Over the decades I have seen Lee's career get an overabundance of embellishment and boosting far out of proportion to his actual value. It is a fact that the reason why the Red Sox didn't end the Curse of the Bambino 29 years sooner was because of his failure in two World Series starts. What has always come across as hypocritical to me is how if you go through Red Sox history books written in the 80s and 90s you will find that fans always were quicker to blame Jim Burton for the loss in Game 7 of the World Series (or Darrell Johnson for taking out Jim Willoughby in favor of Burton) even though Joe Morgan's winning hit was on a good pitch that Morgan was able to turn into a dying quail single. But in point of fact it was Lee's eephus pitch to Tony Perez that put the Reds back in the game after Lee failed to bear down following the failure to turn an inning ending double play one batter earlier. Yet the same Red Sox fans who never let Mike Torrez forget it for giving up the Bucky Dent HR left Lee untouched for the Perez HR that turned Game 7 around.
These same books also insist on blaming Don Zimmer for taking Lee out of the rotation in 1978 and not having him pitch Game 4 of the Boston Massacre series instead of Bobby Sprowl. You will see no shortage of self-serving insistence on Lee's part that if he'd pitched he would have saved the Red Sox season. The fact that Lee got yanked for losing seven straight decisions is always downplayed or ignored.
Lee's trade to Montreal is also hyped up in these books as if the Red Sox committed the worst trade since Sparky Lyle for Danny Cater (if not the sale of Babe Ruth) because the Red Sox only got a journeyman infielder, Stan Papi in return and because of Lee's 16 win season in Montreal in 1979. But as this article notes, that was Lee's only good year in Montreal. He would have hardly made a difference for the Red Sox in 1979, who finished 11.5 games behind the Orioles and while Stan Papi was a bust, Lee's spot in the rotation was basically assumed by Steve Renko who won 13 games that year and thus delivered roughly the same amount of wins.
I have always felt that Lee got away with getting the Bill Buckner-Mike Torrez treatment from Red Sox Nation simply because they loved his off-field image and his venomous comments about the Yankees. The fact that he failed to deliver in the biggest showcase he had in his career and also demonstrated abysmal me-first behavior at other junctures like when he quit the team for several days over the sale of Bernie Carbo in 1978 (years later, Carbo admitted his own personal issues had justified management's decision to trade him, effectively undermining Lee's whole rationale) is always ignored or downplayed. And remembering as I do how unforgiving Red Sox Nation could be to the likes of Buckner, Torrez, Darrell Johnson, Zimmer etc. that has always struck me as hypocritical.
Over the decades I have seen Lee's career get an overabundance of embellishment and boosting far out of proportion to his actual value. It is a fact that the reason why the Red Sox didn't end the Curse of the Bambino 29 years sooner was because of his failure in two World Series starts. What has always come across as hypocritical to me is how if you go through Red Sox history books written in the 80s and 90s you will find that fans always were quicker to blame Jim Burton for the loss in Game 7 of the World Series (or Darrell Johnson for taking out Jim Willoughby in favor of Burton) even though Joe Morgan's winning hit was on a good pitch that Morgan was able to turn into a dying quail single. But in point of fact it was Lee's eephus pitch to Tony Perez that put the Reds back in the game after Lee failed to bear down following the failure to turn an inning ending double play one batter earlier. Yet the same Red Sox fans who never let Mike Torrez forget it for giving up the Bucky Dent HR left Lee untouched for the Perez HR that turned Game 7 around.
These same books also insist on blaming Don Zimmer for taking Lee out of the rotation in 1978 and not having him pitch Game 4 of the Boston Massacre series instead of Bobby Sprowl. You will see no shortage of self-serving insistence on Lee's part that if he'd pitched he would have saved the Red Sox season. The fact that Lee got yanked for losing seven straight decisions is always downplayed or ignored.
Lee's trade to Montreal is also hyped up in these books as if the Red Sox committed the worst trade since Sparky Lyle for Danny Cater (if not the sale of Babe Ruth) because the Red Sox only got a journeyman infielder, Stan Papi in return and because of Lee's 16 win season in Montreal in 1979. But as this article notes, that was Lee's only good year in Montreal. He would have hardly made a difference for the Red Sox in 1979, who finished 11.5 games behind the Orioles and while Stan Papi was a bust, Lee's spot in the rotation was basically assumed by Steve Renko who won 13 games that year and thus delivered roughly the same amount of wins.
I have always felt that Lee got away with getting the Bill Buckner-Mike Torrez treatment from Red Sox Nation simply because they loved his off-field image and his venomous comments about the Yankees. The fact that he failed to deliver in the biggest showcase he had in his career and also demonstrated abysmal me-first behavior at other junctures like when he quit the team for several days over the sale of Bernie Carbo in 1978 (years later, Carbo admitted his own personal issues had justified management's decision to trade him, effectively undermining Lee's whole rationale) is always ignored or downplayed. And remembering as I do how unforgiving Red Sox Nation could be to the likes of Buckner, Torrez, Darrell Johnson, Zimmer etc. that has always struck me as hypocritical.
Well, they called him the Spaceman didn't they? Spacing out while jogging or in a building somewhere seems to strangely fit as his baseball downfall.