Whatever Happened To? Bill ‘Spaceman’ Lee

The Spaceman was a major league baseball pitcher. He was what baseball folks like to call ‘a flake.’ He was also a really good pitcher. Lee won 94 games over 10: seasons with the Boston Red Sox between 1969 and 1978. In one of those years, 1973, he was an all star. He pitched another four seasons with the Montreal Expos and ended his career with a 119-92 won-loss record and a very respectable 3.62 earned run average.

You might think the ‘Spaceman’ moniker was a result of his eccentric behavior both on and aff the field, but it was in fact much more literal. Lee was fascinated by space and was an avid follower of the Apollo missions. A teammate, John Kennedy, offered up the nickname on a day when Lee was having locker room discussions with reporters about a moon landing.

Lee was not your typical gung-ho ‘one for all, all for one’ sort of athlete. He was more of a baseball activist. As a Red Sox, he and a few teammates, including Ferguson Jenkins and Rick Wise were known as the “Buffalo heads.” What seemed to unite them was their disregard of team rules and distaste for manager Don Zimmer, the puffy-faced veteran who Lee once referred to as “designated gerbil.” When one of them was traded Lee “left a burning candle on Zimmer’s desk after Willoughby was traded and refused to show up for the 1978 team photo (he had to be inserted later). When Bernie Carbo was dealt to Cleveland, Lee ‘wept for 20 minutes, ripped his telephone from the wall at home and vowed he would never play for Boston again.’ When he returned the next day and was given a $533 fine, Lee asked for the team to make it $1,500 so he could have a few more days off.” (Michael Clair, mlb.com, Dec. 27, 2022)

A similar incident while with the Montreal Expos ended his tenure there and his major league career. Joel Yanofsky, writing for the Montreal Gazette (March 5, 2005) recalls Lee’s last day as an Expo: “Early in the 1982 season, manager Jim Fanning released one of the most underrated and exciting players on the team, second baseman Rodney Scott. This, in turn, caused left-handed pitcher Bill Lee to storm out of the clubhouse in protest, drowning his anger at an east-end tavern. This was quintessential Lee — loyal teammate and quixotic rebel. The next day he was booted off the Expos and blackballed from the game.”

While Lee spent a good deal of his post-MLB career with charity events, speaking engagements and promotional baseball events, he also ventured into politics. In 1988 he ran for President under the satirical Rhinoceros Party banner. His campaign slogan was “No Guns, No Butter” because both kill you. Unsurprisingly, he failed to get on the ballot in any state. But that didn’t stop him from telling the Ottawa Citizen (Nov. 7, 2000) that if he had won “we wouldn’t be in Iraq. We wouldn’t be in Afghanistan. We’d have universal Medicare. There would be no border between the U.S.and Canada. We could walk freely back and forth.”

So it may then surprise you to hear him endorsing George W. Bush in that same interview. Here’s why: “The way things are now, people want to party and George W. is the kind of guy you can party with. Back in 1973, we rolled a couple of doobies (marijuana cigarettes) and smoked them together. And I can tell you he definitely inhaled.”

He was at it again in 2016 when he threw his hat in the ring for the governorship of Vermont. This time he ran on the Liberty Union Party line, the socialist party that Bernie Sanders had been a part of. The Rutland Herald (Oct. 15, 2016) observed: “Spaceman is unpolished. His positions are unconventional, often rooted in his counterculture beliefs. He is an eloquent and humorous storyteller, but he is goofy as a politician. There is little about him that is political. He wears his uniqueness and eccentricity as badges of honor. “

Writing in Time Magazine (May 15, 2016), Sean Gregory commented “Here’s a gubernatorial platform for you: legalized pot, universal health care, seizure of federal highways, and steroid cheats in the Hall of Fame.” He got 2.78% of the vote.

Asked what, if elected, he would do on his first day as governor, he said: “I would meet with Justin Trudeau and work on the fact that if Trump gets elected, we have a covenant in our charter that says we’re allowed out of the United States.” (Vice, June 8, 2016 )

Lee also co-authored four books. They were not all critically acclaimed. In his review of Have Glove Will Travel; Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond, Joe O’Connor of the National Post in Toronto (April 23, 2005) remarked: “(Lee) writes like a teenager anxious to impress the cool kids with anecdotes that begin and end with him. And this me-me-me approach takes away from what is, in parts, truly engaging material.”

But above all else, Spaceman was a pitcher, and even into his seventies, he’s not up for letting that go. Here are just a few bits of Lee’s post-MLB ball playing resume:

— 1984. Living in Moncton, New Brunswick, he pitched and played first base for the Moncton Mets.

— 1992. He pitched for the Vermont Grey Sox, a team of former major leaguers that traveled the northeast playing minor league and collegiate teams. His teammates included his old Buffalo Heads colleague Ferguson Jenkins.

— 2007. Lee joins other former major leaguers on Oil Can Boyd’s Traveling All-Stars.

— 2008. He pitches for the Alaska Goldpanners in the annual Midnight Sun game played during the summer solstice.

— 2010. At age 63, Lee pitches 5-⅓ innings for the independent Can-Am League Brockton Rox. By picking up the win, he becomes the oldest pitcher to win a professional baseball game.

— 2012. Lee breaks his own record when, at age 65, he throws 94 pitches for the San Rafael Pacifics for a complete game victory over the Maui Na Kia Ikaika. He allows four runs on nine hits in a 9-4 victory.

Just last year the Washington Times (March 31, 2022) reported on a “video of Lee, now 75 years old, emerging from the crowd at a Savannah Bananas game, walking onto the field with a beer in hand and recording a strikeout.”

But last year age started to shows signs of catching up with the Spaceman. “Lee, 75, pledges to continue to pitch 40 years and counting since his last MLB game in 1982. That might have been in doubt after a medical emergency Friday night when he collapsed while warming up in the bullpen before entering a Savannah Bananas exhibition game — a scary incident captured on national television (ESPN2) and reported in stories across the internet as a near-death experience.” (Savannah Morning News, Aug. 24, 2022)

More recently ESPN reported on Aug. 31, “Lee collapsed on field during pregame ceremonies of a triple A game between the Worcester Red Sox and the Norfolk Tides. The triple A Red Sox doctors recommmended Lee be taken to UMassMedical Memorial Center for evaluation. It said later he is in stable condition after having what it called ‘a brief health scare.’ Lee, 76, had been scheduled to throw out the ceremonial first pitch and sign autographs at the game.”

Throughout his entire career, Lee never shied away from a microphone or an interviewer. Aside from his pitching, what he is best known for is some colorful quotes. Here’s a few examples.

On mandatory drug testing “”I’ve tried just about all of them, but I wouldn’t want to make it mandatory.” (Out of Left Field, Peter Drier and Robert Ellis, 2017)

Following his collapse in Savannah, “I always thought I’d die on the field, but not in the (obscenity deleted) bullpen.”(Boston Globe, Sept. 20, 2022)

“Well, I cut my own firewood. I turn my potato patch over with a shovel. I don’t use gasoline. I don’t use fossil fuel. I gather all my own kindling. I recycle all my own paper. I recycle everything. I eat within fifteen miles of my house. I think those are conservative things that Republicans don’t do. “ (Vice, June 8, 2016)

“A few million years from now the sun will burn out and lose its gravitational pull. The Earth will be turned into a giant snowball and be hurled through space. When that happens it won’t matter if I get this guy out.” (The Province Vancouver, Sept. 1, 2009)

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Whatever Happened To?