BILL LEE | RICHARD LALLY
1 THREE CLASSIC BOOKS BY SPACEMAN
First came The Wrong Stuff, a classic of its genre; then the hilarious The Little Red Sox Book, a revisionist Red Sox history (Curse Reversed edition now available in paperback) and now Have Glove Will Travel. Lee is the Hemingway of baseball players.
Pumpsie Greenberg
2 Hemingway Couldn't Write A Better Book
This book is extraordinary. First, it may be the most literate baseball memoir ever written. It reads like an excellent novel with some passages that moved me to tears, not because they were poignant, but because they were so beautifully written. Second, you will never read a more candid self-portrait. Mr. Lee writes honestly and insightfully though humorously about his many shortcomings. But what struck me is that this is a great piece of travel writing, something like a cross between Bill Bryson and the late Hunter Thompson. Lee relates zany and amusing anecdotes about the places he's visited and the exotic characters he's met while searching the globe for the perfect playing field. Lee writes of ending a drought by hitting a homer in Saskatchewan (with an wacky but loving travel piece on the town of Lumsden), educating Ted Williams, of all people, on hittng theory, and how he got arrested three times in one day while playing in Russia. It is all great, great fun. But when he writes about how baseball helped him reconcile with his father and children or of the gift he received from an impoverished woman while visiting Cuban, Lee (and his co-writer Richard Lally) will break your heart. The passages in these sections are as moving as anything you will ever read in a baseball book or any book for that matter. This book is essential reading for anyone who loves baseball or just loves great writing. I cannot wait to see the movie. Bravo!
3 Bill Lee Has A Genuine Love For The Game
I was going to rate this book three stars, but the book rallied in the last few chapters. I was not interested in reading about Bill Lee's adventures around the world as it applied to drugs and other hell-raising escapades. He was put on baseball's black list after going AWOL during a game with the Montreal Expos when a friend of his was unfairly, according to Lee, released. There is a wonderful chapter on the conversation he had with Ted Williams. Williams, of course, claims he made a living off of dumb pitchers. However, Lee challenged Teddy Ballgame by saying he could tell him one reason Williams was such a good hitter that Ted wasn't even aware of. The skeptical, but curious, Williams decided to hear what Lee had to say. After having Williams conduct a simple experiment involving his eyes, Lee made a believer of Williams in regard to which of Williams' eyes was the dominant one. Lee genuinely loves the game of baseball as has previous generations in his family. In fact, his aunt, Annabelle Lee, was a professional ballplayer for nine seasons as the ace left-hander for several women's baseball teams during the 1940's. Her uniform hangs in the Baseball Hall of Fame. For Lee to continue playing wherever a ballgame can be found shows he has a genuine love for the game. There are some very funny anecdotes that will be fun to pass on to others. I give the book four stars rather than five, due to a lot of the aforementioned mischief stories involving drugs and alcohol. The last forty pages, however, make this book a worth while read.
