Bill “Spaceman” Lee and my brother Steve

In the fall of 2003, the Boston Red Sox faced the New York Yankees in the third game of the American League Championship series. It was the bottom of the sixth, and Nomar Garciaparra, Boston’s All-Star short-stop, faced Roger Clemens on the mound. The Red Sox, perennial also-rans, had not yet broken the “Curse of the Bambino;” the team had not won a World Series since they traded away pitcher Babe Ruth in 1918.

            Watching the game on TV was former Red Sox pitcher, Bill “Spaceman” Lee. His eyes bulged as he fidgeted and moaned and wrung his hands. Next to Bill was my brother, Steve. No one, I repeat, no one loved the game more than Steve. He patted the Spaceman on the back and passed him the cheese dip.

            Dispersed around the living room on beanbags, couches and La-Z-Boys were fourteen middle-aged men and a young woman from Brooklyn, New York. We were campers at Bill Lee’s Fantasy Baseball Camp in Upton, Vermont. This was the highlight of our weekend with Bill and his associate, Jeff McKay, a former coach at the University of Massachusetts. As over-the-hill, former high school and college baseball players and never has-beens, we had soaked up Bill’s instruction and witticisms for the past three days. We had scrimmaged, done a bit of pepper, and listened to Bill expound on his theories on such diverse topics as Cuban baseball, the best Craft Beer, and why he could still pitch in the majors at age 57, if only someone would give him the damn ball.

            Bill also made his case for World Peace. "I would change policy, bring back natural grass and nickel beer. Baseball is the bellybutton of our society. Straighten out baseball, and you straighten out the rest of the world." Which, after spending 3 days with Bill, to my mind, made perfect sense.

            “Everybody. Watch Nomar,” Bill Lee said. “Watch his hands.” The screen was no more than five feet from our noses. Roger Clemens, pitching from the stretch, checked the runner on first, bobbed his head, and fired a fast ball. Nomar, swinging from the hips, missed badly. “Did you see that? Did you see that? Oh my god!” Bill erupted from the couch, smacked his head with the heel of his palm, grabbed a cold one, and “slam,” out the door he disappeared.

“See what?” I whispered to my brother Steve.

            This was not your usual Fantasy baseball camp where the celebrity player flies in for a pep talk, shakes hands all-around, signs a few bats, and leaves the baseball instruction to an assistant. No, when you arrived at Bill Lee’s camp, you entered a portal into Bill Lee’s universe.

            On our first day, the thing I noticed when The Spaceman greeted us was that he was wearing a Boston Red Sox uniform circa 1918. And at 6’5” with a slightly rounded paunch, he looked like had stepped out of a time machine from an era when baseball players, particularly pitchers, eschewed weights and ate and drank “whatever,” and plenty of it.

            Then we broke up for a little pepper. Pepper involves one player tossing the ball to their partner who bunts or taps the ball back. The participants are only about 10-15 feet apart, and the drill is intended to improve eye/hand coordination. It is simple yet deceiving; the pitcher must present the ball to the right spot; the batter must tap the ball back so that it doesn’t go around or over the head of the pitcher. The drill is fast and light and easy and fun. It gets you in the mood for baseball, unless you’ve recently torn your rotator cuff and need to toss the ball underhand. Like me.

            Bill sauntered over to watch me play pepper with my brother Steve. He stood off to one side, with his arms crossed across his chest, humming, something. What? In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida? Never mind. Steve was playing his best pepper. No matter where I threw the ball, he expertly adjusted his bat and tapped it back to my glove. Then, embarrassed that I was throwing the ball underhand under Bill’s watchful eye, I decided to throw overhand. Big mistake. Man, did that hurt. The ball floated over Steve’s head and rolled into the dugout.

            “Hold it. Hold it!  Chuck! [he knew my name!], what the hell is going on?” He strode over to where I stood and reached up and squeezed my shoulder with his enormous left hand. I yelped and blurted out my story…slipped on my skies at Huntington Ravine, fell into a snow-fed creek, was carried downstream with my pack, hit a boulder, dislocated my shoulder, tore my…but Bill would have none of that. “Chuck,” he said simply, “You don’t have shit in there.”

            “Right. You’re so right.” I replied.

            “Keep it underhand, okay?” he said.

            “Sure. Thanks Bill.”

            My brother added, “For the scrimmage, we’re going to put him in right field and move the second baseman to the edge of the infield apron and shift the center fielder over to cover for him.”

            Bill appraised my brother. “AT LEAST SOMEBODY AROUND HERE KNOWS BASEBALL!” He clapped his hands and said, “LET’S PLAY SOME BALL!!”

            That was my brother’s second memorable baseball moment. The first occurred against Montclair High School in the Class A New Jersey high school tournament when Steve was eighteen. Steve singled to start the inning. Larry Berra—yes, the son of Yogi Berra—Montclair’s talented second baseman (who would also have a notable career in the majors), sized up my brother, weighing his options. If it’s a line-drive, I double up this nobody on first. If it’s a grounder to short or third, I take the throw over second base and throw to first: double play.

            It was a grounder to short. My brother broke for second, two steps behind Larry Berra. Larry received a perfect throw, just to the right of his glove, pivoted, and… my brother roared into second base, spikes up, and took him out. Absolutely plastered him. The ball dribbled onto the outfield apron. Larry dusted himself off, picked up the loose ball, and glowered at my brother.

            Yogi Berra, watching from the stands, screamed an obscenity and stormed to the third base line. Then he pointed to my brother. “That was bush league!” My brother’s eyes widened like saucers. “Totally bush league!” Yogi repeated before slowly realizing that his son was okay, that my brother’s play was only a little over the top, and Montclair was still winning 4-2. He shlumped back to the stands.

            My brother dusted himself off and beamed. Yogi Berra was talking to me!

            In the arc of life, baseball would be my brother’s constant companion. After high school, he was deeply disappointed when he didn’t make the Marietta College baseball team, okay, crestfallen, but he never wavered in his love of baseball or hung up his spikes. When he moved to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, he shifted his allegiance from the Yankees to the Baltimore Orioles. He admired Cal Ripken’s grittiness and basked in the success of the great pitching rotation of Cuellar, Palmer, Dobson, and McNally, who brought the Orioles multiple World Championships.

And he stuck with hardball. In Maryland, diehard baseball guys refused to retire to slow-pitch softball. They found their niche in hardball leagues where the ball came off the bat with a crack instead of a whump. Into his forties my brother played, then into his fifties. After a bone marrow transplant for a blood cancer at age 61, he returned to the game a year later with a plate in his neck and blood counts which never fully recovered. He was a scrapper. You wanted Steve on your team. Eventually, he shifted from second base to pitcher. At age 63 he developed a wicked knuckle ball, and boy could he hit. Along the way, he picked up baseball minutiae, a lot of it.

            Me, I drifted away from the game. I played Little League but gave it up when Pony League beckoned. Maybe it was because our dad died suddenly when I was 11 and Steve was 13 and it affected us differently. Maybe I didn’t have the great teammates or coaches my brother was blessed with. Steve, he played ball.

            So, when Steve called and asked me to go to the Bill Lee Fantasy Baseball Camp, I had mixed feelings (Okay, I didn’t want to go). I had not played a game of baseball in nearly 40-years and, to be truthful, felt that I would be surrounded by a bunch of hero-worshipping guys with a passion for autographs. But Steve persisted. The camp was in beautiful upstate Vermont.  You can drive over from Maine in four hours. There is excellent local craft beer. In the end, I relented. After all, my brother was making-an-effort to spend time together. “I’m not going to have a good time,” I insisted to my wife Sandi as I fished out an ancient mitt stashed away in our toy bin.

            “Go forth and be with your brother,” Sandi mused. “Play ball.”

            On the first morning after playing pepper, we went out for breakfast at a local diner. Bill Lee wore his 1918 Red Sox uniform. He chatted up our waitress. He chatted up the customers. Over his shoulder, he carried his favorite bat. It was like a revival meeting. Say this about Bill Lee, he loved being Bill Lee. Afterwards, we hit the diamond. My brother settled into second base. I walked out to my assigned position in right field. Bill shuffled batters and fielders in and out of the line-up and lamented that we didn’t have enough players to field two full teams. So, he, Bill Lee, would pitch.

            The rhythmic melody of baseball chatter flowed over the field. I found myself in right field chanting, Come on, no batter, no batter, no batter. SWING!  After spitting and scuffing my sneakers against the outfield grass, I pounded my glove, bent my knees, and adjusted my cap. A fly ball came off the bat, and I drifted towards the right field line, pumped my glove, and caught the ball, my first catch since age eleven. Then I rolled the ball underhand to my brother and everyone laughed in a we-understand-injury sort of way. Steve gave me a thumbs up.

            When it was my turn to bat, I whiffed repeatedly on Bill Lee’s offerings. Then the big lefty told me that he was going to groove the ball into my sweet spot, and I sprayed a line drive to left field. Yes!!! Bill pitching from the stretch, tried to pick me off. Sliding back to first, I waved a finger in his direction. No way! At my last at bat, Bill gave me a look at his famous Leephus, a lobbed, high-trajectory pitch which looks hittable, only it isn’t. I swung. I missed. I swung. I missed. Hands on his knees, Bill laughed till tears came streaming down his cheeks.

When my brother came to the plate, Bill seemed to bear down. Steve waved his bat menacingly and he rifled the first pitch into the farthest corners of the outfield. Several innings later, he almost took the head off the third baseman who made the near-fatal mistake of reaching up and adjusting his sunglasses at exactly the wrong time.

It was the ninth inning, tie game. Man on third, one out. The batter lofted a fly ball over Steve’s head. I watched in awe as he sprinted towards me from second base out to shallow right field, caught the ball with his back to the plate, pivoted and in one fluid motion fired a perfect strike to the catcher to throw out the runner tagging up from third base. When the dust cleared, Bill Lee declared the runner out. Double play. Game over. Then Bill quietly tipped his cap in my brother’s direction.  

That night, Bill and my brother and Jeff McKay, a former coach at the University of Massachusetts, stayed up late, talking baseball trivia. Bill nearly peed in his pants at my brother’s Yogi Berra story. He told Steve that it was a darn shame that he didn’t make the Marietta college baseball team. Their loss. You’re a solid player. Good fundamentals. And of course, they argued about baseball statistics. Before ubiquitous I-phones could be the final arbitrator in any stat discussion, my brother more than held his own.

That afternoon, we crowded into the farmhouse to watch the Sox play the Yankees on TV. After Nomar flailed miserably on the first pitch, Bill had willed himself back inside and collapsed onto the couch. A red swollen welt was visible on the big guy’s forehead where moments before he had smacked himself in frustration. The next pitch came in belt high. Nomar swung and missed again. Strike two. “Nooo!” Bill leapt up. He pointed to the TV. “Do you know what that was?” The screen door slammed and out went Bill, again.  

I leaned over to my brother. “Steve, I mean, what’s the deal? We’re watching a player on TV, and we’re supposed to pick up a flaw in his swing?”

“I don’t know,” Steve replied, as he continued to stare at the screen. “Maybe Bill is seeing something we can’t see. Nomar is a superstar. He recently married Mia Hamm, one of the all-time great soccer players, plays a solid short-stop, clutch hitter. I think Clemens is just overpowering him.” The other campers nodded. They knew Steve was a baseball guy.  

Bill Lee quietly rejoined us on the couch. The curse of the Bambino settled over Nomar’s head. The count was no balls and two strikes. We held our breath. Clemens come out of the stretch and delivered the ball. Nomar swung and weakly tapped the ball back to the shortstop. He was out by a mile. There was a collective groan.

“Do you know what that was?” Bill Lee repeated for the last time. We looked at him blankly. Okay, now the teaching moment. Here was the real difference between a major league pitcher and the rest of us weekend warriors. We leaned in as one. “That was too much,” Bill said before taking a long slow draw from his beer. “Too much Mia Hamm.”  And you know, after spending a weekend with the Spaceman, it made absolute perfect sense. After all, we were baseball players.