Player Profile: Billy Beane

I have four cards of Billy Beane. This one is from 1987 Fleer.

Playing career: Outfielder Billy Beane played for the Mets, Twins, Tigers and A’s from 1984 to 1989. In 148 games he hit .219 with 3 HR and 29 RBI.

Where he is now: The General Manager of the Oakland A’s since October 1997, he is the reigning AL Executive of the Year.

Interesting facts: He was played by Brad Pitt in the movie Moneyball, based on the book of the same name which detailed Beane’s revolutionary use of statistics in player analysis.

He is on the board of directors of NetSuite, a $300 million publicly-traded software company.

His Danville, CA was recently up for sale. Click the link to see photos of the $1.8M mansion.

In a recent interview with Maxim magazine, the reporter showed Beane his 1987 Fleer card (pictured above). “I think this is at the old Cleveland Stadium,” said Beane. “You know, you take these when you’re 22, and you don’t think you’re going to be immortalized for the rest of your life, and you sure wish you’d shaved that day.” I’m not sure if it is actually Cleveland; looks more like Anaheim to me. What do you think?

My memories: Like Billy Bean, Billy Beane was a mostly obscure guy from my late-1980s baseball cards who became more prominent for his post-playing career.

Google Autocomplete results: He is second when you type Billy, between Billy Joel, a singer, and Billy Crystal, a famous actor and Yankee fan. There do not appear to be any other prominent Billy Beanes.

Coming up next: The next profile will be Dave Beard.