With a relatively sparse selection of TV sports today (Celts/Magic, Michigan/Michigan State and Royal Rumble pregame festivities aside), we’ll instead turn our attention to the all-important matter of the pending general election, and the unlikely candidacy of former Red Sox lefty Bill Lee, as covered by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s Mike Bernadino (link copped from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory) :

“This guy is a plagiarist of the highest order,” says Lee of Al Gore. “An Inconvenient Truth is so passé. This is stuff I knew in 1969 from reading Buckminster Fuller. Like Dick Schaap said, I told him about global warming in ’72.”

But what about that Nobel Prize Gore received?

“Ever since he got it, we’ve had the coldest winter we’ve ever had,” Lee says. “There may be global warming in the Indian Ocean or in the Klondikes, but not here in Vermont.”

Despite his screed on Gore, Lee remains a staunch liberal who had supported the hopeless presidential campaign of Dennis Kucinich before he pulled out of the race Friday and sounds more frustrated than ever with his party.

“The Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot,” Lee says. “They’re going to be the Bickersons and allow someone else to come sneaking in saying they’ll save the economy, lower gas prices and lower the boiling point of water.”

He gives a throaty laugh.

“I’m going to have to run,” he says.

A father of four and grandfather of six, the Spaceman remains in high demand for nostalgia events. Recently, at a hospital fundraiser in Connecticut, a fan asked Lee about Roger Clemens and those steroid allegations.

Can’t share the Spaceman’s complete answer, but it included a mind-blowing reference to raves in San Francisco and left his audience slack jawed.

The Beatles fan is hoping Paul McCartney could somehow join up with a cover band called the Fab Faux. Lee also listens to jazz and “a lot of Beethoven ¦ real sinister stuff while watching war movies.”

Most of all, he laments the loss of civility and the spread of ignorance in American society.

“Everybody’s got ADD,” he says. “It’s because of the cell phone. Everybody’s running around, and there’s no politeness, no courtesy. No one is holding doors open anymore.”