Bill Lee did not get the nickname of "The spaceman" because he made his major league debut on June 25, 1969, or a few days after Neil Armstrong walked on moon.
He earned the nickname because he was a very unusual man, or the kind of professional athlete that would have loved Twitter and other social media outlets.
In the 1970s, college and my first real job took me to Baltimore where I got quickly engaged in AL East rivalries, such as the Yankees, Orioles and Red Sox.
It was great baseball and Bill Lee was always in the middle of it. He also gave up that 3-run homer to Tony Perez that turned game 7 of the 1975 World Series and the title to Cincinnati.
Lee pitched 10 years for Boston: 94-68 and a 3.74 ERA. He may have been one of the best lefthanders ever to pitch in Fenway Park. Then he moved to Montreal and retired after 4 seasons. In one 3-year stretch, he won 51 games for Boston.
Mr. Lee is back in the news and we don't mean a veterans game. Bill Lee is running for governor and his opponents better get ready for lots of crazy quotes about this and that.
This is from The Boston Herald:
…the free-spirited Lee is hitching his wagon to Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.It’s too early to tell whether Vermont will elect Mr. Lee. At the same time, they did elect Mr. Sanders and he is in a dead heat with Mrs. Clinton in California.
"You get what you pay for, if you want change, you vote for Sanders or me. I'm Bernie-heavy, I'm not Bernie-lite. My ideas were before Bernie," Lee told WCAX. "If you want to see money come down from the 2 percent, we're going to need umbrellas when I'm elected, because it's going to be raining dollars…." (snip)
As governor of Vermont, Lee would be in favor of legalizing marijuana and bringing the Expos to Montreal.
“The problem with Americans is their fist is like this (closed), and you got to open your hands,” Lee said. “Republicans are pterodactyls, they have little short arms that never get to their front pockets.”
And if presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump wins the election in November, all bets may be off.
“If things don’t go our way, if we get Trump as president, I’m out of here and I’ll take Vermont with us,” Lee said.
Politics aside, it is very interesting to me how people like Bill Lee are so fond of socialism. It shows me that they don't really have a clue of what socialism does to countries. Maybe they should talk to Cuban baseball players who would die for the opportunity that a man like Bill Lee had in the majors or the good money that he made along the way.
Governor Bill Lee? Probably not, but it makes you wonder about what we are teaching kids about the real world in our schools today.
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
