Lee's full focus on family now

BY MARTY COOK -ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

FAYETTEVILLE -- Contraction is the least of Cliff Lee's worries.

After the year he has had, Lee, 23, couldn't care less about whether the Montreal Expos fold, play on or move to Washington or Timbuktu. Lee, a left-handed pitcher from Benton who pitched one year at the University of Arkansas, is with the Expos' Class AA team in Harrisburg, Pa.

Kristen Lee talks with her husband three times a day on the phone from Benton. Their 14-month-old son, Jaxon, has leukemia.

Jaxon was diagnosed on the final day of last season when the Lees were in Daytona Beach, Fla., on a road trip with the Expos' Class A Jupiter team. Jaxon, then 4 months old, came down with a fever and began throwing up.

Kristen took him to the emergency room. Doctors told her it was a urinary tract infection but after more tests came back with bad news. They told Kristen that Jaxon may have leukemia and would have to go to Orlando, Fla., for an exact diagnosis.

"That was the worst thing anybody has ever told me in my entire life," Kristen Lee said.

Cliff Lee had gone to the stadium after the initial thought was an infection. Kristen Lee called her husband, who couldn't, or wouldn't, believe the possibility.

The Lees went to Arnold Palmer Hospital in Orlando, where their worst fear was confirmed. Jaxon had leukemia and was given a 30 percent chance to survive.

"That was a definite shock," Cliff Lee said. "It was pretty bad the first couple of days, but after that it's just like we got to do what we got to do. What do we need to do to get this taken care of?"

The Lees flew home and took Jaxon to Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock for chemotherapy. After two treatments, Jaxon sustained a setback when cancerous cells formed behind his eye and chemotherapy had to be stopped.

Radiation was used to treat the leukemia cells behind his eye, then the Lees flew to San Antonio in January for an umbilical cord-blood transplant. That has worked and Jaxon's leukemia is in remission, although it is far too early to give a long-term prognosis.

"The transplant is a big, big, big thing," Kristen Lee said. "We're still battling through all the little bumps from that. Now, Jaxon's happy. Actually, he's been happy through the whole thing. Jaxon did wonderful. One of the doctors said, during the chemo, 'You would think we were giving him water.' "

Cliff Lee doesn't talk much about his son's trials or his feelings after watching his son battle for his life. He doesn't talk much about baseball, either.

When his son was undergoing chemotherapy, Cliff Lee would leave the hospital and spend his days chopping firewood, Kristen Lee said.

Every night, Cliff Lee would return to the hospital and his wife and son.

"We spent a lot of time in the hospital," Cliff Lee said. "It's a good thing he is so young because he really doesn't have a clue. He doesn't know he's not supposed to do that stuff. He's definitely happy.

"If you didn't know he had leukemia, you wouldn't know there was anything wrong with him."

With his son doing well, Lee can concentrate on what used to be the only thing that mattered to him, baseball. Lee is 6-2 with 88 strikeouts in 74 2/3 innings and has held opponents to a .197 batting average with the Senators after the Expos made him their fourth-round selection in 1999 following Lee's one year with the Razorbacks.

"People used to ask me what I was going to do and I'd say, 'I'm going to play professional baseball,' " said Lee, rated the Expos' No. 11 prospect by Baseball America. "I didn't know if that was actually going to come true, but that's always what I wanted to do."

Lee was a top prospect in high school but turned some off with his attitude and immaturity. He missed much of his senior season because of injuries but was selected in eighth round by Florida in 1997.

Lee chose to go to Meridian (Miss.) Community College, and Baltimore selected him in the 20th round of the 1998 draft but didn't offer him any money. After one more season in junior college, Lee wasn't drafted and transferred to Arkansas.

The former wild child is now a picture of professionalism.

"[Family] has made it where I don't just play for myself anymore," Lee said. "I have a family I have to take care of. I've changed my ways a lot, you can put it that way.

"I don't hardly do anything anymore. All I do is go to the field, play baseball and fish. That's it. Anything I used to do off the field I don't do anymore."

Kristen Lee has noticed the change.

"I don't like that crazy stuff, and that's how you would kind of explain him in high school," Kristen Lee said. "He's matured a whole lot.

"Cliff calls before he leaves to go to the field, sometimes he calls during the game, and he calls me after the game. If he goes to get something to eat, he calls me when he gets back."

Kristen Lee said she feels like a single mother with a sick child because Cliff is away in the Northeast. She didn't know anything about baseball before but is slowly making the adjustment to baseball wife. She even parroted her husband when she said it was lucky Jaxon had gotten sick at the end of the season so all the treatments and hospital stays took place during the off-season.

"I didn't really know what I was getting into, at all," Kristen Lee said. "He plays baseball, and I have a sick child. That makes it totally, totally different. It's just hard."

For Cliff Lee, his life is now about doing the best job he can when he is not calling home to check on his wife and son.

"I'll do whatever they pay me to do," Lee said. "I want to make [the majors] as soon as possible. I really couldn't afford to sit around in the minors for a real long time. I have a wife and kid now."

Page Created: 6/17/02