Lee displays his talent on grandest stage

I remember when he arrived in the Major Leagues on Sept. 15, 2002. He had come to the Indians organization earlier that summer in the Bartolo Colon trade that brought the Tribe a handful of big league prospects.

And while the then 23-year-old Cliff Lee wasn’t the centerpiece of the deal, he was no mere throw-in. Brandon Phillips, a fast-talking, almost-ready-for-the-big-leagues infielder with a hip-hop swagger, was the blue chip, and Phillips did turn into the ballplayer he was expected to become.

The expectations on Lee were grand as well. He was a prospect on the rise, but the Indians didn’t need him to step into the rotation and take over for Colon. They already had an anchor for their starting rotation in left-hander CC Sabathia, so they could afford to wait for Lee.

He didn’t disappoint them. OK, so he had a misstep in 2007 when the Indians sent him back to Triple A. He didn’t like the idea of being back in the Minors.

What players do? Lee was 28 then, and his resume already included two 14-win seasons and an 18-win season. He wasn’t injured, and he hadn’t forgotten how to pitch. He was just going through one of those hiccups that players sometime have.

Lee picked the wrong time to have his, though. His struggles kept him off the ’07 playoff roster during a season in which the Indians came within a win of making it to the World Series.

No telling what might have happened had Lee pitched. He might have made a difference. He might have proved the arm needed to carry the Indians to where they hadn’t been in a decade.

One thing I remember well about Lee in the years I talked to him and wrote about him was that he didn’t live his life peeking over his shoulder. Few players I have met live totally in the present the way Lee always did. He never dwelled on what he couldn’t change, even if it was last night’s bad outing. He never revisited the stories that came out yesterday.

I also remember his confidence. To call it cockiness would be to call it wrong. He had a belief in himself that he was comfortable with, though not arrogant with. He seemed to know he was a cut above others who made their living throwing a baseball.

Believing and proving are two different things. No argument there, right?

And all the belief in the world, all the cockiness can’t mask a 5-8 record with a 6.29 ERA, numbers that got Lee sent back to the Minors in ’07.

But that 2007 season taught Lee, now 30, a lot about himself. His trip back to Triple A helped him relearn to pitch – to trust his fastball. And learn Lee did, as the Cy Young Award he won in 2008 proves.

In a few hours, he will showcase this talent for a national audience when he starts Game 1 of the World Series for the Phillies, who picked Lee up in a midseason trade with the Tribe. He will be facing the Yankees, a team that he has faced countless times.

He will also be going against an old teammate and his friend – Sabathia, himself a Cy Young winner with the Indians in 2007.

Two former Indians, two players who matured into staff aces in the same city and in the same uniform, pitching in a World Series opener at the new Yankee Stadium, performing under baseball’s brightest lights: Lee against Sabathia.

This is where I always thought Cliff Lee would be: pitching on this big stage. I just figured he would be doing it in Cleveland, not in Philadelphia.

Oh, Those 'Little' Boys of Summer ...

I can't pull myself away from ESPN and its saturation coverage of the Little League World Series, now winding toward its endgame. I'm borderline obsessed with it.

I thought I had gotten my fill of the Series last year when I covered these pint-sized ballplayers for MLB.com.  But even as my career with the dot.com veered in another direction, I've maintained a deep affinity toward the event. 

I left a piece of my baseball heart last summer in Williamsport, Penn., the epicenter to what might just be the purest form of America's national pastime. 

Each summer, teams of Little Leaguers travel there from places as near as Kentucky and as far as Japan or Saudi Arabia. They come carrying hopes and dreams and passions for what has become a decidedly international game. While baseball planted its roots firmly in U.S. soil, its branches go in every direction.

So you sit in Lamade Stadium or Volunteer Stadium and see this United Nations of youngsters enjoying this game like Jeter and Howard and Braun and Granderson and Pujols and Mauer and Ellsbury and ... well, like any big leaguer. The youngsters run and throw and swing and catch. They laugh, they hurt, they cry. They make new friends, they see new sites, they live a fantasy. 

I used to think that putting a spotlight on boys 11-, 12- and 13-years-old was misguided. I mistakenly believed adults had co-opted the game, molding the World Series into what it has become: a made-for-TV spectacle. 

But I discovered firsthand last summer that the Little League World Series is no more about adults than a secondary education is. The World Series is about little boys like Dieter Miller and Hung Yuan Lin and Wen Hua Sung and Edmond Americaan and Claycandy Hariquez, Kiko Garcia and Bulla Grant and Harley Hunter and Katie Reyes -- and, yes, a girl of summer, too; it's about what they love and enjoy.

Oh, the adults around them enjoy it all as well. They soak up this intoxicating atmosphere at Williamsport like a town drunk with no limit on his bar tab. They cheer wildly for their sons and grandsons and brothers and cousins and the neighbor's kids. They celebrate the successes; they mourn the disappointments.

And there are many of the latter in Williamsport. For only one team will leave this burg deep in the middle of nowhere with a championship. The rest of the teams will return to their homes with disappointment in tow, though not as losers. 

For to make it to Williamsport is to be a winner. It's an experience of a lifetime, a lifetime that has only begun to take shape. 

As I watched these little boys of summer last year, I hoped they would have successes beyond the playing field. The odds are that, of the scores of boys playing in Williamsport then, only two or three of them will reach the big leagues.  

That's OK, because what they will have learned from their experience is how to be a good teammate, how to accept things they cannot change and how to enjoy a moment that so few boys will ever experience.

And for the rest of their lives, they will have hours of ESPN video and their watercolored memories to remind them of the thrills they are having -- win or lose -- on a small stage that is every bit as grand as Fenway Park, Wrigley Field or Yankee Stadium.