Some adoring fans looked on as the immortal Ted Williams stood in front of a TV camera showing broadcaster Ken Harrelson how to hit a baseball.
And the final ring in this crazy American star circus, William Francis Lee III, hit fungoes to outfielders. "Naaaaah," he snarled disappointedly after he cut the ball along the grass about 50 yards.
"I heard you got a single yesterday, Lee!" one of the outfielders jabbed as he trotted toward the dugout. Lee didn't seem to notice.
He was the only one who wasn't in full uniform or at least a $50 sweat-suit. He finished his laps wearing a tattered gym-class t-shirt and sat down with me to talk.
The Spaceman. Boston's star southpaw by Southern California and out of Zen Buddhism. He was slightly out of breath, pulling his gray-streaked hair back, squinting his thin tanned face. He talked gently, in a California beach mumble, no show-biz, setting me totally at ease, and then he came at me from the stars.
I have always loved Bill Lee. He was the only mad one, the only player I really wanted to talk to in Winterhaven, after I had been Holiday-Inned to death by all the other ball players to whom I asked the usual sportswriter questions and got the usual sportswriter dreck..."Well, you gotta like our ball club, we're lookin' good, lookin' good...just trying to get in shape, you know, we can win it all this year, that's what we're out here to do and we're gonna do it."
"Yeah, militaristic, regimented football, I never really got into it," Lee reflected. "Baseball's more grass...that's what I like about it. Football's too rush-rush, too kill-oriented, too carnivorous-oriented."
"And as America gets out of the industrial revolution, baseball is taking on a resurgence, people are more into a laidback type of sit down and relax and enjoy a beer, discuss politics, watch a ball game, you can do everything at the same time!" he said smoothly.
"It's sort of like the coffeehouses in...A-u-s-t-r-i-a," his voice drifted quixotically, "when Freud and Jung used to sit around and... bullshit. Drink coffee. That's where baseball's heading."
He drew a breath, and trying to fathom all of this, I laughed nervously, pretending to understand.
"You'll do it this year, Mikey," a retired amateur golfer yelled to Torrez, "You'll win it all for us." The man understood everything.
Bothered only momentarily, Lee started again. "It's a vicarious thrill they get out of it," he shrugged toward the fan. "Instead of attaining that thrill first-hand, they attain it second-hand...those people are expecting things from you and if you work toward their expectations you're negating your principle in life because you're working for them and not for yourself."
Spaceman and I were sitting under the intense heat, bombarded by devouring mass-media madness thrown up for TV cameras by worshipping little boys and the old timers ready to follow the Red Sox off of the earth for a pennant because they are tired of losing.
"You can't set ego-oriented, money-oriented, material-oriented goals...your goal has got to be to come down here and have fun playing ball and things will fall into place," Lee said.
"It's a kind of a reverse psychology, but if you try too hard for the dangling carrot in front of you, all you'll do is spend your energy too fast and when it comes time to get the carrot, you're not in the position to enjoy it or ever make the effort..." he sighed, dripping sweat on the turf, and looking around anxiously.
"These kids," he said almost to himself, "they gotta learn to have patience."