MONTICELLO, NY — Joe Lee is an amateur harness driver with a professional “A” license from the United States Trotting Association (USTA). He’s also the assistant equipment manager with the legendary New York Yankees, and he learned a lot about the philosophy of winning from a couple of big names in the majors, along with some of the veteran drivers at Monticello Raceway.

At first glance, it might seem like a long-shot stretch between major league baseball and the realm of Standardbred harness racing, but Lee easily straddles both worlds.

He explained it to this sports scribbler from a local weekly near Monticello Raceway.

Lee began his career in baseball in 1995, first as a teenage batboy, shagging fly balls during batting practice and warming up 17-season major league right fielder Paul O’Neill. Then he worked his way up to the position of assistant equipment manager, taking in seven World Series games and witnessing five wins from the dugout.

“Working for George Steinbrenner for all these years really taught me to want to win, that winning is everything,” said Lee. “It was the mindset, always play competitively… for Steinbrenner winning was second only to breathing.”

In his early days with the Yankees, Lee got to rub shoulders with some of the greats in the game. Along the way, he refined his idea of getting to the finish line in first place.

“Those guys who were playing at the time—Jeter, Clemente and A-Rod—were tigers out there. They’d play to win and get mad if they lost,” he said, referring to shortstop Derek Jeter, right fielder Roberto Clemente, power swatter Alexander Rodriquez, and the rest of the Yankees gang.

And from Joe Torre, Yankees manager from 1996-2007 under Steinbrenner, Lee picked up a few tips about timing in baseball. For him, that translated into harness racing.

“Torre would tell players that the game is speeding up in your eyes, you have to slow it down,” he said. Translated into harness-speak, that meant, “You know where the finish line is. Don’t die, and come out of it alive.”

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Lee’s folks, Dennis and Gail, grew up around harness racing, as they owned a couple of trotters trained by Ron Turcotte while his mom was a groom. When Lee was a youngster, they frequently traveled to Freehold Raceway, Roosevelt and Yonkers.

“There’s a picture of me on a bassinet in the barn area,” he recalled. Another early memory is watching the International Trots, where each horse was illuminated with a spotlight while their national anthems played over the loudspeakers.

Before taking a seat in a sulky—that two-wheeled spidery contraption that harness drivers sit on (sometimes called a “bike”)—back sometime in his 20s, Lee rode show-jumping horses, rider and steed clearing tall fences.

During those days, his friend Sandy Goldfarb owned several horses, and one day he told them he’d like to give harness racing a whirl.

“The goal was just to get behind the gate one time to see how it was,” he recalled, explaining that his first qualifying race at Freehold was offered to him by trainer “Buzzy” Sholty. He learned from Joe Holloway—a United States Trotting Association Hall of Famer trainer—too, and the likes of Mike Sorentino Jr., Carl Tirella and Dennis Laterza.

“I remember telling myself, stick behind the guy in front of you, don’t run ‘em over, and don’t get killed,” recounted Lee.

As he learned the sport and picked up more rides, he traveled “to places I never thought I’d be.” He drove at tracks as far flung from home as Canada, Florida, the Little Brown Jug in Ohio, Majorca in Spain, and New Zealand.

Add tracks in Yonkers, Pocono. Vernon, Batavia, Mohawk and Saratoga, and Lee’s driver’s card began to fill up.

A bit closer to home, Lee considers driving at the Meadowlands “the Mecca of it all,” but is a frequent driver at Monticello Raceway, the Mighty M of the Catskills.

In a fitting tribute to his love of the majors and trotters, Joe Lee was tabbed “Yankee Joe” by John Manzi. Manzi was the legendary former head of publicity at Monticello, the guy who dreamed up a race between an elephant and a camel during the track’s heyday.

“He was like the amateur reporter,” recalled Lee. “He’d come over to whoever won the race and get a couple of quotes about the trip they had on the track, publish it and get it up on U.S. Trotters. He was a Class A guy; he would always be at the top of the hill where you come off the track, and ready to write.”

He hadn’t “even gotten off the bike yet, and there he was… Monticello is John Manzi!” Lee added.

Lee started to drive at the Mighty M, qualifying horses for Bruce Aldrich Sr. and Gary Messenger, and said that “winning never gets old. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. From the day I started to today’s races, when the starter gets on the microphone and says ‘Get ‘em together,’ or at the Meadowlands’ 30-seconds-bring ‘em in, it’s a rush… like every race is the first.”

On July 12, Yankee Joe had a pretty good day for himself, driving in two heats of the amateur races, the 2nd and 8th respectively, and winning both: the 1-mile pace $4,000 purse NAAA North American Amateur Driving Association with Barnabas @ 1:56.2 and the Catskill Amateur Drivers Club with Fair Glider, 1-mile trot $7,500 purse @ 1:59.

With the wins, Lee posted his 100th and 101st first-place finishes at Monticello.

At the close of our interview, in a space overlooking the Mighty M’s storied track, this sports scribbler posed a wistful question to Yankee Joe, “Do you think you might be able to find a couple of autographed Babe Ruth baseballs laying around the dugout, and perhaps, could you part with one?”

“We’ll split the money, and buy a horse, maybe a couple of horses,” he replied jokingly—with a horseman’s sense of humor.