Bill Lee

Sport: Baseball

Induction Year: 1972

Induction Year: 1972

Big Bill Lee of Plaquemine, La., signed a professional baseball contract with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1933, at the age of 23, and won 20 games in his first year with the Cardinals’ Columbus, Ohio farm club.

Branch Rickey then sold Lee to the Chicago Cubs for $12,000, and the 6-3, 195-pound right-hander proceeded to lead the Cubs to National League pennants in 1935 and 1938.

In his first game in the major leagues, Lee pitched the Cubs to a 2-0 shutout victory over the Philadelphia Phillies.

Lee was 20-6 in 1935, posting the league’s best winning percentage (.769) and a 2.96 earned run average in his second major league season.

Manager Charlie Grimms’s Cubs, trailing both the Giants and the Cardinals’ “Gas House Gang” as September got under way, captured the pennant with a 21-game winning streak that included five victories apiece by Lee, who was 25, and 26-year-old Larry French.

On the final day of the streak, Lee was matched against the Cardinals’ Dizzy Dean in the first game of a doubleheader at St. Louis’ Sportsman’s Park.

Dean, who had already won 28 games, was staked to a 2-0 lead in the first inning. But the bespectacled Lee, who was nicknamed “The General,” didn’t allow another run by the club that sold him two years earlier and the Cubs clinched the pennant with a 6-2 victory.

Years later, Grimm called the 1935 Cubs “the best group I ever managed. In all my 50 years in baseball, I never experienced a season to come close to 1935.”

After the Cubs and Detroit Tigers split the first two games of the World Series, The Tigers scored a 6-5, 10-inning victory in Game 3 (Lee pitched the first seven innings) and won the series with two more one-run wins.

Lee was 22-9 in 1938, leading the league in both victories and winning percentage (.710). He also led in shutouts with nine and earned run average with 2.66.

Despite his success, the Cubs were struggling and owner Philip Wrigley fired Grimm on July 20. He turned the managing duties over to Gabby Hartnett, the Cubs’ 37-year-old catcher.

“The decision to change was not a sudden one,” Wrigley said. “I have been thinking about it for quite some time. In fact, I’ve thought about it so much that I’ve lost sleep over it and also much of my appetite. Grimm did a swell job, but I think the change is best for the baseball organization. Charlie gave everything he had, but the club was not doing as well as we felt the Giants.

“There certainly is an extra spark needed and I’m going to find it if it’s the last thing I do,” Hartnett said.

Things got worse before they got better. Winning 40 or 54 games in June and July, Pie Traynor’s Pirates were in the driver’s seat. Pittsburgh’s management was so confident that the Forbes Field press box was enlarged to accommodate World Series coverage and club president Bill Benswager ordered 1,000 pins for the World Series press corps.

On Labor Day, the Cubs were only 26-22 under Hartnett and trailed the Pirates by seven games. Then history repeated itself, as Chicago made its second September charge in four years.

With Lee pitching a 13-hit shutout against the Giants on Sept. 17 (the most hits allowed by a National League pitcher in a shutout since 1913), the pennant race came down to a Wrigley Field series with the Pirates starting on September 27.

Sore-armed Dizzy Dean, who had been acquired three days before the season started, pitched the Cubs to a 2-1 victory in the first game—with Lee picking up a save.

Lee also made a relief appearance the following day, when Hartnett’s ninth inning homerun on an overcast day moved the Cubs into first place by two percentage points.

The following day, Lee—pitching for the fourth day in a row—beat a lifeless Pittsburgh team 10-1. Chicago clinched the pennant one day later.

Between the 1935 and 1938 seasons, the Cubs made one of baseball’s all-time front office bonehead plays when they passed up an opportunity to get Joe DiMaggio. With some scouts concerned about a knee injury, the San Francisco club of the Pacific Coast League offered DiMaggio to the Bus on a half-season trail basis. If they weren’t satisfied by July, the deal would be off.

The Cubs turned down the offer, and paid for their blunder in the 1938 World Series when DiMaggio collected four hits, including a two-run homer in a Yankee sweep.

In the opening game of the World Series, Red Ruffing of the Yankees out-dueled Lee 3-1—New York’s lowest output in the Series. Lee, who held DiMaggio hitless in Game 1, also started Game 4 and gave up three runs in the second inning as the Yankees completed the sweep with an 8-3 victory.

Winning 19 games the following year, Lee was 106-70 in his first six seasons in the major leagues.

He had 23 shutouts at that point in his career. Bothered by arm problems later, he had only six more shutouts in his last eight seasons—three of them in 1944. The bottom line for his last eight seasons was 63 victories and 87 losses, as he won more than 10 games only once (13-13 in 1942).

As a hitter, the highlight of William Crutcher Lee’s major league career was May 7, 1941, when he hit two home runs in one game, In his other 975 trips to the plate, he had only three other homers and finished his career with a lifetime batting average of .168.

Lee, who pitched for the Phillies and Boston Braves during World War II before finishing his career with the Cubs in 1947, was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 1962. he was the fourth baseball player chosen, following Cooperstown Hall of Famers Mel Ott, Ted Lyons and Bill Dickey.