Suffice to say, the Lee family is well represented in the Sacramento Sports Hall of Fame – now even more than before.
Leon Lee, a graduate of Sacramento’s Grant Union High School and a 10-year star in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league was inducted into the Hall along with five others in a ceremony on February 4 at the Thunder Valley Casino. He joined his brother LeRon and son Derrek among the nearly 50 notables enshrined since the Hall’s inception in 2013.
The Lees are the only family with three representatives in the Hall. Leon and Derrek are the first father-son duo, and Leon and LeRon are just the second set of brothers chosen in the voting by Sacramento-area fans. Former major league pitchers Bob and Ken Forsch were elected in 2018.
LeRon played in Japan for 11 seasons, and his .320 career batting average is the highest of any foreign-born player. Derrek was a 15-year major leaguer who earned All-Star and Gold Glove recognition.
“When they called me and said that I’d gotten in, I was really excited,” said Lee, who is also a member of the Sacramento Baseball Hall of Fame. “This is a special honor, and it’s extra special to be included with my son and brother among all the other great athletes.”
It also has particular meaning for Lee because he spent so much of his career playing in Japan. A ninth-round draft choice of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1971, he toiled for seven seasons in the U.S. minor leagues, reaching as high as the AAA level. Then, in 1978, he joined brother LeRon on the Lotte Orions (now the Chiba Lotte Marines). He played with Lotte for five years, the Taiyo Whales for three, and the Yakult Swallows for two before retiring after the 1987 season.
“I think the fact that both LeRon and I are in this Hall of Fame helps validate the quality of baseball in Japan,” Lee said. “It’s different now, but people thought for a long time that it was at the level of AAA or maybe 4A [meaning very good AAA but not good enough to be a regular in MLB].
‘I remember being at a golf tournament once and talking with Bobby Winkles, who was the manager of the [Los Angeles] Angels at the time. We were in the same foursome, and he asked me how many homers I’d hit that season. I told him 40, and he said, ‘Yeah, but they have pretty short fences over there.’”
Over the 10 seasons, Lee averaged .308 with a .372 on-base percentage, and a .530 slugging mark during his time in NPB. He hit 268 home runs and drove in 884 runs. He was twice named to the Best Nine team, for a time held the NPB record for the most home runs by a foreign player, and ranks 10th in career batting average among players with 4,000 or more at bats (LeRon is the leader with a .320 mark over 11 seasons).
The evening of the ceremonies was special, too, in that sons Derrek and Bryan and daughter Isyara were on hand, and that granddaughters Ayanna and Lyric actually made the presentation.
“What made it all so special for me was getting to play with my brother and us both doing so well,” Leon said. “He and I hit back-to-back home runs 12 times.”
“That was a surprise, and it was really nice,” Lee said. “I thought it would be Derrek or maybe Bryan or Isyara to present me, but then the granddaughters stepped up and did it. They had a script and everything. It was great.”
NOTES: Also enshrined were ex-NBA players Matt Barnes (who played for the Sacramento Kings and won an NBA title with Golden State) and James Donaldson (a former all-star), 12-year MLB player Nick Johnson, six-time national champion triathlete Jamie Whitmore, and Robert Bodas in the Special Olympics category . . . There were 41 nominees across 10 different sports. For more on Leon and LeRon read our previous feature on the NPB import legends.
