Bill 'Spaceman' Lee, 75, pledges to keep pitching for Savannah Bananas after his recovery

Former major league All-Star pitcher Bill Lee will forever be nicknamed "Spaceman," and now he could have another moniker earned the hard way: Iron Man.

Lee, 75, pledges to continue to pitch 40 years and counting since his last MLB game in 1982. That might have been in doubt after a medical emergency Friday night when he collapsed while warming up in the bullpen before entering a Savannah Bananas exhibition game — a scary incident captured on national television (ESPN2) and reported in stories across the internet as a near-death experience.

"Oh yeah. I said (to doctors) I'm going to pitch again," Lee said Tuesday in an interview with the Savannah Morning News/savannahnow.com at a downtown Savannah hotel.

His physicians at Memorial Health University Medical Center — where he was a patient Friday night through Monday, when he had a procedure implanting a medical device for his heart — instructed him to wait six weeks before doing anything.

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Lee had planned to play in two amateur adult league tournaments this fall, including the Men's Senior Baseball League World Series, but is open to the idea of returning to the Bananas Premier Team, a professional travel squad, later this year and certainly in 2023. He turns 76 in December.

Lee said he feels good enough to play now, though he's going to follow doctors' orders and miss the Banana Ball games against the Party Animals scheduled for this Friday and Saturday, and Sept. 2-3 at Grayson Stadium.

In fact, Lee was feeling so good during his first night in the hospital, he "could have gone nine (innings)."

"At 3 in the morning, I never felt better in my entire life," Lee said. "I woke up from a nap and I was ready to go. Bang. They had me hydrated, they had me perfect. They probably had given me medication or something like that."

Bananas owner Jesse Cole visited with Lee on Sunday and Tuesday and said he has as much energy as ever and is eager to play again.

"The man can do it all," Cole said Tuesday. "For him to still be pitching at this level at 75 years old, I wouldn't doubt that he'll be back on the mound in no time."

Cole is not rushing Lee to return, but whenever he's ready, the Bananas will be, too. Lee joined the Premier Team for the 2022 Spring Series, pitching effectively in relief in 10 home and road games in the Southeast and Kansas City.

A member of the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame and a 1973 American League All-Star during his career from 1969 to 1982, Lee has been a positive influence on a new generation of players who have found their way to Bananaland.

"He's made such an impression and such an impact on everyone in our organization: our players, our staff, the fans," Cole said. "He's loved. I don't know if someone could gain that love faster than Bill did just in the last few months. We will welcome him back. I would expect him to be a big part of our plans in 2023."

Details from the bullpen

Such a positive outlook contrasts with the dire mood on Friday, a hot and humid night when a heavy thunderstorm had delayed the start of the game for about an hour.

In the top of the fourth, Lee warmed up for a scheduled fifth-inning appearance. Pitcher Mat Wolf, who happens to also be an Oklahoma City firefighter and EMT, caught him in the bullpen on the right-field line.

Lee recounted the moments before he hit the ground.

"I threw a changeup for a strike that I remember. I was warming up fast. Then all of a sudden I got dizzy and I went down ... ," he said. "I passed out."

Wolf said after the game that Lee wasn't breathing at first and was non-responsive.

"The key was the first paramedic to get to me was my catcher," Lee said.

A host of first responders tended to Lee, including those staffing the game as well as off-duty firefighters, police officers and a paramedic attending the game on the Town of Thunderbolt's employee appreciation night. When they saw Lee on the ground and Wolf motioning for help, they literally jumped the railing to assist.

After getting treatment, including CPR and two shocks from a defibrillator, according to witnesses, Lee sat up and was helped to his feet. A hushed crowd of 4,000-plus spectators broke into applause, as did the Bananas and Party Animals players, who had huddled in a prayer circle during an intense several minutes.

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Lee, whose eccentricities and unfiltered comments had rubbed baseball's establishment the wrong way during his career, has also been sharp of wit. He didn't disappoint Friday night, injecting some levity into his own serious situation.

"I always thought I'd die on the field, but not in the (obscenity deleted) bullpen," Lee said that night as he was helped from the field to an ambulance.

On Tuesday, Lee confirmed the comment, and added more detail from a long-held perspective.

"I always thought it'd be a line drive with my name on it," he said.

Treatment for medical issue

It was not to be, and Lee believes the situation Friday night was not as dire as it looked or others believe. He said his breathing was erratic, according to what Wolf told him, but he never stopped breathing and always had a pulse.

He said he did not have a heart attack, just to be clear. He said the issue is with his left ventricle, a lower chamber in the heart that pumps oxygen-rich blood to the body.

"It's not a plumbing problem; it's an electrical problem," Lee said of the electric signals from the upper to lower chambers of the heart. "I have what they call a lower branch block in my left ventricle. It widens and it miscommunicates with everything else and it doesn't fire at the right time or at the same time. Thereby, sometimes I don't get enough arterial flow to my brain to provide oxygen. So I have these light-headed spells, which I've already had before on the field."

Lee connected Friday's incident with one about four years ago during a baseball game in Fort Myers, Florida. Lee was batting, hit a groudball and ran toward first base, only to fall to the ground.

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That same light-headed feeling came Friday. Lee said he must have been dehydrated after not eating or hydrating all day, missing meals when his schedule got hectic, and then trying to make up for it by downing two energy drinks at the ballpark without food in his system.

"What I did was criminal to my body on Friday and I paid the price," Lee said. "It put me into a position where when I exerted myself and needed that ventricle pump, it didn't get it all the way to the top shelf. Thereby, I had a fainting spell."

Lee is confident is his return to the game in part because of the care from his Memorial Health University physicians including cardiologist Dr. David Newton. Lee said Newton, whose speciality according to his practice's website profile is clinical cardiac electrophysiology, implanted a Medtronic medical device.

"I had an electrical wiring that takes your ventricle and gets it synchonized with everything, so they say I will not have an episode like that again," Lee said.

The device, visible externally with a patch over the skin, was going to be placed on his left side above his heart. That would limit movement on his left side, so the famous left-handed pitcher nixed that idea. The patch is on his right side.

"It's got three wires that go into his ventricles and then it's hooked up to a machine that actually reads that pathology," Lee's wife Diana explained. "If he needs a shock, the computer knows that. It's all inside."

Upon hearing that comment about computer chip technology now inside him, Bill Lee quipped: "Here I am, a guy that doesn't own a cell phone, but I'm getting calls."

Lee, who resides with Diana in rural Vermont, doesn't have a cell phone but she does.

An ironman for longevity at his craft

He described the medical device as like a pacemaker that regulates heart rhythm, and it reminded him of a certain comic book hero with a power source in his chest.

"(Newton's) the guy who turned me into Iron Man, but I was pretty much an ironman before," Lee said in reference to his seven decades as a professional pitcher.

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He couldn't help himself and asked the doctors about the new energy source attached to his body.

"I said, 'Is it strong enough to jump-start my battery in Vermont when my car is cold?' They didn't laugh."

Diana said her husband has been "in good hands" with the medical team in Savannah.

The couple was joined this weekend by his daughter Caitlin Burkes, who flew in from Jackson, Mississippi. His daughter Anna Wallace of Fayetteville, Georgia, and son Andy Lee with grandson Logan are arriving from Northwest Florida.

Bill Lee also has been in communication with old friends from his Red Sox days such as pitchers Sparky Lyle and Gary Bell.

"A lot of people wanted to come," Bill Lee said. "I told them not to come because a party's going to break out and I won't be able to attend."

Nathan Dominitz is the Sports Content Editor of the Savannah Morning News and savannahnow.com. Email him at ndominitz@savannahnow.com. Twitter: @NathanDominitz

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Bill Lee former Red Sox pitcher for Savannah Bananas to keep pitching