During Spring Training of that year, as he was hoping to go into his 17th season in the Major Leagues, Lemon was rushed to a Gainesville, Fla., hospital and was diagnosed with a rare stomach condition known as polycythemia vera.
At the time, there were no living cases.
As he laid in his hospital bed, with IVs in his body and barely able to focus, Chris Berman was on SportsCenter pretty much doing his eulogy. Even if it was only for a few minutes, Lemon was able to see what it would be like when he dies, as Berman spoke kind words, rolled highlights of his heydays with the White Sox and Tigers and talked how he'd be sorely missed.
"He kind of looked up at the TV and was like, 'Hold on, I ain't dead yet,'" said his wife, Gigi Lemon.
The nurses considered Lemon a lost cause, and a pack of cameramen and reporters were waiting outside of Shands Hospital, because they wanted to capture Lemon's "last moments."
"It was scary," Lemon said. "It's like you're already gone, and you're being able to see what it will be like. ... It's like a dream."
It might as well have been.
Seventeen years later, Lemon looks like a fit teenager and is one of the most successful youth baseball coaches in the country. Long since recovered from his health scare, the former speedy center fielder has the luxury of looking back at that time and laughing about it.
Especially with all the success he's had since.
He built a baseball school in Florida, went into coaching at the Amateur Athletic Union, became chairman of the Florida AAU in the early 1990s and is now the national chairman for AAU baseball.
There's more.
He's been coaching at Eustis High School in Lake County, Fla., for years, has had tremendous success with his youth baseball teams -- one of his 13-and-under squads once won 100 straight games -- and is in the planning stages of taking control of municipal athletic facilities for Apopka, Fla.
This week, Lemon is in Memphis, Tenn., for the first National Youth Baseball Championships. He brought with him two of his AAU teams, named "Chet Lemon's Juice," in the 10-and-under and 12-and-under divisions.
"He's a teacher -- that's what he was born to do,'" said Eddie Einhorn, vice chairman of the White Sox and founder of the NYBC, which unites the winners of eight youth baseball leagues and brings them out to Gameday Baseball's First Tennessee Fields to crown a winner in the two age groups. "I tell Gigi all the time, 'You have to slow him down.'"
But she can't.
Currently, Lemon coaches four youth baseball teams -- all of which are top tier -- runs the AAU, tours the country for tournaments and coaches high school baseball.
He's instructed the likes of Matt LaPorta, Prince Fielder, Rickie Weeks, Zack Greinke and Casey Kotchman, among others.
Not bad for a guy who had a seven-pound spleen removed in 2001, had a G.I. tract procedure in 2006, pops six pills a day, throws up blood every once in a while because his body produces too many red-blood cells and, at one point, had his weight reduced down to the level of some of the preteen kids he now coaches.
"He doesn't know this, but I think his goal is to touch every kid," said Gigi, who Chet Lemon said is "the [George] Steinbrenner" of his teams, because she pretty much runs everything. "And I think there's nothing more rewarding for him than the kids."
One of the things Berman had to have been talking about during Lemon's "montage" must've been the heart and hustle he showed on the baseball field.
In his Major League debut in 1975, Lemon was playing third base and in trying to field a ground ball to his left -- way to his left -- he ran in front of his shortstop and nearly collided with his helpless second baseman.
"[Then-White Sox manager] Chuck Tanner grabbed me and said, 'Chet, see there, that's 400-something feet of grass -- you can run all you want,'" Lemon said.
That's exactly what he did.
Lemon, a career .273 hitter with 215 home runs and 884 RBIs in nearly 2,000 games, set an American League record in 1977 by recording 512 putouts in 524 chances as an outfielder.
He was traded to the Tigers for Steve Kemp after the 1981 season and went on to win the World Series in '84 with a Detroit team that got off to a 35-5 start and featured greats such as Kirk Gibson, Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker and manager Sparky Anderson.
"I just remember there were so many leaders on that team," said Lemon, whose son, Marcus, was drafted by the Rangers in 2006 and is now with Class A Bakersfield. "We wanted to win every time we took the field -- it didn't matter if we were 10 [runs] up or 10 down.
"We put a sign up in the clubhouse that said, 'The Element of Surprise Will Never Get the Best of Us.'"
Surprise never got to Lemon outside of the baseball field, either.
He wanted to keep playing in 1991, but his life changed drastically when he found out about his rare disease.
A disease there still is no cure for.
Now, Lemon has accepted that he'll have to live the rest of his life with the hindrances of the disorder. But ever since that scary night at the hospital, he's made sure his life is the kind that's worth living.
"I value my relationships with people a lot more now," Lemon said. "When you experience my experiences, you tend to appreciate the little things a lot more.
"I realized that I need to leave a good impression in this world, because you never know what will happen."
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