No Longer Left Out, He Plays Left Field

After he retired from baseball, left- handed pitcher Bill (Spaceman) Lee was not really welcome to play in the oldtimers games in Boston and Montreal, where he used to play.

Why? Well, in Boston, Lee had called Manager Don Zimmer “a gerbil” and in Montreal, he upset Manager Jim Fanning so much that years later, Fanning still considered Lee “a traitor.”

But times have changed. Now Lee, the unsuccessful Rhinoceros Party candidate for president, has played in an oldtimers game in Montreal and just recently played in an oldtimers game in Fenway Park.

Lee was stationed in left field in front of the Green Monster because Carl Yastrzemski didn’t want to play his Hall of Fame position. Instead, Yastrzemski wanted to fish.

Said Lee: “Yaz tipped his hat to the fans and was in Florida before the first out was recorded.”

Add Spaceman: Lee pitched the ninth inning in the oldtimers game at Fenway, allowing a home run to Curt Flood.

Lee said he grooved it to Flood, since it was Flood who successfully challenged baseball’s reserve clause, which in effect, bound players to their original teams.

“I thought here was the one guy who did as much for baseball as anybody else, so I just said, ‘Here, hit it.’ ”

Last add Spaceman: Although he grew up in Canoga Park and went to USC, Lee has decided to live in Vermont. He is building a house in tiny Craftsbury in the northern part of the state.

“It’s a pretty pristine paradise--both days it’s sunny,” Lee said.

Trivia time: Who was the first jockey to ride 5,000 winners?

Bull market: Certainly, Michael Jordan has turned the Chicago Bulls around, but it wasn’t wasn’t too long ago that the team was in disarray.

In the pre-Jordan days, Magic Johnson had this to say after hearing that Ann Landers attended the Bulls’ games at Chicago Stadium: “She must have problems of her own.”

Open and shut: The U.S. Open golf tournament will be played June 15-18 at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y., which was also the scene of the 1968 Open.

In that Open, only Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino broke par for 72 holes. However, Trevino’s score of 13-under-par 275 was deemed so easy, the original Donald Ross-designed course was overhauled by golf course architect George Fazio, who made it tougher.

“Why did they do it?” Nicklaus asked in Golf Magazine. “It’s incongruous. Now you have 15 Donald Ross holes and three George Fazio holes.”

Trivia answer: Johnny Longden, who reached it in 1957.

Quotebook: From Yogi Berra when asked his cap size during spring training: “I don’t know. I’m not in shape yet.”