The vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for Rush has amassed one of the largest baseball memorabilia collections in the world. Now, part of it will go up for auction at Christie’s.
If Geddy Lee is anything, maybe the best word to describe him is forever inquisitive. As a founding member of the Canadian progressive rock band Rush, he and bandmates Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart spent 40 years in a constant state of musical exploration. Lyrical themes from Peart ran from the mystical (Xanadu, 2112, By-Tor And The Snow Dog) to commentary on the human condition (Nobody’s Hero, Limelight, Far Cry) and beyond while the music went from pure power rock trio to exploring New Wave, reggae, and heavy synthesizer side at varying stages. After the band retired, Lee wasn’t satisfied in putting out a standard coffee table book with pictures of his vast bass and guitar collection, it dove deep into their history with his Big Book Beautiful Bass book. More recently, he’s released an autobiography (My Effin’ Life).
So, it should be no surprise that Lee took one of his other passions and threw himself into it as an opportunity to not only collect but learn.
Baseball seems perfectly aligned for Lee. The game isn’t the instant, prepacked, and processed dopamine fix of football. The story of each season is played out daily over 162 games. It is not defined by the clock in terms of game length. Some games can be concise. Some can wander into extra innings. Baseball is also a game that allows for one to mentally address the situation in-between plays and then is punctuated by great action.
So, too, Rush has always been a band that created something to chew on. As Lee said in the past, a lot of music for the masses has empty calories. From odd time signatures to songs in the late ‘70s that once stretched to 9-minute epics, Rush always offered up a bountiful meal for the mind. Rush’s popularity was built on their relentless touring schedule early on. The daily grind of back-to-back shows would normally see others fall into drugs. Lee said that while they were around the band, “We took our work seriously” and therefore never fell into the lifestyle.
Baseball, with its daily heartbeat of games with the boxscore lends itself to the rhythm of road life. During the late spring and summer, baseball is always there. Lee and Lifeson had been known to take batting practice when on the road (in the clip below with the Angels, Lee says, “If I could live my life again, this is what I’d do.”) Geddy is still a figure at Toronto Blue Jays games. And, maybe unsurprisingly, baseball found its way into album credits. For 1982’s Signals, the liner notes list not only what each player performed on the album, but baseball positions (Lee is listed as pitcher, Peart as third base, and Lifeson as first base). Former MLB player Warren Cromartie and the Montreal Expos’ Intellivision Baseball are listed as “Most Valuable Persons”.
As fame and fortune presented itself, Lee started collecting baseball memorabilia. His collection numbers in the thousands. It has allowed him to learn about the history of the game, and through it, the history of America. In 2008, he donated 200 baseballs signed by Negro League players to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.
“If you really look at it from an abstract point of view, it’s greed,” Lee said in an interview with The Athletic. “You want to own the game. You want to own a piece of every great player, to hold in your hand a ball that was signed by Lou Gehrig. It just became a magnificent obsession for me.”
As a sign that the collection isn’t just about hoarding artifacts, Lee sees the pieces he’s amassed as simply a stop along the way.
“Baseballs, nobody owns them,” Lee said. “They’re like houses. You take care of them for a while, and then they move on to the next person, the next custodian.”
The 300 pieces up for auction put together by Hunt Auctions and Christie’s traverses three centuries of the National Pastime. Entitled, Selections from the Geddy Lee Collection and Important Baseball Memorabilia it ranges from a 1968 Henry Aaron Atlanta Braves jersey (est. value $500,000-$1,000,000) to a 1927 Lou Gehrig bat (est. $400,000-$600,000) to a ball signed in 1965 by members of The Beatles (est. $100,000-$300,000) to a ball signed by former President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson (est. $75,000-$300,000). Other items include include a 1917 Chicago White Sox baseball with “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, a 1942 Negro Leagues autographed baseball with Josh Gibson, and much more.
But what’s telling is what is not up for auction.
Peart may have penned the lyrics, but Lee sang them in the song Nobody’s Hero from 1993’s Counterparts album. In it, the song touches on the loss of people in Peart’s life who had died (one with AIDS, one who had been murdered) yet their importance even though they were “nobody’s hero” (“Saves a drowning child/cures a wasting disease… lands a crippled airplane/solves great mysteries”). So, it’s telling that Lee treasures a baseball that surrounds a little-known player who never achieved greatness and was certainly “nobody’s hero.” The ball’s monetary collectible value is a faint shadow to other pieces in his collection, and yet, he chooses this one to highlight what he loves about the game and its history.
The ball is signed by Bert Shepard, who played in one game in 1945. Shepard did more than just add his signature to the ball; he gave a brief life story.
“I lost my right leg being shot down over Germany in World War II,” Lee says, reading from the ink in the interview with The Athletic. “I got a new leg and pitched for the Washington Senators.”
“I lost my right leg being shot down over Germany in World War II,” Lee continued. “I got a new leg and pitched for the Washington Senators.”
The auction at Christie’s runs in New York and online from Nov. 21 to Dec. 7.
Read the full article here