Quoth the Johns:
This song is not based on any personal experience with baseball great Bill "Spaceman" Lee, who I quite accidentally met at a TV show right after writing this song. Lee, back in the seventies had a couple of great, controversial seasons with the very conservative Boston Red Sox. When Lee made a couple of appearances on local rock radio stations at the time, he lived up to his name with a very odd "lost philosopher"-style that made a lasting impression on me.
—John Flansburgh
[source: monopuff.org's online Unsupervised Libretto]