Messages From A Spaceman

A conversation with baseball's most down-to-earth guy

Story and photos by Benjamin Pomerance

Bill Lee is ready to play ball. Forget the fact that the former Red Sox and Expos standout hasn't pitched a major league game since 1982. Forget the fact that he's 62 and graying around the temples. Forget even the six-foot drifts of snow that are smothering his Craftsbury, Vermont, farmhouse like an exploded vat of cotton candy. On this late March morning, the ballplayer best known to the world as "Spaceman" has the fever no inoculation can cure. In Lee's ever-active mind, he's on a green field far away, amped for Opening Day, armed with his trademark Leephus pitch and anxious to take on the world.

"I'm a ballplayer," Lee states emphatically, as if the myriad baseball artifacts scattered throughout his cozy home aren't indication enough. "I was born a ballplayer, and someday I'll die a ballplayer, and in between, I've lived a ballplayer's life. From Little League on to the majors, I haven't been a pitcher. I've been a ballplayer who just happens to pitch every fourth day. If I could've played the field the other days, I would have done it. This is the game I love."

"I was born a ballplayer, and someday I'll die a ballplayer, and in between, I've lived a ballplayer's life"

Which is perhaps why he refuses to leave it. At an age when most professonal athletes have turned in their spikes and settled down to multi-million dollar estates in the Bahamas, Lee is happily doing what he loves best: playing ball. Not in the major leagues, of course. No amount of cash could bring him back there, not after the Sox traded him in 1978 and the Expos released him in 1982. That's disloyalty in Lee's mind, and there's nothing Spaceman hates more. Boston's inducting him into their Hall of Fame in November, but will the guest of honor be there? Forget about it. "I always said I wanted to be dead when they inducted me," the pitcher proclaims, "because they'd carry me in there in a pine box, face down, and they'd have to kiss my ass." Hardly the sentiments of a man desperate to relive his glory days in the pros.

No — the baseball Lee is playing now is, as the Spaceman tells it, "the best kind of baseball imaginable — baseball that's just, as the movie title says, for the love of the game." A matter of weeks after the Expos handed him his walking papers following a one-game clubhouse protest over the perceived mistreatment of a teammate, Lee's postman approached him with an offer he couldn't refuse. "I came to the door," Lee recalls with a home-plate-sized grin, "and he told me they had gone to Ottawa and secured my amateur status to pitch for their senior team, the Longueil Senators. And I said, 'I'd be honored to. When's my first game?' And he said, 'Tonight'. That was a real gut check, but I went out there and did my thing."

He's been going out there ever since. From Canada to Cuba, Spaceman's been a jet-setter for the past twenty-six years, a global ambassador of goodwill through the game he loves. Barnstorming with teams of retired major leaguers — Marquis Grissom, Delino DeShields, Ken Ryan, and Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd make up part of the traveling "Oil Can's All-Stars" — and average Joe's from many counties, Lee's baseball retirement has become his baseball renaissance. He estimates that he plays at least 100 games per year, and states he would be happy to play more. As long as there's a bat, a ball, and a glove somewhere in the world, Lee says, the tools of the trade will be calling his name.

"The places I've been, the people I've met playing on these teams — you can't beat it."

"People say I'm crazy, but they've been saying that all my life," Lee says. "I'm having a blast doing this, and I don't plan to stop. The places I've been, the people I've met playing on these teams — you can't beat it. Maybe I'll still be playing the game when I'm 80, if I make it that long. They'll have to bring me out to the mound to pitch from a wheelchair." He cracks up, his goateed visage bursting into another one of those giant grins. "Wouldn't that be a sight to see? Wheeling me out to the mound? That just shows you how much I love being part of this game."

Yet today isn't about the game. Today's about lazing around the house, a leisurely breakfast with his wife, Diana, a rare home day for the globetrotting pitcher. By Diana's estimation, the couple has only spent about thirty days at their home base in the last year, so this morning is precious indeed.

This does not mean, however, that Lee plans on letting the day pass him by. The man known during his playing days for practicing yoga, championing environmental causes, quoting Eastern philosophers, and sprinkling marijuana on his buckwheat pancakes still comes as advertised. Darting around the home he helped build with his next-door neighbor, stopping only to proclaim his opinion on one of his many pet causes, Lee clearly maintains the infectious enthusiasm for life that made him a counterculture hero during his playing days.

He shows off his bookcase, where the complete works of Shakespeare and an anthology of Edgar Allen Poe share space with baseball history volumes. He brags, with a sheepish grin, about his furniture, much of it made by the hands that once pitched in the World Series. He reels off quotes from Rousseau, Einstein, Mao Zedong, Robert Frost, and Yogi Berra, all of it connected by the same slim thread to his objections of the Iraq war. "It's all a battle of fundamentalists," Lee says, shaking his head in disgust. "It's the American fundamentalists on the right against the Islamic religious fundamentalists, and nobody's going to win. Nobody's even taking a good lead. Why doesn't anybody else acknowledge this fact when it's staring them in the face?" He pauses for breath, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a baserunner preparing to steal second.

At this, Diana interrupts. "Bill," she says, shaking her head in mock amazement, "How much coffee have you had today?"

He stops, drops slightly, Spaceman momentarily returned to earth. Finally, that watermelon smile brightens his face. "Too much," he says, laughing heartily at his own act before the lecture resumes.

"He loves life, and he'll never say no to anyone."

It's too much to write down, too much to imagine being contained in the head and heart of just one man, and the one who knows best fully acknowledges the around-the-clock dynamo that is her husband. "He's tireless," Diana says. "He loves life, and he'll never say no to anyone. If I didn't rein him in once in a while, he'd completely wear me out."

Yet if Spaceman is indeed on his own planet, he's convinced it's the best possible place to be. "The one word I have a really hard time saying is 'no,"' he confesses, "and it's gotten me into a lot of trouble. But it's also opened a lot of doors, and that, to me, is more important." Doors in Cuba, where his barnstorming tour with a team of ex-major leaguers led to the creation of the popular documentary Spaceman In Cuba. Doors in Maine, where his fundraisers for the Special Olympics remain some of the most lucrative efforts for that cause. Doors from California to New Brunswick, where his playing gigs, speaking engagements and ever-popular signings of his autobiography, The Wrong Stuff, have brought him into contact with, in his words, "people more remarkable than fiction could create." "You know, the human race is incredible," Lee says. "Billions of people live on this earth, and every one of them is like one of those snowflakes — not like anyone else. I've had the privilege to meet and work with lots of people, and every one of them has brought something different to my life, to who I am."

And just like that, the interview is over. Lee seems ready to go all day, a raconteur playing to a willingly captive audience, but Diana knows her husband needs to go. A glance at their upcoming schedule shows why: a speaking engagement at a nearby elementary school the next morning, a flight back to California the day after that, a return trip to the Northern Tier for Lee's weekly radio show on 990 AM, Montreal's leading sports station, the following Monday. The next month will bring various fundraisers, meetings with friends on both coasts, countless promos for Lee's new film, the start of the barnstorming season…and plenty of appointments neither of them even know about.

"I always say that we're only here for a brief moment on Earth, but we're making the best of the time we have."

"We leave a lot up to chance," Lee says. "I always say that we're only here for a brief moment on Earth, but we're making the best of the time we have. I don't really have any complaints, and I don't expect I ever will." He smiles that giant smile one more time. "But if I do, you'll all probably hear them loud and clear."

With that, he turns and walks to the door, the eternal ballplayer heading home once again. He stops briefly, looking out at the pastoral vista around him, and you can't help but wonder what he's thinking. Then he's gone, back inside with his books, belongings, and baseballs, the Spaceman happily blasting off for another season.

What are your favorite stories about Bill "Spaceman" Lee?