"You have two hemispheres in your brain - a left and a right side. The left side controls the right side of your body and right controls the left half. It's a fact. Therefore, left-handers are the only people in their right minds."

The chill winds swoop down from Canada, the leaves are changing their color, and the first snow has fallen in the Upper Midwest.  The Major League Baseball season is winding down—the playoffs are here, and the World Series is nigh.

But, before we apply that last loving layer of neatsfoot oil on the Rawlings glove and store it away for the winter, let’s tarry a while and share a story about one of baseball’s true characters, shall we? 

I was a baseball fan for as far back as I am able to remember.  I lost some enthusiasm for it in my late teens, when I started learning that there was another meaning to the term “getting to second base” besides hitting a double into the right-center field gap.

But once I settled back down again in my early twenties, I renewed my affection for The National Pastime in 1971.  I abandoned the Yankees of my childhood and started following their mortal enemies, the Boston Red Sox.

In particular, that summer of 1971, I began learning about a 24 year old left-handed relief pitcher from Burbank, California by the name of Bill Lee.  Tall, lanky, good-looking, with a longish mop of hair, Lee had been used sparingly by the Red Sox in his first two seasons and looked like he wasn’t going to have a long future in the game.  His fast ball was unimpressive, so he relied on a variety of what major leaguers derisively call “junk”:  screwballs, curves, and change-ups that would confuse batters and destroy their timing.

In the 1971 season, things finally clicked into place for Lee.  He learned to throw the ball on the corners of home plate and avoid the center of the strike zone where hitters could muscle his slower pitches out of the park.  He became a more reliable pitcher, eventually being used to start games rather than coming on in relief of other pitchers.  He went on to win 119 games over his fourteen seasons, was an All-Star in 1973, and was recently elected to the Red Sox Hall of Fame.

But most people who remember Bill Lee recall him for his outspoken and offbeat personality rather than his effectiveness as a pitcher.  In a world of athletes who seem to rely on the same dozen comments when talking to reporters (“I just didn’t have my best stuff today”; “I couldn’t have won without the other 24 guys on the team”), Lee, articulate, intelligent, and with a rapier wit, was a Technicolor figure in a gray-and-white world.

He learned to play the media like Yo-Yo Ma works the cello.  The Boston media, tired of the same ol’-same ol’ comments from players who generally resented them, learned that Lee, who had quickly earned the sobriquet “Spaceman” from teammate John Kennedy, was usually available for a witty, outrageous, or controversial quote.

Referring to the famous 37 foot high wall in left field at Boston’s Fenway Park, the Green Monster, Lee once asked, “Do they leave it there during the game?”  He considered himself a baseball purist:  “I would change policy, bring back natural grass and nickel beer. Baseball is the belly-button of our society. Straighten out baseball, and you straighten out the rest of the world.”

But Lee’s observations could get more caustic and controversial.  He once said of the California (now Los Angeles) Angels (of Anaheim,) “Hell, if KY jelly went off the market, the whole California Angels pitching staff would be out of baseball.”  (He was referring to several pitchers on the Angels being suspected of using the lubricant to make the ball less hittable.)  Of the hated New York Yankees, who Lee beat a dozen times in his career, he said, “You take a team with twenty-five assholes and I'll show you a pennant. I'll show you the New York Yankees.”

Spaceman didn’t limit himself to commentary on baseball and how the team owners were destroying the sport.  Oh, no.  Lee was never reticent about sharing his world view, which included left-wing politics, a health-food diet, environmental consciousness, and drug use.  “The other day they asked me about mandatory drug testing,” Lee offered.  “I said I believed in drug testing a long time ago. All through the sixties I tested everything.”  He stated that he sprinkled marijuana on his buckwheat pancakes in the morning, as the THC rendered him impervious to the carbon-monoxide fumes of traffic as he jogged to Fenway Park from his home.  The Commissioner of Baseball fined him $250 for that statement.  Lee declined to pay it, opting instead to send a $251 check to a Catholic orphanage in Alaska that he had worked with.

Lee was widely respected, or at least tolerated, by his teammates due to his skill and no-nonsense attitude on the field, but he was anathema to management.  His feud with manager Don Zimmer was legendary; Lee coined the nickname “gerbil” for the rigid, old-school team boss.  He led a group of free-spirited Sox players into an unofficial group called the Buffalo Heads.  He expressed his dissatisfaction with the management of the Red Sox when several of the Buffalo Heads were abruptly traded, which earned him the same fate.  He finished his career pitching for the Montréal Expos, who released him after he protested the trade of his friend Rodney Scott.  Lee believed that Major League Baseball blackballed him at that point: no team would pick up his contract and he was forced to retire from his beloved baseball.

These days, Lee lives in Vermont and plays in senior league semi-pro teams. In 2003, he joined a barnstorming team of older players and toured Cuba.  Last year, at the age of 61, he pitched in the annual “Midnight Sun” game in Fairbanks, Alaska, on the occasion of the summer solstice.  He pitched six innings for the Southern California Running Birds and led them to a victory.

A friend of his, the late, great Warren Zevon, created a song, "Bill Lee," and included it on the Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School album.