Is Rush Canada’s most popular export? As much as we love maple syrup and moose, it’s probably true.
Well, singer, bassist and frontman Geddy Lee is sticking with his home country, and has been a Toronto Blue Jays fan for years. In fact, he’s often been spotted hanging out at Rogers Centre, cheering the team on.
Likewise, with the Jays having completed an impressive offseason and consequently seeing expectations for the 2013 campaign rise exponentially, Major League Baseball figured it would be a good idea to bring Lee into their studios to get his take on the upcoming season. USA Today also interviewed the soon-to-be Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee while he was there, and the collective information we learned about Lee is fascinating.
“We do an intermission between sets,” Lee said of Rush’s live shows, “and the first thing I do is check box scores.”
But beyond obsessively checking box scores, there’s more we learn about Lee. For one, his box score interest is just a part of his fantasy baseball playing. Moreover, he’s become another follower of Bill James and Sabermetrics
“I started reading Bill James quite early on — not when he was first doing his pamphlets, but when he first started doing the Baseball Abstracts, I was right there buying them,” said Lee. “I still have all the old baseball abstracts. So that got the wheels turning, and my friends and I used to talk about those stats.”
Of course, Lee also had some opinions on his Blue Jays, and perhaps unsurprisingly he really likes the moves the team made this offseason. Beyond the players the team brought in, like Jose Reyes and R.A. Dickey, Lee cites Brett Lawrie as a potential difference-maker for the Jays.
“There are very few kids who can just come up from the minors and take off — very few Miggy Cabreras out there,” said Lee. “They’re few and far between. Most of them have to work at it, and they need a couple of years. Certainly in that lineup now, [Lawrie is] going to have a chance to do some damage.”
Check out the video below for Lee’s interview with MLB. (And, as an editorial aside, Neil Peart is the best drummer alive.)
Thumbnail photo via Wikimedia Commons/Geddy Lee
