[F]ormer Boston Red Sox pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee never had much of a fastball. He relied more on off-speed pitches and curveballs throughout his baseball career.
Not much has changed, not even his changeup — he still pitches senior ball in Burlington — except for one thing. He’s added a new pitch to his arsenal: He’s running for governor of Vermont.
Thursday evening in Cabot, Lee will officially kick off his campaign as the candidate of the Liberty Union Party, the party that spawned the political career of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Lee’s campaign promises to be a mix of pitches — fastballs and curveballs, and maybe even one of those super-slow throws with an enormously high trajectory, known as an eephus pitch, that became his signature way of catching the batter off-guard.
The Craftsbury resident is an oddity and a study in contrasts. A goofball off the field, Lee pitched more games for the Sox than any other left-hander in the team’s history. He won 109 games in a career with the Sox from 1969 to 1978 and then the Montreal Expos until 1982, pitching in relief at the beginning and end of his career, a three-time 17-game winner as a starter in between.
But Lee’s bigger claim to fame was forged off the field with off-the-cuff, often tongue-in-cheek remarks, including support for Maoist China and Boston school busing. He was a darling of the press.
Just when you think Lee is being serious, he veers into the silly.
“I live here because it’s a sane place to live,” he said Wednesday, “and because it’s a halfway house between two bars, one in Montreal and one in Boston.”
The 69-year-old has been an ambassador for Major League Baseball since 1999, helping to bring Cuban players to the United States and encouraging Americans to visit the island country. He also said that in his first 100 days he will market baseball bats made from Vermont wood and labeled “I-91” and “I-89.”
He decries the opiate addiction problem as a product of “the introduction of the designated hitter and the elimination of PE” gym classes in school. On the second point, he said, he is serious, adding that children need to be made to go outside and run to “create their own endorphins” and not rely on drugs.
The founder of the Liberty Union Party, Peter Diamondstone, told Time Magazine that Lee is a credible candidate.
“He seemed to us to be a person of high quality character,” Diamondstone said. “He goes to Cuba and plays baseball with young girls and boys. He does things that seem to be in the spirit of the socialist community.”
The Liberty Union Party describes itself as the nonviolent socialist party. It is classified as a minor party, although it had major party status as recently as 2012. Last year, it passed a resolution condemning Vermont’s three-member congressional delegation as “war criminals’’ for supporting Israel.
This will not be Lee’s first swing at politics.
In 1988, he ran for president under the banner of the Rhinoceros Party. His platform included bulldozing the Rocky Mountains so areas to the east could receive a few extra minutes of sunlight. He also sought to ban guns and butter.
Asked what his 2016 gubernatorial platform will be, Lee said, in between splitting cords at his home: “It will be made of my own wood.”
He went on to list universal health care and legalizing marijuana as part of his agenda, though he sounded as if he thought that had already been taken care of.
“It’s not legal?” he quipped. “It’s been legal since 1966 as far as I’m concerned.”
The man who once bragged he sprinkled marijuana on his pancakes to combat Boston bus fumes said he no longer smokes it. “I’m into edibles these days.”
Lee became known as “Spaceman” in 1971 after a teammate, third baseman John Kennedy — no, not that Kennedy — heard him pontificating about an Apollo mission to reporters after a game, preventing Kennedy, according to Lee, from getting changed quickly enough to catch up with a woman he spied in the crowd.
Lee said he also wants to abolish the border between the U.S. and Canada, harness Canada’s Bay of Fundy for electric power and bring the Tampa Bay Rays back to Montreal.
“We’ll call them the X-Rays,” he said.
Lee said that in truth he would not do much as governor and that it’s really just a stepping stone.
“This is a perfect state. Why touch it?” he said, invoking the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which says that once something is observed or examined its behavior is changed. Plus, Lee said, he has higher goals.
“I want to be the emperor of planet Earth,” he said.
Lee may run into a practical problem. He told Time magazine he lived in Vermont for only three months of the year, which would mean he is not a full-time resident. He told VTDigger he’s “pretty sure” he was in the state for six months of the year, but quickly added he expected the issue to be a “touchstone” in the campaign.
“I’m a ballplayer. I’m always on the road,” Lee said. He said he also has homes in Canada and Florida. “My accountants are in Florida, my lawyers in Montpelier and my doctors are in Canada — my dentist, my dermatologist, my orthopedic surgeon.”
Lee plans to use his appearances on the mound for the Burlington Cardinals, his senior league team, to promote his candidacy.
“Am I the right person to lead the state? You bet I am,” he said, “in international affairs and domestic affairs. I live off the land, eat my own produce. I eat within 5 miles of my house, and I think that’s the way all Vermonters should live.”
Also running for governor are Democrats Sue Minter, Matt Dunne and Peter Galbraith. Republicans running are Lt. Gov. Phil Scott and Bruce Lisman.
Lee will hold his kickoff at Headwater Gardens in Cabot at 5:30 p.m. Thursday.
