TO LONG-TIME MEMBERS of Red Sox Nation, William Francis Lee III, a/k/a “the Spaceman,” is either one of the most beloved players ever to have worn a uniform for the Boston nine, or simply the guy who threw the fateful blooper pitch that Tony Perez crushed for a home run in Game Seven of the ’75 World Series, and who was once fined $250 by Major League Baseball for saying he sprinkled marijuana on his buckwheat cakes “to absorb the toxins.” One of the Red Sox’ best pitchers from 1969 to 1978, the self-professed “Roman Catholic Zen Buddhist” has been immortalized in song by Warren Zevon, been featured extensively in Ken Burns’s epic documentary Baseball, and had his autobiography, The Wrong Stuff, optioned for the movies by actor/hemp activist Woody Harrelson.

Lee made the wire services last fall when he was quoted in the Montreal Gazette as saying that he supported George W. Bush for president because he was “the kind of guy you can party with.” “Back in 1973,” Lee claimed, “we rolled a couple of doobies and smoked them together. And I can tell you — he definitely inhaled.” Although the Bush camp neither confirmed nor denied the story, Lee says he remembers it clearly. “It’s a moment that stands out in my brain, because I remember thinking, ‘What am I doing at a fundraiser for Senator Brooke? He’s a Republican.’ It was like Fear and Loathing at the Museum of Science.”

When interviewed by the Phoenix, Lee had just returned to his home in Northern Vermont, after driving 23 hours straight from the Gulf Coast, where he had spent some time at Red Sox spring training camp — seeing old friends and shagging a few fly balls with Troy O’Leary and $160 million man Manny Ramirez. “I can’t believe how easy spring training has gotten,” he says. “There just doesn’t seem to be as much on-the-field activity. The players seem to do all their training off the field, and they just come out for a brief time. It’s like they’re trying to avoid the public. And the press. I’ve never seen such a clandestine group of guys. They do their little workout, then they’re into their SUVs and they’re gone.”

While down in Fort Myers, Lee also renewed acquaintances with a group of Russian players he had coached years earlier. “I’ve been staying in Florida with this author, Randy White,” he says. “I fly in from Las Vegas, rent a car, and end up at his house. Next thing I know, he tells me that at four in the morning there’s going to be 16 Russians coming in from Moscow. I tell him that every time the Russians come, we end up getting hammered ’cause there’s so much vodka going around. He says, ‘Well, these kids are between 12 and 13,’ so I pick ’em up, feed ’em some pizza, and put ’em to bed. I wake up in the morning and go out to work on the field. All these school kids and their teacher are out in the outfield putting little Russian flags all over the fence. The teacher asks me, ‘Are you involved with the Russians?’ I told her that I had coached the coaches and now they’d returned with their children. One of the students, a little kid named Bubba, asked me why the Russians were playing baseball. I told him that ever since they’d started playing baseball, they don’t fight anymore. The teacher says, ‘You hear that, Bubba?’, because I guess Bubba had a bit of a fighting problem. Bubba looks at me and says, ‘Maybe I should go to Russia.’”

WE ASKED Bill how the game has changed since his playing days. “It’s turned into Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, you know? I think we’re seeing the last gasp of professional sports. It’s all money, money, money. The game has become secondary to the economics. I think that’s going to be the death of it in the long run. You can only strike so many times. I think you lost something like 20 percent of the fan base in the last strike, and if they do it again, you’ll lose a lot more. The pie’s getting smaller and smaller. God help us if we have to watch the XFL.”

Having forged a reputation as a philosopher, of sorts — he’s been working on a book called Baseball and the Big Bang, which postulates that the earth is a hanging slider that God is sitting back on, waiting to drive out of the universe — Lee has several theories on how to save baseball from itself. “What has to happen is, the fans have got to rebel and become the commissioner’s office,” he says. “If the fans could come together, they could dictate what happens in baseball, not the players and not the owners. As long as you have a puppet in as the commissioner, who basically just rubber-stamps what the owners want to do, you’re going to have alienation from the players, and you’re going to have economic confrontation. That cannot happen — for the good of baseball and the good of society. I believe the fan has to come to the rescue. That kinda adheres to my socialistic world-view. It’s like Ralph Nader said: it used to be that religion was the opiate of the masses, then professional sports became the opiate. The consumer has to wake up and be the one to dictate what goes on.” A worthy sentiment, but easier said than done.

“We want a fast-moving game, played on natural grass, with no designated hitter,” he points out. “The problem is, we’re being led around by this ring in our nose, and the people who’re pulling us aren’t big enough to be pulling a bull of our size. We’re the big bull — not the owners, not the players.”

Given Lee’s take on the economics of the game, it’s no surprise that he’s against the construction of a new Fenway Park. “It’s bad for the neighborhood, it’s bad for baseball, it’s bad for planet earth. There’s no long-term thinking. It’s much cheaper to renovate than to build a new ballpark. The way the Save Fenway Park committee has proposed it, you’d have the same field, more seats, better sightlines, and everybody would be happy. The fans would be happy, the owners would get what they wanted. Take out all those strange poles in Section 14, improve the seating in the right-field corner, and all those tax dollars wouldn’t be wasted. New Fenway would be like the Big Dig, part two.” We couldn’t agree more.

At this point, Bill’s wife Pam asks him to get off the phone and help out with their daughter. Sensing that the interview is almost over, we ask Bill to give his impressions of various years in his playing career.

1969: “I was in a ’62 Chevy, coming out of Pittsfield, heading down the mountain, coming into this old, dilapidated place called Boston. The management told me not to unpack my bags, because I was only going to be there two weeks. Ten years later, they basically ran me out of town, and I still haven’t unpacked my bags.”

1975: “The year that we finally came together as a team. They decided to let Rice and Lynn play, and we went coast to coast.”

1978: “We built the team back up, we were doing fine. That’s when [Don] Zimmer and I had our differences, and the ball club suffered. Blew a lot of games down the stretch, and you know the rest.” Former Red Sox manager Zimmer recently published his autobiography, in which he calls Lee the only player he’s ever known in his 50-plus years in the game that he wouldn’t welcome into his home. Bill’s response: “Who wants to see ’50s Art Deco, anyway?”

1979: “I got traded to Montreal for a bag of balls [actually, he was traded for the immortal Stan Papi]. It was nice. If you’re going to be deported, you might as well get deported to the Paris of North America. I have my own radio and television shows up there.”

“You’ve got three minutes on somebody else’s show,” Pam interjects.

“Yeah, but they’re my three minutes.”

Finally, the Spaceman assesses the 2001 Sox. “If Garciaparra was healthy, and they all played well, they could make a run. Pedro will have another monster year, but they need some left-handers. I saw Cone pitch, and I feel bad for him. He’s pushing the ball, I think he blew his shoulder out. He looked like road kill out there. He’s just gotta suck it up and pitch with a bad arm. I think he’s got one more year in him. He just can’t throw any fastballs over the dish, and he’s got to have perfect control of his off-speed stuff. He does that, and he’ll have a great year. He’s got guts, and he’s a winner.”

What about the volatile, often AWOL Carl Everett? “I think Everett’s a hell of ball player. He’s a tough kid. All he’s got to do is control his emotions. When his emotions start taking over, he needs to have a certain player in the ball club with a real quick bat who can hit him over the top of his head.”

These days, in addition to his broadcasting gig in Montreal, Lee travels the world competing in over-40 baseball tournaments, pitching in exhibitions (with former Sox Rick Miller and John Tudor, among others), and doing coaching clinics and fantasy camps. “I don’t know where baseball’s gonna take me,” he says, “but wherever it is, that’s where I’m gonna end up.”

J.M. Dobies is managing editor of the Worcester Phoenix. He can be reached at jmdobies[a]phx.com

Issue Date: April 5-12, 2001