Bill Lee on the Mound

[Mike D.]

On a beautiful day here in New England (77 degrees and sunny at game time), the wife and I jumped in the car and headed over to Brockton for a Rox game. The Rox are in the indy CanAm league.

The Rox starting pitcher....63 year old lefty Bill Lee.

The Rox have clinched a playoff spot, so they signed Lee to a 1-day contract to start the game.





This was no 1-inning celebrity event, either...Lee pitched 5.1 giving up 5 hits and 2 runs (including 1 HR) and striking out 1 with no walks. Other than the home run, the Worcester team didn't really hit anything hard off of him. He got the win in the Rox 7-3 victory.

Oh, the CanAm league is a non-DH league, so Lee hit, too:



He went 0-3 with 2 groundouts to second and a pop up to short right that was also fielded by the second baseman.

After Lee came out of the game, the fun kept right on coming. Pitching the 8th inning for Worcester was former Red Sox 1st round pick Rick Asadoorian.



He threw a scoreless inning, walking 1 and striking out 2. In 22 games this year (22.2 IP) he is 2-2 with a 1.99 ERA and 8 saves. He's struck out 27 and walked 11 while giving up 17 hits.

In 116 ab's this year, he's also hitting .207.

The pictures are a bit tough to see because I was using my cell phone camera, sorry about that.

[VTSoxFan]

That's great! I am glad he's still playing the game he clearly loves.

The game pictured reminds me of seeing him pitch in a game in Waterbury, VT, in 2004. He was with the Lakes Region Rangers, playing the team (the name escapes me) from Mad River Valley in a Northern Vermont Over-40 league. There's no mistaking his distinctive gangly-ness or his big toothy smile.

Thanks for the pictures!

[ipitch]

How fast was Lee throwing?

[Mike D.]

How fast was Lee throwing?

They didn't have a radar gun at the ballpark, unfortunately. It would have been interesting to see exactly what he was throwing.

He was REALLY mixing up his pitches...keeping guys off balance by throwing REALLY slow curves (like, 50 MPH slow) then zipping a fastball in on the next pitch (high 70's to 80 MPHish, maybe).

Like I said, he threw 5 1/3 innings, and clearly wanted to keep going. When the Rox manager came out, Rox pitching coach Ed Nottle (former Pawsox manager and baseball lifer) was jokingly trying to block the manager from crossing the foul line to go get Lee.

It really was an impressive pitching performance...you could tell Lee's knees are shot, but he could still pitch pretty well. Like I said above, other than the HR, they didn't make much solid contact off of him.

[ipitch]

He was REALLY mixing up his pitches...keeping guys off balance by throwing REALLY slow curves (like, 50 MPH slow) then zipping a fastball in on the next pitch (high 70's to 80 MPHish, maybe).

Thanks. Anything over 70 would be pretty amazing, IMO.

[Mike D.]

This article has better pictures than I was able to get. Also mentions that the opposing manager was former Red Sox catcher Rich Gedman.