Looking for a break from routine, Lee, who is a nondrinker, ventured into a sports bar at Arizona Center. He left after five minutes, cowed by the attention he drew.
"Well, I have to find a lady somehow," he says. Then he adds, "I'm not going to find her in a bar."
Then again, he doesn't know where he'll find her, unless in some little town in the middle of nowhere.
When told that Michael Jordan married a woman who didn't know who he was when they met and didn't care, he says, "I think that'll be the biggest turn-on. If she didn't know who I was, that's a plus right there."
He could take out a Romance classified ad: Tall, dark and handsome pro athlete with 10 million dollars seeks woman unimpressed by same.
"It's going to be tough for me to find the right woman," he says. "Because I'm not sure if she's going to want me for the Travis Lee on the field or the person inside. And I'm sad I didn't have one going into this situation."
Alas, at this point, the Lee on the field can't be separated from the one inside.
"Let me put it this way," says his father, "success brings a lot of things that women like to be around. Travis is a find--not just because he's good-looking, but because his heart is so pure."
Says his friend Ranjy Thomas, "I'd be surprised if Travis ever said he's been in love."
But meanwhile, in the stands on game day, females from 5 to 55 call out to him. The little girls hold up signs that say "Marry me, Travis." The adolescent girls yell his name from the rail along the first-base side of the stadium. The older women lust after him.
Travis Lee is not a lusty guy. He's a puppy-love guy.
A Diamondbacks billboard on Washington Street near 16th Street carries a giant photo of Lee at bat, staring ahead intently, bat raised.
The caption reads "Major League Crush."
It's not only perfectly apt, but a hint of the potentially monumental marketing opportunities that await Travis Lee.
The similarities and differences to Michael Jordan at the same stage of his career are striking.
Ten years ago, Jordan was very close to Lee's age and just starting to cash in on his unprecedented marketability. Like Lee, he was young and innocent, a former Olympian with a squeaky clean image and all-American moral values. Jordan was so frugal that he'd stew over the price of a dozen golf balls even though he was a very wealthy man. Like Lee, he was inaccessible, unreadable, hard to get to know.
Both men are so fluid that they seemed to have been bred for their sports. One scout recently referred to Lee as "Roy Hobbs without the baggage," referring to the Robert Redford character in The Natural, who is supposedly the best baseball player there ever was. Jordan has been described similarly.
But unlike Lee, Jordan was a showman in a showier game. In basketball, as Buck Showalter points out, the worst team in the league can draft a Michael Jordan and be in the playoffs the next year; baseball requires a nine-man team.
Jordan knew how to turn on the cool, how to pop out the glib one-liner in a press conference, how to act intense in the big commercial or the feature film, even when playing opposite someone so formidable as Bugs Bunny.
Will Lee learn to play that game? Will he be able to stomach it?
The endorsement offers pour in.
"The phone rings off the hook," says Jeff Moorad.
A major fast-food franchise has made overtures, but Moorad has put them off. His client, after all, has no short-term need for cash. He can't figure out how to spend the millions he already has.
"Over the next few years, we'll find a handful of partners," says Moorad. He'll take the same route that David Falk took with Michael Jordan and consider only the classiest advertising acts.
Travis says, "My first year I'm just trying to focus on everything on the field. In a couple of years when I feel more comfortable out there, I'll think of opening up."
Amen.
Contact Michael Kiefer at his online address: mkiefer@newtimes.com
