the American League Championship Series.

In 2003, Beane's approach to running the Oakland A's was the subject of the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis.