by Bill Lee
I suppose our marriage started going downhill after my first road trip in 1969. I think she realized then that being a ballplayer’s wife wasn’t going to be easy.
After my first couple of road trips, she accused me of running around. At that point, I was innocent, a mere babe in the woods. That didn’t last for long. I started taking up with people on the road, rationalizing that as long as I was going to have to hear her accusations, I might as well have some fun for my trouble. Our marriage survived because we played half our games at home. When I wasn’t traveling with the club, we had great times. Mary Lou was into a lot of the same things I was: running, camping, and she was concerned with social issues.
But, despite our compatibility, the relationship eroded. We bickered over little things, and these shouting matches eventually grew into fights, physical ones. It would be late at night, and I wouldn’t want to get into anything, but she would, yelling, “You’re not going to bed yet. We’re going to have this out.”
I would be too exhausted. It was tiring, pitching at the ballpark and catching hell at home. I should have been more receptive to her, but I wasn’t. My fault. One night, when I wasn’t in the mood for another heavy dialogue and had ignored her, she got frustrated and attacked me with a Tonka toy as I was lying on the bed. As she came at me I reached up and grabbed her with my right hand. I hoisted her up off the ground, and her momentum sent her flying through the air, slamming her into the bedroom wall. It was as if we were practicing for a new Olympic event: the wife/hammer throw. I sprang out of bed, picked her up, and apologized. I felt awful.
The problem was Mary Lou wanted to set down roots, but she had married a nomad. She wanted me to be like Mr. Price, our next-door neighbor. I was expected to come home at five and sit in front of the fireplace, reading the paper while smoking my pipe. I was never that. I was Don Quixote, jouster of windmills. I told her during the first year of our marriage that I would never leave her and that I would always come home from road trips. That’s all I could guarantee.
I knew it was over when she slammed the door on me and told me to go to spring training alone. One other tip-off was her parting line: “Don’t come back.” I was self-destructing at the time. I was fooling around a lot and had told her so. There was no sense in living a lie. I still loved her as much as ever, but, occasionally, I had to be with people who were more compatible with me in certain ways than she was. We got into a mammoth fight—not surprising, she had every right to want to kill me—and then she threw me out. As I was leaving, my daughter Caitlin came out of her room and sat at the top of the stairs. She said, “Daddy, you don’t have to go. I’ll hide you in my bedroom.” I went out, got into my car, and headed for Florida. I cried all the way.
I almost didn’t leave. I thought about giving up baseball, it hurt that much. But, after thinking it over, I decided that baseball wasn’t the problem. I was the problem, and I wasn’t going to change. At least, not now. As I drove across the country, I thought of everything I might do to make things between Mary Lou and me right again. It was no use. By the time I reached the Florida border, I knew it was all over.
She had a lawyer call me, and she drew up papers for a divorce. I wouldn’t sign them, explaining that since I no longer believed in marriage, I couldn’t possibly believe in divorce. They were able to push it through without me, though. I told them she could have everything except my Volkswagen camper, my chain saw, and my blue comforter. It wasn’t a bad deal for her. She got the duplex in Boston and the house in Washington. One year after the settlement, I crashed the camper after skidding on a sheet of black ice in Saskatchewan. That’s when I knew the trials of Job had not ended. I had to remind myself that before things get better, they often get worse.
I don’t know how I got through the exhibition season, but I did. I had been hammered into a deep depression. When the Players Association called a strike in June, I couldn’t have cared less. I did not vote to strike; I did not want any part of it. We were striking over the issue of compensation for free agency. I didn’t believe in free agency, so how could I vote to strike over any facet of it? When the strike question was discussed, I stayed on the fence. The fence is a wonderful place to be, provided you know how to walk it. If you slip while walking that fence, you must make sure that both feet land on the same side of it. Otherwise, it’s good-bye gonads.
Steve Rogers was the Montreal player rep, and I was his assistant. I sat in on the first strategy meeting. Our leader Marvin Miller presided, and everybody got a chance to speak. When I stood up, I said, “Screw the owners, Marvin. Who needs them? Why don’t we just forget about the season. We’ll barn-storm around the country with groups of players, choose up sides, and play in local ballparks in small towns. There will be no admission charged. When the game is over, we’ll pass around the hat and divide the proceeds. If we put on a good show, we’ll do all right.” No one seemed to care for that idea very much.
When the strike was settled, I did not want to come back. My kids and I had traveled cross country from Montreal to Florida to Washington. I had missed them more than I could say. I was also playing basketball and softball every day, and had put in some appearances with a semi-pro hardball team, the Bellingham Bells, in Washington. I was having a hell of a good time.
The first thing I realized when the season resumed was that Dick Williams was having the skids greased under him, and that his relationship with the Expos was ending. The signs were there. He was near the end of his contract and negotiations over a new one had broken down. Suddenly, we were reading about problems he was having with his players. That was bullshit. He wasn’t having any more skirmishes in the clubhouse now than he had had in the past. The club was just laying the groundwork to ease him out. Not too long into what was laughingly called the Second Season, he was replaced by Jim Fanning.
That switch turned the club—which had been spinning its wheels—around, but not for the reasons people think. Everybody assumes we started winning ballgames because Fanning brought a calming atmosphere to the club. Actually, three games after he took over, the players realized that we had to get our act together because Gentleman Jim didn’t have a clue as to what was going on out on the field. It would have been tolerable if he had been a nonmanager, someone who just made out the lineup card and allowed us to play. But he was like a hyperactive kid, running up and down the dugout, panicking as soon as we got behind in a ballgame. His ideas on strategy were vague, if not nonexistent. He also held the most disorganized team meetings that I could remember.
After watching him in action, it didn’t take long for us to call a team meeting of our own. Fanning and his coaches were not invited. All the players attended. Cromartie acted as moderator of the conclave. When I was called on to speak, I stood up and said, “Williams and McHale hadn’t been getting along and that had distracted Dick from managing. But Fanning flat-out can’t manage at all. We can all see that. So what it all boils down to is this: We can’t afford to be in a position where a managerial decision can cost us the game. We have to take it upon ourselves to get ahead. This team is going to have to battle every inning. Each member of it is going to have to stay alert. We will have to communicate amongst ourselves on when to execute the sacrifice, the hit-and-run, and the stolen bases. We have to make our own strategy decisions.”
Fanning never knew what was going on. After the meeting, I told him that he had to settle down and relax on the bench, explaining he just could not panic out of reflex. He said, “I didn’t realize how that looked. This is a new experience for me and maybe I get overenthusiastic. But I’m not panicking.” He seemed to appreciate the conversation, and he and I communicated well with each other during the rest of the season. Though I hated the split schedule that the owners had come up with, I have to admit that once we started playing, I was having a ball. The team was winning, I was pitching well, and my head was clear. Once again, love had found Andy Hardy.
I met Pam in a bar called The Longest Yard, not long after
Mary Lou and I had said our final good-byes. We were introduced by a mutual friend. We didn’t say much to each other that evening, and I didn’t get the idea she had been dying to meet me. About a week later, she came to a party at my house. I was hammered by nine o’clock and had dragged myself up to bed for some sack. I don’t think I had said six words to her the entire evening. I woke up the next morning at seven and came downstairs to make breakfast. As I looked into my living room, I noticed that someone was lying in the middle of it, on a moon-shaped pillow, surrounded by an ocean of beer. It was Pam. Hearing me, she woke up, looked around her, and was startled to find herself in unfamiliar surroundings. Before I had a chance to ask her what she wanted for breakfast, she had slipped out the door. A few days after that, I saw her again and kidded her about leaving her boat in my living room. We started talking, and it was all over for me. She had this mischievous look in her eyes that told me she was as much of a kid as I was. I was hooked.
After winning the Eastern Division’s second half title, the Expos had to meet Philadelphia in the first tier of the National League playoffs. This set would determine who would play the Western Division champion for the pennant. We beat Philly in five; Rogers pitched two outstanding games. We were supposed to leave for Los Angeles to face the Dodgers, but I had other plans. On the morning of the fifth game in Philadelphia, I had found out that Pam was ill with pneumonia. Every time I called to talk to her, she was unable to come to the phone. I assumed she was in a coma. As soon as we recorded the final out against Philly, I ran to the clubhouse, got dressed, and left to catch the next flight to Montreal. Running through the parking lot, I was stopped by a bunch of fans from South Philly who yelled, “Hey, you’re Bill Lee!” I said, “Yes, I am, but I have no time right now. I have to get to the airport.” They offered me a lift in their pickup truck. I arrived at the airport minutes before my flight was due to take off.
I was in Montreal two hours after the game ended. The next thing I knew, I was standing on the sidewalk in front of Pam’s house. Pam, who was not as close to death as I had feared, was standing out there with me, in her bare feet, telling me that I couldn’t come in because her boyfriend was inside. I was crushed. But then she told me that she was breaking up with him, and that I could see her when I got back from Los Angeles. The following day, I called her mother and said, “Hi, I’m Bill Lee and I love your daughter. I’m going to marry her. Please don’t judge this book by its cover. My intentions are honorable.” Pam had told me that someone had already told her mother that I was a wild man, and that Pam would just be another notch on my belt. I assured her that I never wore a belt. We hit it off. After her mother spoke to me, she went up and talked to Pam, telling her everything I had said. Pam agreed that she loved me and that if I wanted to marry her it would be no problem.
I did make it to Los Angeles in time for the playoffs, though I did manage to get fined for missing the team flight. That series went the full five games. We lost it in the ninth inning of the final game when Rogers, pitching in relief of Ray Burris, gave up a two-run homer to Rick Monday. Just as I had wanted to pitch in the playoff game against New York, I wanted to be in this ballgame, facing Monday. I almost climbed the bullpen walls to get at him. I was pumped up for that game. When we were finally eliminated, I was pissed.
But, within an hour of the final out, I thought, “Fuck, who cares. Who wants to win a pennant during a split season, anyway?” I was pleased to see that, despite everything that had happened to me over the last year and a half, my powers of instant rationalization were still with me.
After the season, Pam and I planned to get married in Vancouver, but we couldn’t come up with all the papers they required. Vancouver is a great place to visit, but it’s a tough town to get married in. While vacationing in Jamaica, we told everybody we’d be getting married soon. Someone suggested that we do it while we were down there. We thought that was a great idea, but the first minister we went to turned us down. His wife told me, “We don’t do fast marriages for anyone. You might be marrying her so that you can take her to Europe and put her into prostitution.” I argued, “But I’m from the States. Do I look like a pimp?” It was no use. They were really paranoid about white slavers down there. We finally found a minister who would perform the ceremony. I’m not sure what faith he was, but I could tell he was sincere. And he ran the only Chicken Burger Palace on the island. We had a Rastafarian band, and one of its members kept asking the minister, “Mr. Preacher Man, can you save me? I have two wives and about twenty kids. Will I go to heaven?” Two girls, Carol and Cynthia, who worked in the house where we were staying made a wedding shirt for me out of the Jamaican flag. They also baked a wedding cake, ornamented with white orchids. David Donald, a friend from Montreal, and most of our friends from the island attended the service. I bought Pam a coral wedding ring. We were married amid the natural wonders of Jamaica, and the ceremony was almost as beautiful as she was.
During the off-season, I was going to Olympic Stadium regularly to work out in the Nautilus room. Fanning would run into me there, and he would spend time picking my brain, looking for ways to improve the ballclub. No matter what elements of the team we focused on, he invariably would turn the conversation into a friendly debate over the merits of Rodney Scott. Sometimes we wouldn’t even be talking baseball. I might say, “Jim, did you see where the price of gold has dropped again?” And Fanning would reply, “Yes, but can we afford to keep Rodney at second base next year?” I tried to convince him that we not only could, we had to. I explained that Rodney was an integral part of our defense and that we couldn’t afford to replace him. Jim would just nod his head and not mention it again. Until the next time.
The Montreal front office had talked about getting rid of Rodney from the first day he took the field for us. But Williams loved him and wouldn’t allow him to be messed with. With Dick gone, everybody knew it was only a matter of time before Rodney followed him out the clubhouse door.
Fanning had already picked Scott’s replacement: Wallace Johnson, a second baseman with the Expos’ Triple-A farm club in Denver. Fanning had built him up into a combination of Joe Morgan, Babe Ruth, and Frank Buck. He was constantly telling me how Wallace was going to lead us out of the doldrums and that the kid was going to be an instant star. The first time I saw Johnson, I kept checking him out as he walked to and from the shower. I was looking for wings. Fanning had dreams of Wallace hitting nothing but line drives into the power alleys of Olympic Stadium. Funky dreams. I would have loved to find out what herbs he was smoking; I would have gone for several kilos of the stuff.
When the 1982 season opened, Wallace had the second-base job. He hit well at first, but his glove just couldn’t cut it. Then, after three weeks, his bat gave up the ghost. Fanning put Frank Taveras in at second. I liked Frank. For years, he had been a starting shortstop for the Pirates and the Mets, and he could do a lot of things to help a ballclub. Unfortunately, playing second base was not one of them. He lasted about a week. Rodney, who was being used for late inning defense, was ready to take his starting job back. But Fanning wouldn’t give it to him. Instead, he brought Tim Raines in from left field, placing him at second. That had been Tim’s position in the minors and Fanning and the front office assumed he could still get the job done.
A few days after the Raines move was made, a team meeting was called by Al Oliver. Oliver had been traded to Montreal from Texas just before the season had started, but he had already established himself as a team leader. He had called us together, hoping to point out that we weren’t playing up to our full potential, and that we were making too many mistakes on defense. It was a good meeting. Everybody spoke up, and nobody hurled any garbage. I found it quite constructive.
Midway through it, I noticed that Rodney was absent. I didn’t think twice about it; the meeting had been player-organized and had been called on the spur of the moment. I assumed he hadn’t heard about it. When it was over, the team prepared to take batting practice, and I went
out to do my running. On returning to the clubhouse, I sensed that something was askew. Rodney was at his locker, packing his bags. When I asked him what he was doing, he said, “They released me.”
He looked as shocked as I was. I couldn’t believe it. I thought, “Jesus Christ, this is déjà vu. It’s Bernie Carbo all over again.” Nobody had to tell me what had to be done. I already knew. It was time for me to walk.
Fanning had a standing rule: In case of an emergency that would force us to leave the ballpark before we could get his permission, we were to leave a note telling him where we could be reached. With that in mind, I wrote a message and placed it on his desk. It read, “I can’t put up with this bullshit. I’m going to be at the bar in Brasserie 77. If you want me, come and get me.”
When he first took over as manager, Jim had made a speech, telling us that his father had once given him a pair of boxing gloves as a Christmas present, and that he wasn’t afraid to put them back on. I added a postscript to my note, inviting him to bring those gloves along. He never showed up. I went back to the ballpark just prior to the start of that afternoon’s game. When I asked the trainer if Fanning had seen my message yet, I was told he hadn’t. The trainer then handed me my game uniform. After first thanking him, I took it into the manager’s office and ripped it down the middle. I layed it across Fanning’s desk. Then I went back to the Brasserie and draped little Quebec flags around a picture of Rodney. The customers loved it.
I had three beers while watching our game on television. We were getting jocked, and by the sixth inning, I realized that we were going through an awful lot of pitchers. I hustled back to the stadium in case I was needed. I was mad at management, not at my teammates, and I didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize our chances of winning a ballgame. I got to the park by the eighth inning, but I wasn’t needed. We lost by two runs. I went into our workout room and started lifting weights in an attempt to blow off steam.
