The extent to which we have lost touch is demonstrated by the fact that the last time I had contact with Billy Bean was when the film “Moneyball” came out in theaters in 2011. His namesake, Oakland baseball manager Billy Beane, was played in the film by actor Brad Pitt.

“Maybe you can get Brad Pitt to star in your movie,” I wrote.

“A movie about a .226 bat?” he said.

Bean’s batting average was not mentioned in his obituary after Major League Baseball announced he had died of leukemia on Tuesday at age 60. It was mentioned that he was an openly gay former player. It was also mentioned that he was senior vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion at MLB.

Bean was in demand because he gave voice to many hidden voices and at the same time avoided all common gay stereotypes – he had a ten-year professional baseball career behind him. Years before he came to the MLB office, he was the media’s go-to person for all gay issues that came into contact with the sports pages.

“Newspapers, TV, radio, ESPN is sending a team over,” Bean told me in 2002 when a false report claimed that New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza was gay.

Bean wasn’t exactly looking for attention. He was just tired of running from it. At 31, he resigned from the San Diego Padres after watching his partner die of a ruptured pancreas one night and playing a game the next day without telling anyone. He didn’t attend his partner’s public funeral for fear of being outed.

He, too, did not get out of the business on his own, but was forced out of the business a few years after his retirement by a newspaper article that he believed was about a restaurant he managed in Miami Beach.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” asked his best friends in baseball, his San Diego teammates Brad Ausmus and Trevor Hoffman.

“How many gay men do you know?” he asked.

They knew one. Him. And they knew him as a hard-working teammate with a smart attitude who was, at that point, exploring career paths after opening two restaurants.

He briefly worked as a late-night producer for WQAM host Ed Kaplan to keep in touch with baseball in the radio business. He took listeners inside the game in interesting ways: He explained why, as a left-handed hitter, he was afraid to face left-handed pitcher Randy Johnson; he noted that the Marlins’ young players benefited from playing in front of small home crowds that wouldn’t boo their mistakes; and why, as he put it, 90 percent of the players were taking steroids.

That’s how I met him one night in the radio studio. He was a sports junkie, a fan of all games, someone who not only had something to say but also had the ability to say it.

We did a little radio. We played basketball together from time to time, although as a former high school quarterback and professional athlete he dominated the court.

He wanted a job in baseball “to get through the door he had walked through,” he said. I wrote about his hopes of getting an interview with the Marlins for an entry-level job.

“I would enjoy the work,” he said. “I think I could help the organization. But I know there is a hurdle.”

The final hurdle, of course, remains that of men’s team sports, and that has gradually changed since Bean left baseball – “It’s getting better,” he once said, a few years before taking the job in the MLB office in 2014.

He saw the progress being made throughout the sport. John Amaechi and Jason Collins, both now retired, came out as gay in the latter stages of their NBA careers. Michael Sam was the first openly gay NFL player drafted when he was drafted in the seventh round in 2014.

“I know there are a lot of people who look to me as a reference point in that regard,” he said. “And I think if there are one or two more gay baseball players – or 10 or 25 or 100 – then they’re just people you walk by every day.”

“They, like me, just want to play the game. And the game is hard enough without having to think about anything else.”

He felt “pain and deep regret,” as he once said, about the way he ended his baseball career. That only helped him realize what work was waiting for him. The .226 hitter became a powerful voice in a sports world that needed one, and no doubt a role model for some players looking for one.