Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Have Glove Will Travel Adventures of a Vagabond by Bill Lee New movie proves that 'Spaceman' Lee is still way out there. If you're a Red Sox fan, there are few people you could spend a more entertaining hour with than former Sox pitcher Bill Lee . Lee has always been one of the slyest and uncensored players in the business. When he was in Boston last year to promote his book, ``Have Glove, Will Travel: Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond," for instance, the man known as ``Spaceman" told the Globe that Yankee fans won't like the book because ``there are no pictures," and acknowledged that he regularly took steroids -- ``Oh, yeah, I took anything they'd give me. They shot me up with stuff all the time just to get me back out there. I looked like a Frank Perdue chicken half the time." A new movie profiles the fiercely independent player, who was with the Sox from 1969 to 1978. Called ``Spaceman: A Baseball Odyssey," it follows Lee to Cuba for a stint as a guest pitcher for an adult baseball league team from San Diego. It's supplemented with wonderful archival material and commentary from folks including former Sox teammates Luis Tiant and Fred Lynn and Globe sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy . ``Lee's life is just one long quest to play baseball," says the film's producer Josh Dixon , who first heard of the colorful player in 2000 (Dixon claims to have subsequently become a Sox fan). ``When Lee was about age 36, he was essentially blackballed -- no one wanted to touch him -- because he had ruffled so many feathers. But he continued to play baseball all over Canada, in Russia, China, Japan, Central America, South America." Lee, who's 59, still travels whenever somebody invites him to play. The movie meets up with him at his home in Craftsbury, Vt., where he's wandering his property with a shotgun. Most of the rest of the film takes place in Havana and Vinales, where Lee goes on a diet of ``black coffee, cigars, and straight rum," quotes Marshall McLuhan, and, after gimping around the bases with his bum knee, offers a little Cuban kid 14 acres in Vermont in exchange for his legs. The film has its New England big-screen premiere on Friday at 7 p.m. at the Woods Hole Film Festival, which started yesterday and runs through next Saturday. ``Spaceman" also has been shown twice on NESN , and is scheduled to replay on Aug. 6 and 28. Dixon is planning a theatrical and DVD release of the film in September. For information about the rest of the festival, call 508-495-3456 or go to www.woodsholefilmfestival.com . For information about ``Spaceman" the movie, go to www.spacemanincuba.com. CONVERSATIONS WITH: The Museum of Fine Arts is hosting an interesting series around the 2005 documentary ``Sketches of Frank Gehry ": several of the screenings between today and Aug. 20 will have post-film discussions to dig into director Sydney Pollack 's film and Gehry's monumental role in the world of architecture. Today, William Mitchell , MIT professor of architecture and media arts and sciences, will lead the conversation after a noon screening of the film. Mitchell was involved in the MIT Stata Center project, which Gehry designed. The film's producer Ultan Guilfoyle will be the guest after the Aug. 13 show at 2:30 p.m., and Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell , who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1996, will offer comments after the Aug. 20 show at 2:15 p.m. The series is co - presented with the Boston Jewish Film Festival, which coordinated the speakers. Information is at 617-369-3306 and www.mfa.org/film . ONLINE RESOURCE FOR FILMMAKERS: TurnHere.com is a neat concept: It's a travel guide website that, instead of featuring text descriptions of places, provides free short films that describe different city neighborhoods and their atmosphere, restaurants, and way of life. The site's tagline: ``Short Films Cool Places." For Boston, for instance, there are currently 15 short films online about neighborhoods from ``Allston Rock City" to ``Little Italy in the North End" to ``Dudley Square" in Roxbury, and films that focus on ``Boston Dive Bars" and ``South End Tails" (that is, the dogs who live there). HAVE GLOVE, WILL TRAVEL. Now in his mid-50s, countercultural and free-spirited as ever, the popular ex-Major League southpaw continues to zip curveballs over the plate and at the establishment in this sequel to The Wrong Stuff (1984). One reason 20 years have elapsed between the two books may be that Lee robustly and publicly enjoys his recreational intoxicants; another may be that he has kept very busy playing baseball outside show purviews. Lee has always been an outspoken, unconventional character who irked managers and front offices alike. (Both blackballed him from time to time.) In the mid-1980s, after 13 years in the limelight with the and the , he found himself looking for rubbers from which to pitch. He found plenty who were eager to tap his profane and exuberant personality, from the senior circuit and the exhibition leagues to colleges and clinics for Mic-Mac Indians in his adopted Canada. Lee is supreme at conveying the pure joy of playing baseball, and he also captures the fun of his run for president of the United States as the Rhinoceros Party candidate (he gets Abbie Hoffman’s endorsement, but not Hunter Thompson’s), of learning how to drink cognac from Bobby Hull, of playing in the 1988 Goodwill Games in the Soviet Union, of hitting a while playing for a semi-pro team in Saskatchewan that instantaneously coincided with a shatter of lightning and the coming of rain to quell an ruinous drought. He’s entertainingly all over the field: going to Cuba and tendering a savvy piece of travel writing, discussing Bernoulli’s principle and the physics of the curveball with Ted Williams, explaining the dynamics that involved pitching into trade winds rather than prevailing westerlies, sending up a lovely tribute to his father and his children, or taking the Major League to task for its greed and glitz. The Red Sox just delivered the World Series, but Lee delivers the beauty of elemental baseball: two pleasures the sport sorely needed. Bill Lee. William Francis Lee III (born December 28, 1946), (nicknamed " Spaceman "), is an American athlete and retired pitcher. He played for the Boston Red Sox from 1969-1978 and the Montreal Expos from 1979-1982. On February 25, 2008 the Red Sox organization announced that Bill Lee will be inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame on November 7, 2008. Lee will be inducted as record-holder for most games pitched by a left-hander (321) in team history and the third-highest win total (94) by a southpaw. On June 21, 2008, Lee was the starting pitcher for the Alaska Goldpanners of Fairbanks for the 103rd Midnight Sun Game. an event he last pitched in 1967 (losing to the Japan Amateur National Champion Kumagai-Gumi on seven unearned runs). Lee is known for his adherence to the counterculture behavior, his antics both on and off the field, and his use of the Leephus pitch, a personalized variation of the eephus pitch. [1] Lee has written four books: The Wrong Stuff ; Have Glove, Will Travel ; The Little Red (Sox) Book: A Revisionist Red Sox History ; and Baseball Eccentrics: the Most Entertaining, Outrageous, and Unforgettable Characters in the Game . In 2006, the documentary film Spaceman in Cuba featured Lee. Contents. Early life. Although Lee was born in Burbank, California, he was raised in Canoga Park and later in San Rafael. [ citation needed ] . He was born into a family with a number of former professional baseball players. His grandfather William Lee was an infielder for the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League and his aunt Annabelle Lee was a pitcher in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She was the first to throw a no- hitter and a perfect game in the AAGPBL. He graduated from Terra Linda High School in 1964. Lee attended the University of Southern California from 1964-1968 where he played for Rod Dedeaux. Lee was drafted by the Boston Red Sox in the 22nd round of the 1968 Major League amateur draft. Major league career. Rather than rely on the use of a fastball, Lee developed as a finesse pitcher. He threw a variety of off-speed pitches, including a variation of the Eephus pitch. The Leephus pitch or Space Ball, the names for Lee's take on the eephus pitch, follows a high arcing trajectory and is very slow. Lee was used almost exclusively as a relief pitcher during the first four years of his career. During that period, Lee appeared in 125 games, started just nine of them, and compiled a 19-11 record. In 1973, Lee was used primarily as a starting pitcher. He started 33 of the 38 games in which he appeared and went 17-11 with a 2.95 Earned Run Average. He was rewarded for his strong performance with a nomination to the American League All-Star team. He followed 1973 with two more 17-win seasons. Lee started two games in the 1975 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. His first start came in Game Two of the series. Lee let up just one run in eight innings; however, the Reds scored two runs off of Dick Drago in the top of the ninth inning and subsequently won the game 3-2. In Game Seven, Lee shut out the Reds for five innings and the Red Sox took a 3-0 lead. After getting the Reds' Tony Perez out twice with an Eephus pitch, sixth inning, the Reds' Perez hit an Eephus pitch over the , the left field wall at , for a two-run home run. Shortly thereafter, Lee left with a blister. [2] The Red Sox lost the game by a score of 4-3, and the 1975 World Series four games to three. Lee separated his left shoulder during a brawl that occurred between the Red Sox and the New York Yankees on May 20, 1976, after Yankee Lou Piniella ran over Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk in a play at home plate. Lee initially blamed the injury on Yankee third baseman Graig Nettles. However, after he had a chance to see the fight on video tape, Lee apologized to Nettles. Subsequently, he blamed Yankee manager Billy Martin for encouraging the Yankees players to be confrontational. [2] During the 1978 season, Lee and Red Sox manager Don Zimmer engaged in an ongoing public feud over the handling of the pitching staff. Lee's countercultural beliefs (detailed below) and free spirit also clashed with Zimmer's old-school, conservative personality. Lee and a few other of the more free-spirited Red Sox formed what they called "The Buffalo Heads" as a response to what they considered the overbearing nature of Zimmer (whom Lee nicknamed "the Designated Gerbil"). Zimmer retaliated during the season by relegating Lee to the bullpen and convincing management to trade away some of the other "Buffalo Heads", such as Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins and Bernie Carbo. And though, as a starting pitcher, Lee had owned a 12-5 career record against the New York Yankees, Zimmer refused to start him against the Yankees during a crucial late-season series. Although they had led their rivals by more than 14 games in mid-July, the Red Sox lost the division to the Yankees by one game. Lee was traded at the end of the year to the Montreal Expos for Stan Papi, a utility infielder. Referring to the previous season's collapse, Lee bid farewell to Boston by saying, "Who wants to be with a team that will go down in history alongside the ‘64 Phillies and the ‘67 Arabs?" Lee pitched well for the Expos in 1979, winning 16 games -- while his former team, the Red Sox, slumped, mostly for lack of starting pitching. Lee's career ended in 1982, when he was released by the Expos after staging a one-game walkout as a protest over Montreal's decision to release second baseman and friend Rodney Scott. Reputation and controversy. Lee's personality earned him popularity as well as the nickname "Spaceman". His intelligence, articulate conversational style, humorous voice, and outspoken manner meant his views were frequently recorded in the press. He spoke in defense of Maoist China (once visiting, only to lampoon it endlessly), population control, Greenpeace, school busing in Boston and anything else that happened to cross his mind. He berated an umpire for a controversial call in the 1975 World Series, threatening to bite off his ear and encouraging the American people to write letters demanding the game be replayed. He ate health food and practiced yoga. He claimed his marijuana use made him impervious to bus fumes while jogging to work at Fenway Park. He sang Warren Zevon songs at times, and in an act of mutual admiration, Zevon recorded a song entitled "Bill Lee" on his album Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School . In a college town like Boston, his views were shared by many youths, and they quickly became Lee's biggest fans. Despite his views on off-the-field matters, Lee was respected by fellow players, who believed his cajoling of the press took pressure off the team, and his attitude on the field was pure business. He was intensely competitive, and worked quickly, which always endears a pitcher to his teammates. But Lee would often speak out on matters concerning the team and was not afraid to criticize management, causing him to be dropped from both the Red Sox and Expos. Lee countered his offbeat politics with a strong sense of the game. He is an avowed purist and traditionalist, speaking out against the designated hitter, AstroTurf and polyester uniforms, while conversely extolling the virtues of day games and Sunday doubleheaders. Post-professional career. After the Expos released Lee, he played for a number of semi-professional teams. This included his time playing for and managing in the short-lived Senior League in Florida, largely composed of retired major leaguers. In 1988, he ran for President of the United States on the Canadian Political Rhinoceros Party ticket, but failed to appear on the ballot in any state. His slogan for the election was "No guns. No butter. Both can kill." He still lives on a farm in Vermont and played baseball around New England with the "Grey Sox", a semi-pro nine made up for former Red Sox players. In addition, Lee appears every Monday on the Loren and Wally morning show at WROR from roughly 7:45am to 7:55am (EST) and with Mitch Melnick on the Team 990 in Montreal every afternoon during baseball season. His farm is in Craftsbury, Vermont, and he visits his widowed father in Terra Linda, California. Always the child, he likes to go play catch at the old high school and swim in the municipal pool. He prides himself on saying he lives his life in a series of "small untruths". Specifically in 2007, Lee has played former major league players Dennis 'Oil Can' Boyd, Marquis Grissom, Delino DeShields and Ken Ryan on the Oil Can Boyd's Traveling All-Stars. The team was assembled by Boyd to "promote the heritage of the great Negro League style of baseball and the tradition of barnstorming", as well as to "serve as an inspiration to young African-American baseball players as the number of African- American players in Major League baseball continues to decline". [3] [4] On June 21/22, 2008, Lee, at the age of 61, pitched six-plus innings for the Alaska Goldpanners in their 10-6 win over the Southern California Running Birds in Fairbanks, Alaska. It was during the annual "Midnight Sun" ball game played at night on or about the Summer Solstice, when it never really gets dark. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner article is here: http://newsminer.com/news/2008/jun/28/spacemans-midnight-sun-game- was-one-ages/. Spaceman: A Baseball Odyssey. In 2003, filmmakers Brett Rapkin and Josh Dixon joined Lee on a barnstorming trip to Cuba. During this trip, Rapkin and Dixon gathered footage for the documentary film "Spaceman: A Baseball Odyssey." The film premiered at the 2006 SILVERDOCS AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival and later achieved high ratings on the New England Sports Network. It currently distributed across North America by Hart Sharp Video. 2008 Midnight Sun Game win. On June 21, 2008, Bill Lee returned to the mound as the starting pitcher for the Alaska Goldpanners in the 103rd Midnight Sun Game. In six innings, he struck out three and gave up four earned runs en route to a 10-6 victory over the Southern California Running Birds. Books. He is the author of four books. Two written with Richard Lally, and two with Jim Prime: spaceman. Bill Lee was left handed and born in California;a decent formula. The “spaceman” didn’t disappoint. He coulda been a mountain rebel, a story teller, big league southpaw, baseball bat manufacturer, weaver of eeuphus pitches, and oh that’s right, he was all of that and a damn good writer too. He still is. I met Mr. Lee a few years ago. He was on a book tour and supposedly promoting his new book; “Have glove Will Travel: Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond.” I say supposedly because the gathering of about 20 of us quickly exited for the nearest “watering hole.” Lee was the first out the door. I was carrying a basketball under my arm. Lee caught a side glance of the ball from another sport and dropped the question he was answering. He reached out his arms so I threw him the basketball and he started spinning it on his finger and talking about pick up games at USC. The book itself is about his baseball life after being unofficially banned from the Montreal Expos and major leagues in 1982. Lee hit the road to extend his career. It didn’t matter if it was softball, hardball, or wall ball. He just wanted to keep playing. He joined leagues in New Brunswick, British Columbia, New Hampshire, the Alaskan midnight sun game and in 2012 he signed a contract at 65 years young with the San Rafael Pacifics. On August 23, 2012 he became the oldest pitcher to ever start a professional match. He tossed a complete game shutout. The book is in many ways a continuation of “The Wrong Stuff”- his first book chronicling his days as a pitcher with the Boston Red Sox and Montreal Expos. Both books are written exactly as he speaks with few fancy licks and a lot of honesty. It’s easy to imagine him sitting down and cranking out both in five hours. There’s also “The Little Red (Sox) Book; The Curse Reversed Edition.” Lee might have been born in Burbank, California, but his loyalties rest with the Red Sox. He pitched in Boston for 10 years, earned an all star appearance in 1973 and pitched well in the 1975 World Series. I dare say best story, idea, or quote in the Red Sox book because that’s for deodorant advertisers. I’ll just say that the spaceman reveals a logical explanation regarding the IQ of Yankee fans. I don’t want to spoil it for you. Reading Bill Lee is a seance we all deserve in the original. Lee knocks you off your center and literally realigns lives. That may sound a tad dramatic, but his integrity is so fine tuned that it’s virtually impossible to not walk away from him feeling a bit more determined to dig deeper into who you are. Have Glove Will Travel: Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond by Bill Lee. When speaking with Bill Lee, the ex�Red Sox southpaw and avowed "liberal, hippie, Rastafarian�Zen Buddhist�Communist with a lot of Catholic guilt," it�s usually best just to let the tape roll. The leftist lefty � who�ll be in town March 2 to read from his new memoir, Have Glove, Will Travel: Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond (Crown), co-written with Richard Lally � always has something interesting to say. Chronicling Lee�s post-professional adventures playing in various independent leagues from Cape Breton to Cuba to China, Have Glove is a hilarious, sometimes hash-hazy account of one baseball purist�s refusal to hang up his cleats. When we reached the Spaceman at his home in Craftsbury, Vermont, last week, he�d spent the past hour watching deer forage in the snow outside his window, but sunny summer days were clearly on his mind. Here�s what he had to say once he put down his copy of Plato�s Republic . On whether the dawning of spring training still packs a thrill for him after all these years. "Oh yeah! Oh, you bet it does. I get a jump on [the players]. I go down in January and play in a wood-bat tournament, then do a couple of fantasy camps, and then turn around and cut some more wood up here. But, yeah, the middle of February I always have the urge to leave and beat the next big storm south. They�re all like young dogs frolicking in the grass down there. They all feel pretty good. They�re not blistered by the sun and bored of the regularity yet. The first week is always the best." On why, at age 58, he still plays ball. "I kind of get a reprieve from old age from it. I made a pact with myself: I would play until I didn�t hit a home run in a given year. And each year I seemed to hit one or two or four. I hit two in the [Triple-A] All-Star Game down in Pawtucket last summer. This year, I made a special bat out of birch, lighter and a little whippier, so I could face younger pitching. And damned if in the first game this year, I didn�t take a 2-0 fastball and hit it out of Eddie Popowski Field down in Fort Myers." On the Red Sox� remodeling of Fenway Park. "I love it. Remarkable. I�ve always wanted the Boston Pops to play in the right-field corner, up on that veranda. But they put a bar up there instead, and that�s the second-best thing." On watching the Sox� historic post-season run last fall. "I was in Maui. I found out that it�s the greatest place on earth to watch a Red Sox playoff series. The games start at 2 p.m. You get up at first light, have a nice Kona coffee, and then you snorkel with all the natives and the 2000 species of fish and turtles. And then you have a nice lunch, a cocktail, and then sit down and watch the Red Sox kick Yankee butt. It doesn�t get any better than that." On his admiration for Curt Schilling�s ALCS heroics, Schilling�s political views notwithstanding. "I call it the Stigmata of Schilling, that blood leaking through his sock. But it wasn�t blood, it was probably that Betadine solution that they put over a wound to keep it sanitary. I�ve always thought that everybody in Boston, instead of having plastic Jesus on their dashboards, should have little [statuettes] of Schilling. Even though he�s a right-wing fascist. Anyone who will go up and stump for Bush in New Hampshire. I mean, aren�t there enough conservatives up in New Hampshire without sending another one?" On why there are so few true characters like himself in the game today. "Everybody�s got an agent now, and it tends to make you more conservative and commercial-oriented. No one�s a free thinker because of the economics of the situation." On players who use steroids. "I don�t care, they can do anything they want. I love a hitter that�s wound up and grinding his molars down to dust. They don�t tend to last very long, and all you have to do is hold the ball on �em and they�ll eventually blow up at home plate." His prediction for the 2005 Red Sox. "Oh, I think we�ll win every ball game. And the Yankees will decide not to play; Steinbrenner will move the team to the Philippines and call them the Manila Folders." Bill Lee reads from Have Glove, Will Travel at noon on Wednesday, March 2, at Barnes & Noble in the Prudential Center, 800 Boylston Street, in Boston; call (617) 247-6959.