Bill Lee raises the spirits of a Royal's fan - "Here am I/ sitting in my tin can/ far, far away/ Planet earth is blue and there's nothing I can do

It's almost too painful to write about the Royals right now. So, I thought I'd post these photographs. They tell a great story.

That's Bill "Spaceman" Lee, pitching for an independent league team recently. At 63, he may be the oldest man to win a professional game.

I've always appreciated the Spaceman. He still plays ball in a highly competitive over-40 league, which you know warms my heart. In fact, he is connected to a writer I admire: Randy Wayne White. White is a travel writer I discovered in Outdoor Magazine. Later I picked up on his string of gripping Doc Ford mysteries, the latest has been number six on the New York Times fiction list. He also plays in a highly competitive over-40 league. He's a catcher -- the only right position for a novelist.

A few years ago White and Bill Lee took White's team to Cuba. They also took some film and made a wonderful movie about the adventure but I can't find record of it anywhere today, even on his Web site. I bought a VHS copy but it malfunctioned. Anyway, they took along a big cache of baseball equipment which they distributed to kids everywhere on the island, kids who were playing with bats whittled from logs and baseballs that were essentially electricians tape.

Here's a Web page where you can see snippets of the movie.

--Lofflin

Downloaded the bottom image from Deadspin but they did not give credit to the photographer. My guess is the photographer worked for the Brockton, Mass., Enterprise. The top photograph was submitted by "john" to the Rox' Facebook gallery. Love it...