Spaceman lands on big screen

Some kids dream of becoming an astronaut.
For LSU Eunice head softball coach Andy Lee, there is already a Spaceman in the family.
Now everyone can see his father’s story hitting the big screen on Thursday.
Spaceman is an biographical film about Bill “Spaceman” Lee following his release from the Montreal Expos.
“It is really neat to see that they made a movie about him,” Andy said of his father. “There are parts that are exaggerated but that’s why they call it acting.”
The screen play was taken from the 1985 book “The Wrong Stuff,” written by Lee and Richard Lally.
Lee pitched for the Boston Red Sox from 1969-1978 and the Expos from 1979-1982.
“It bothered me that is out of order,” Lee said. “But they got the spirit of me playing ball.
“They portray me in the worst two weeks of my life – down in the dumps but I continued to play baseball.”
Josh Duhamel plays Lee, a close resemblence according to the original pitcher himself.
“He did a great job,” Bill said. “He looks like me, he acts like me.”
Duhamel starred in several of the Transformers films and also stars in the CBS crime drama series Battle Creek.
Lee actually has a part in his own movie, participating in a brawl as a player on the Long Gate Senators.
“It was filmed on my little league field on the Los Angeles River,” he said. “It was the same field I started playing on when I was nine year’s old.”
He got his nickname in 1971 when reporters gathered around Lee’s Fenway Park locker as he talked about the Apollo 15 moon landing and the U.S. space program.
The crowd prevented Red Sox utility infielder John Kennedy from getting to his locker. “Looks like we got our own spaceman,” Kennedy said.
Lee started two games in the 1975 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.
He won 16 games for the Expos in 1979, while being named The Sporting News National League Left Hander of the Year (over Philadelphia’s Steve Carlton).
His career record is 119-90, including three consecutive 17-win seasons with the Red Sox (1973-1975).
Lee was selected to the American League All-Star squad in 1973 and pitched in the World Series in 1975 against the Cincinnati Reds.
Lee was inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2008 as the team’s record-holder for most games pitched by a left-hander (321) and the third-highest win total (94) by a Red Sox southpaw.
He staged a pair of one-game walkouts — in 1978, after the Red Sox sold close pal Bernie Carbo to the Cleveland Indians, and in 1982, after Montreal released Rodney Scott.
The insubordination effectively ended his MLB career.
For over 30 years Lee has hopscotched across North America, playing ball in various pro and recreational leagues.
“People will know I played the game for the right reasons and I was on in the right side of history,” he said of the movie.
At age 65, he took the mound for the San Rafael Pacifics, pitching a complete-game in a 9-4 win over the Maui Na Koa Ikaika in the North American League.
He retired the first 10 batters, before eventually giving up eight hits, with no walks and no strikeouts. His fastball was clocked at 70 mph.
“The movie ends with actual footage from that game,” Lee said. “It has a real poignant ending and I like that.”
According to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, Lee became the oldest ballplayer to win a professional game when he hurled 5 innings for the Sonoma Stompers in a 6-3 victory over the Pittsburg Mettle when he was 67.
At 69, he still plays for the Burlington Cardinals, part of the Vermont Senior Baseball League since he joined in 1988.
Heading into this season, Lee was 20-4 since 2011 with 184 strikeouts, 12 walks and a 1.14 ERA.
He has a .383 batting average since 2011.
Aside from his continuing baseball saga, Lee also owns The Old Bat Company, which specializes in maple, ash, and yellow birch bats in paertnership with Fall River bat-maker Louis Ledoux.
Calling Vermont his home now, Lee also has Spaceman Vineyards, home of One Time Spaceman wines located in Napa. Calif.
He is also running for governor of Vermont on the Liberty Union Party ticket.
Baseball has been in the Lee family for over a 100 years.
William F. Lee, Sr., was an infielder for the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League in the early 1900s.
Andy’s great aunt was Annabelle Lee Harmon (Jan. 22, 1922 – July 3, 2008), a pitcher who played from 1944 through 1950 with four different teams of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
Born in Los Angeles, Lee was a switch-hitter and threw left-handed - as would her nephew and great-nephew who credit her for their successes.
She entered the baseball record books in 1944 after pitching the first perfect game in AAGPBL history. Besides this, she hurled a no-hitter game the next season and posted a solid career 2.25 earned run average during her seven years in the league.
Her uniform is part of a permanent display at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum at Cooperstown, New York and she was a consulant for the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own.”