newsminer.com

Photo by John Wagner

FAIRBANKS — Former Alaska Goldpanner and Boston Red Sox pitcher Bill “Spacemen” Lee will be the first to admit he isn’t sure how long he will last as the starting pitcher for the Goldpanners in tonight’s Midnight Sun Game.

At 62, his fast ball doesn’t have as much zip as it did 40 years ago, and his curve ball doesn’t have as much hook.

“I haven’t thrown a hardball in three weeks, but I did take a bucket of balls out in my backyard three days ago and throw them against the fence,” said Lee, who lives on a farm in northern Vermont.

Forty-one years later, the “Spaceman” touched down in Fairbanks again on Friday.

This time, though, he drove instead of flying.

“I drove up from Anchorage today, and by the time I hit the Tanana River (in Nenana), my (bottom) was killing me,” Lee told a small crowd at Big Daddy’s Bar-B-Q on Friday evening for a gathering of Goldpanner alumni who are in town for tonight’s game. “That road wasn’t here when I played.”

Lee was 21 years old when he played for the Goldpanners in 1967, the second of two summers spent in Fairbanks before moving on to a 14-year career in the big leagues, most of it as a left-handed pitcher for the Red Sox.

Back then, he hadn’t yet acquired the nickname that most baseball fans came to know him by, “Spaceman.” Though he was a capable pitcher who finished his career with a record of 119-90 and respectable 3.62 ERA, including three straight 17-win seasons for the Red Sox, Lee was better known for his colorful remarks to reporters and clashes with his managers and baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

Lee once bragged about sprinkling marijuana on his organic buckwheat pancakes, for which Kuhn fined him. He told a club doctor that a foreign object sighted on an X-ray of his foot was “an old Dewar’s cap” that he had accidentally ingested. He angered the California Angels’ by suggesting that they could conduct their batting practice in the lobby of the fanciest hotel in town “and never chip a chandelier.”

During his time with the Red Sox, Lee referred to manager Don Zimmer as “the gerbil” and openly questioned his managing strategy.

“Zimmer wouldn’t know a good pitcher if he came up and bit him in the ass,” Lee once said of his manager.

When asked what made him so eccentric, Lee told author Jim Prime, who has written several books about the Boston Red Sox, “I used to play for the Alaska Goldpanners, and when you play on permafrost, and it warms and your centerfielder disappears, that leads to eccentricity.”

At age 62, Lee hasn’t changed much. His hair is whiter, his mid-section a little thicker and his legs are a little more bowed, but his blue eyes still sparkle when he talks baseball and the stories still roll off his tongue as if it were yesterday.

But even Lee, who started and lost the 1967 Midnight Sun Game for the Panners against the Japanese national team, isn’t sure how he will fare when he takes the mound tonight. He plays more softball than baseball these days, though he still appears in good shape.

“The third basemen better be wearing Kevlar,” he said, referring to the fact that right-handed hitters might not have trouble getting around on his fastball these days. “My one rule is they can’t bunt on me. Well, they can bunt if they want, but the next guy up I’m going to hit.”

Lee ranks as one of the greatest pitchers in Goldpanners history. In two years, he posted a record of 11 wins, 6 losses and 3 saves with a 1.87 ERA in 144 1/3 innings. He has the lowest ERA of any left-handed pitcher in Panners history.

The only recollection Lee has of pitching in the 1967 Midnight Sun Game, a 10-3 loss, is that it was dark.

“(Bill) Seinsoth hit a home run, and no one saw the ball leave the bat so they called it a foul ball,” he said.

But the chance to return to Fairbanks and play in the Midnight Sun Game — he was invited by general manager Don Dennis — was too much for Lee to pass up, even at age 62. Lee has fond memories of Fairbanks, for professional and personal reasons.

Lee met his first wife, Mary Lou Helfrich, when he stepped off the plane in Fairbanks.

“She was a stewardess for Wien Air Alaska and when I got off the plane she put a snowball lei around my neck and a year and a half later we were married,” Lee said.

Though they have since divorced, Lee has four grandsons and a granddaughter as a result of his marriage to Helfrich.

“If it hadn’t been for me getting off that plane and Mary Lou being here, those kids wouldn’t exist,” he said.

He remembers working at the Safeway grocery store during the 1967 season.

“I used to stock the beer shelves, which you had to do early in the morning in Fairbanks because people bought their beer early,” Lee said. “Guys on horseback used to come in and buy beer.”

While Lee can’t remember the name of the host family he stayed with, he said the man of the house was an electrician who let him borrow his pickup to date Helfrich, which helped him win her away from another suitor. Though he arrived in town late in the afternoon and hadn’t had a chance to drive around, Lee recognized Fairview Manor, which served as military housing when he was here.

Even after he left Fairbanks, Lee kept strong ties with Alaska. When Lee was fined $200 by Kuhn for admitting he smoked marijuana, Lee donated the money to the mission in St. Marys, a village on the Yukon River.

“I said, ‘That will keep them in moose meat for a year,’” recalled Lee, who came to know Alaska’s geography as a result of his wife’s job as a stewardess. “I told him, ‘I’m not sending it to you, Bowie; it will end up in a (Richard) Nixon re-election fund.’”

It was colorful comments like that that Lee earned his nickname, but deep down, Lee was and always will be a Goldpanner.

“It’s the No. 1 amateur team in history,” said Lee, sporting a traditional red Goldpanners hat emblazoned with the number 49 inside a gold star.