RetroSimba

Bob Lee, who threw hard pitches and hard punches, capped his career in the majors with wins in consecutive games against the Cardinals.

A 6-foot-3, 250-pound right-hander whom The Sporting News described as a “hurling Hercules,” Lee had the most intimidating fastball in the American League when he was a closer for the Angels in the 1960s.

In 1968, his final big-league season, Lee was with the Reds in the National League and no longer overpowered batters, but he was durable and figured out a way to beat the defending World Series champion Cardinals.

A late bloomer, Lee pitched eight years in the minors before getting his chance in the big leagues.

Escaping the mines

Lee was 18 when he signed with the Pirates in 1956. His career stalled in the minors and in 1963 it went backward. Lee, 25, began the year with Asheville, N.C., posted a 6.75 ERA and was demoted to Batavia, N.Y., the farm club in the lowest rung of the Pirates’ system. “Batavia is the salt mines of professional baseball,” the Los Angeles Times declared.

Lee decided to give baseball one last try. “I figured, I’m 25, in a lousy league with bad lights. If I can’t win here, I ought to quit,” he said.

The demotion “was supposed to teach Lee a lesson,” the Los Angeles Times observed. “It did. Taught him how to throw bullets.”

Using his fastball to overpower the overmatched prospects in the New York-Pennsylvania League, Lee became nearly unbeatable. He was 15-2 and won 14 decisions in a row for Batavia when the Pirates decided to start him in their exhibition game against the Indians in Cleveland on Aug. 1, 1963.

On the day of the game, Lee drove the 225 miles from Batavia to Cleveland, took the mound before a crowd of 34,487 and proceeded to show he could dominate big-league batters the way he did those in the minors. Lee struck out 16 and held the Indians to six hits in a 7-1 Pirates triumph. Only two of Lee’s 16 strikeouts were called, The Sporting News reported.

Except for catcher Jim Lawrence, the Indians played their starters: left fielder Tito Francona, shortstop Larry Brown, center fielder Willie Kirkland, first baseman Joe Adcock, third baseman Woodie Held, right fielder Al Luplow and second baseman Jerry Kindall. Francona’s home run accounted for the Indians’ run.

“I had a good fastball and depended on it a great deal,” Lee told The Sporting News.

Lee drove back to Batavia after the game. He finished the season with a 20-2 record and 1.70 ERA, striking out 240 in 185 innings.

Sheer speed

The Pirates traded Lee to the Angels in September 1963 for $25,000.

Lee made the Angels’ 1964 Opening Day roster and, after a couple of relief appearances, the 26-year-old rookie was put into the rotation.

“I knew this was my big opportunity,” Lee told The Sporting News. “If I was going to make it in the big leagues, it had to be now.”

In his first start, on April 25, 1964, Lee held the Indians to one run in 10 innings but didn’t get a decision. Boxscore

Four days later, Lee got his first win in the majors, yielding one hit in seven innings versus the Senators. Boxscore

On an Angels staff featuring Dean Chance and Bo Belinsky, nobody threw as hard as Lee, catcher Buck Rodgers told The Sporting News.

Chance told the Los Angeles Times, “On certain nights, I can throw as hard as anyone, including Sandy Koufax, but for sheer speed, Bob Lee gets my vote.”

Said Lee: “I was lucky. I just got off to a big start. Nobody knew me. I was just a big, sloppy buffalo out there.”

After three more starts, Angels manager Bill Rigney and pitching coach Marv Grissom noticed Lee lost command the longer he pitched in a game, so they moved him to the bullpen and Grissom told him to “fire the ball over the plate.”

Encouraged to throw to the strike zone as hard as he could rather than try to hit spots, Lee thrived, blowing his fastball past hitters.

“The bullpen is my cup of tea,” Lee said. “I really enjoy it. I can get myself up for it. I can go like hell for one or two innings. If I throw 25 to 30 pitches, I’m real good. If I have to throw 40 to 45 pitches, I start running out of gas.”

Lee soon got compared with Red Sox closer Dick Radatz, who was nicknamed “The Monster,” but Radatz told The Sporting News, “Lee is faster than I am.”

“Radatz appears to throw effortlessly. Lee looks like a roaring train every time he throws,” The Sporting News reported.

Naval attack

Heading into a September series at Boston, Lee was 6-5 with a 1.51 ERA in 64 games for the 1964 Angels and set an American League record for most appearances by a rookie pitcher. He was 1-1 with a 2.36 ERA in five starts and 5-4 with 19 saves and a 1.31 ERA in 59 relief stints.

His season ended on Sept. 11, 1964, when he broke his right hand in an altercation with a heckler at Fenway Park. Lee threw three punches and the last one hit a metal railing, fracturing two bones in his right hand.

Lee and other Angels, on the field early for warmups, “were the targets of jibes and insults” by three sailors attending the game, The Sporting News reported. When the hecklers directed their barbs at the Angels’ bat boy, Lee “suggested the sailors take a boat ride.”

When Lee moved out to the bullpen in right field, the sailors followed, “giving me hell all the time,” Lee told the Los Angeles Times.

“They were on me like a new suit,” Lee said. “One of them came down to the rail, just a few feet away, and began to get real abusive. Something snapped and I grabbed him. He swung. I grabbed him by the collar. I hit him once, twice, three times. The third time, they say, I hit the rail with my hand.”

Lee came back in 1965 as good as new, earned a spot on the American League all-star team and was 9-7 with 23 saves and a 1.92 ERA for the Angels.

Though effective in 1966 (5-4, 16 saves, 2.74 ERA), the Los Angeles Times noted, “There is at least some suspicion his fastball may be a zing of the past.”

Cardinals challenges

On Dec. 15, 1966, the Angels traded Lee to the Dodgers for pitcher Nick Willhite. Lee, who described himself as “a blazing 250” pounds, said he was delighted by the deal because “Dodger Stadium is a pitching paradise. The air is heavy and it’s a $3.80 cab drive to the center field fence.”

Lee pitched in four games for the Dodgers, who sold his contract to the Reds in May 1967.

Two months later, on July 3, 1967, Lee was ejected for his role in a brawl between the Reds and Cardinals at St. Louis involving future Hall of Famers Bob Gibson, Orlando Cepeda and Tony Perez.

In 1968, Lee, 30, was a Reds workhorse. He pitched in six consecutive games from April 11 to April 18. The final two games in that stretch were against the Cardinals and Lee won both, his last wins in the majors.

On April 17, 1968, at Cincinnati, the Cardinals had Lou Brock on third base, Curt Flood on first, with none out in the 12th inning, when Lee relieved Ted Davidson. Lee got Bobby Tolan to lift a pop fly into foul territory along the line in right. Reds right fielder Pete Rose “barely caught up with the ball after a long run,” the Dayton Daily News reported.

“I was expecting Brock to try and score on that one, even though there was only one out,” Lee said. “Pete had to go a long way and he was way off-balance, but he threw a strike to the plate.”

Brock held third and Lee’s adversary, Cepeda, stepped to the plate.

“I got two strikes on him and threw him a bad pitch, right up in his power,” Lee said.

Cepeda grounded sharply to shortstop Leo Cardenas, who turned a 6-4-3 double play. The Reds scored in the bottom half of the inning, earning the win for Lee. Boxscore

The next night, Lee pitched three scoreless innings and got another win versus the Cardinals. In the 10th, when he worked out of a bases-loaded jam by getting Julian Javier to hit into a forceout, “the Cardinals were ready to surrender again to Robert D. Lee,” wrote Neal Russo of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Boxscore

The 1968 season was Lee’s last in the majors. In five big-league seasons, he was 25-23 with 64 saves and a 2.71 ERA.