"I think about the cosmic snowball theory. A few million years from now the sun will burn out and lose its gravitational pull. The earth will turn into a giant snowball and be hurled through space. When that happens it won't matter if I get this guy out."
"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."
"Most of the managers are lifetime .220 hitters. For years pitchers have been getting these managers out 75% of the time and that's why they don't like us."
"People are too hung up on winning. I can get off on a really good helmet throw."
"The other day they asked me about mandatory drug testing. I said I believed in drug testing a long time ago. All through the sixties I tested everything."
"There's nothing in the world like the fatalism of the Red Sox fans, which has been bred into them for generations by that little green ballpark, and the wall, and by a team that keeps trying to win by hitting everything out of sight and just out-bombarding everyone else in the league. All this makes Boston fans a little crazy and I'm sorry for them."
"You take a team with twenty-five assholes and I'll show you a pennant. I'll show you the New York Yankees."
― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 19:11 (eighteen years ago) link
― mookieproof (mookieproof), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 19:34 (eighteen years ago) link
Another anecdote (from Okrent and Wulf's "Baseball Anecdotes"):
Lee was always retiring from baseball, usually when the Red Sox, or later the Expos, would trade one of his pals. When Bernie Carbo, a kindred spirit who would buy an extra plane ticket so he could take his stuffed gorilla with him on road trips, was sold to the Indians, Lee walked out for a day and was fined $533. He asked management to make it $1500 "so I could take another couple of days off."
― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 20:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 20:05 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 18 October 2005 20:14 (eighteen years ago) link
Pretty classic, that.
Darrell Johnson pitched Tiant in game 6 instead (there was a rainout) and Lee lost game 7. He was really bugged that he and Luis got flipped.
― steve ketchup (steve ketchup), Tuesday, 21 February 2006 00:36 (eighteen years ago) link
― otto midnight (otto midnight), Tuesday, 21 February 2006 16:08 (eighteen years ago) link
― Steve Shasta (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, 21 February 2006 17:13 (eighteen years ago) link
It sure wasn't Cleveland — they had the Triangle Diner and the Theatrical. We were there one Fourth of July and the streets were so deserted I thought the world had ended and I was the last survivor, like a scene out of Neville Shute's "On the Beach."
http://www.sports-central.org/sports/2006/06/17/lost_in_space_bill_lee_interview.php
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 18:48 (seventeen years ago) link
― Steve Shasta (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, 20 June 2006 19:20 (seventeen years ago) link
"Bill James ruined this game. And then 'Moneyball'."
http://www.nesn.com/2011/09/bill-lee-says-baseball-will-never-die-but-something-must-be-done-to-improve-tempo-of-game.html
― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 10 September 2011 13:36 (twelve years ago) link
I love Bill Lee, but when he complains that "ballplayers carry Halliburtons with money nowadays and we carried a lunch bucket," that's a pretty funny example of old-ballplayers-never-die, and from I guy I would have expected to see the irony of his statement. Lee belonged to the generation of players who were (thankfully) first granted free agency--older players said exactly the same thing about Reggie, Messersmith, and all the rest at the time. (What is a Halliburton?)
― clemenza, Saturday, 10 September 2011 16:39 (twelve years ago) link
Pitched a CG victory in the North American League last night.
BoxscoreGame Report
65 years old.
― clemenza, Saturday, 25 August 2012 14:25 (eleven years ago) link
collapsed while warming up for the Savannah Bananas but he’s okay!did not know he was on the Savannah Bananas but that makes me really happy. bill lee and Eric Byrnes together oh boy
― brimstead, Saturday, 20 August 2022 15:44 (one year ago) link
I'm impressed that that boxscore I linked to 10 years ago is still online.
― clemenza, Saturday, 20 August 2022 21:06 (one year ago) link