'Spaceman' Lee: I smoked weed with George W. Bush in 1972

Bill Lee, the irrepressibly eccentric left-hander known as "Spaceman," reiterated Tuesday during an appearance on the Dan Le Batard Show that he really did smoke marijuana with former president George W. Bush during a trip to the Boston Museum of Science in 1972.

Lee, 69, originally referenced rolling "doobies" with the former president during Bush's election campaign in 2000, and the longtime Boston Red Sox hurler didn't waver when Le Batard asked for clarification Tuesday morning.

"Yes I did," Lee said, emphatically. "In 1972, under the Tyrannosaurus rex fossil at the Boston Museum, and he denied it - and you still re-elected that guy. I'm telling you. And the funny thing is, I brought the dope. He didn't bring it."

Lee, who's running for governor of Vermont, noted Bush's parents - George H.W. Bush, the eventual one-term president who then served as Ambassador to the United Nations, and former First Lady Barbara Bush - were at the museum that day, too, though they didn't partake.

In 1980, two years before he retired from Major League Baseball, Lee expounded on his relationship with marijuana in an interview with the High Times, noting he started smoking it in 1968 - four years before his trip to the museum with the Bush family.

"Who doesn't?" Lee responded when if it was safe to assume lots of ballplayers smoke. "Smoking's a way to let you down slowly from a ballgame… It makes people better in the way they act towards society. Everybody's nicer. It's hard to be mean when you’re stoned. It's made players a lot less alcoholic."