Page 82 - 1975 BoSox

’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL 75
second.”) at surely didn’t create a positive impression with Don Zimmer. When ned a day’s pay of roughly $500 for the Carbo walkout, he asked if they could make it $1,500. “I’d like to have the whole weekend,” he explained. Walking away from a rst-place team, even for just a day, was a strong statement.
From July 15 through August 19, though, Lee seemed to fall apart, losing seven straight decisions. On closer inspection, one sees that in ve of the seven losses, he gave up no more than three earned runs. e July 30 game was the most dispiriting defeat, a 2-1 complete- game loss to the Kansas City Royals at Fenway Park. Zimmer’s refusal to start Lee against the Yankees in September was a huge subplot in the collapse of the Red Sox. Lee appeared in two of the “Boston Massacre” games, but both times it was in relief. In the September 8 game, he threw seven innings in relief, allowing the Yankees just one earned run in a game New York won 13-2. On September 10, his last appearance of the season, Lee closed out the game with 21⁄3 innings of scoreless relief; the Yankees won nonetheless, 7-4.
Lee was in the doghouse the rest of the season. One more win at any point along the way and the Red Sox never would have had to play New York in the infa- mous single-game playo .
Before the year was out, Lee was sent packing. On December 7 he was traded to the Montreal Expos for Stan Papi. Papi was a journeyman utility in elder with 88 games under his belt and 199 major-league at-bats over three seasons. He had accumulated 46 hits (.231) and only one of them was for as many as three bases. It was an indignity that forever rankled the proud competitor. When the trade was announced, Lee covered his disappointment with bravado, saying of the 1978 team, “Who wants to be with a team that will go down in history alongside the ’64 Phillies and the ’67 Arabs?”
Pitching for Montreal, reunited with Dick Williams (the no-nonsense manager under whom he had rst played for Boston a decade earlier), Lee regained his form and won 16 games against 10 losses. He was the ace of the sta , starting 33 games and throwing 222
innings, and posting an ERA of 3.04. Montreal nished the season just two games behind the NL East- leading Phillies.
e next three years — the last of Bill’s 14 years in the majors — were subpar ones. In 1980 and 1981 combined, Lee won 9 and lost 12, both years missing considerable time in midseason. In 1980 he hurt his hip when he fell out of a building onto an iron fence. (Lee’s version of the story was that he was out jogging, happened by a friend’s apartment, and decided to surprise her by climbing up her building and tapping on her window.) In 1981, of course, he lost a great deal of playing time to the players strike. Bill pitched very brie y in both the Division Series and the League Championship Series, getting a total of three outs without surrendering a run.
Lee left the majors for good in 1982 following the May 7 game, after one of a series of arguments with Montreal management. When friend Rodney Scott was released by the Expos on May 8, Bill Lee took another hike, walking out on the team. He never came back; he was released by the Expos the next day. (Scott