James "Cool Papa" Bell

1903-1991

American baseball player

Negro league baseball lore is full of colorful tales, several of which revolve around the exploits of speedster James "Cool Papa" Bell. Teammate Satchel Paige once claimed that Bell was so fast that he could switch the light in their hotel room and jump into bed before the light went out. Rumor also had it that Bell had once been called out because he got hit by his own drive while rounding second base. Like many legends, these tales contain kernels of truth. Clocked at running the bases in thirteen seconds, Bell routinely stretched singles into doubles or triples; he stole bases at will and he covered centerfield with ease, taking away base hits from many batters. Bell played ball with a handful of Negro league teams in the United States and several teams in Cuba, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic, where African American players were heartily welcomed. Although Bell retired shortly before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, he accepted his role in history. Even so, he was among the African American ball players who measured themselves against white Major Leaguers in exhibition games. When asked on what level he thought most Negro league teams were compared with the Major Leagues, he did not hesitate. "We could have played right along with them," he replied in a video clip at the Major League Baseball Web site.

James Thomas Nichols was born May 17, 1903, in Starkville, Mississippi, to Jonas Bell and Mary Nichols. Bell grew up playing sandlot baseball and in 1920, he

moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and took his father's name. He found work at the Independent Packing Company (later renamed Swift), and when not working he played semiprofessional baseball with the Compton Hill Cubs, part of the St. Louis City League. In this auspicious year he also married Clarabelle Thompson, with whom he would share more than fifty years of marriage. Two years later when the Compton Hill Cubs played an exhibition game against the St. Louis Stars of the Negro National League (NNL), Bell was too good of a prospect for the Stars to resist. With his left-handed curve and fade-away knuckle balls, he could dominate batters.

He snapped up the chance to pitch for the Stars, and at age nineteen made his professional baseball debut as a pitcher. The slender six foot tall youngster took the mound with rare poise for one so young and made a name for himself when he struck out slugger Oscar Charleston at a crucial point in a game. The name was "Cool Papa." Bell recalled at MLB.com, "They thought I was going to be afraid of the crowds. We had eleven, twelve, fifteen thousand people—more than the Major League had. I went out there like a veteran. I was a pitcher then and so like nothing is exciting, nothing like that. So they said you're looking cool out there. They started to call 'Hey Cool, Hey Cool.' So our manager [Bill Gatewood] said this 'Cool' isn't enough of a name for you, so he added 'Papa.' So that's how that was born."

After Bell injured his pitching arm, he moved to center field. With his speed and agility, he covered the often irregularly shaped playing fields with ease. He stole base hits and sacrifice flies from batters. He could compensate for his weakened arm with a quick release and accurate throw that prevented runners from trying for an extra base. Bell was also Cool Papa at the plate, but he was always ready to explode on the base paths.

Negro league pitchers took great liberties with the ball, causing it to fly in unpredictable ways. "In our league they threw the spitter, the screw ball, the emery ball, shine ball—that means Vaseline ball: there was so much Vaseline on it, it made you blink your eyes on a sunny day. Then they threw the mud ball—the mud on its seams made it sink. The emery ball would break either up or down, but if a sidearmer threw it and didn't know what he was doing, it could sail right into a hitter," Bell told John Holway in Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues. Even so, Bell often made contact, and not just contact—he knew how to place the ball where he wanted it. His lifetime batting average was an impressive .343.

Bell's speed—he could round the bases in a mere thirteen seconds—made him extra dangerous at the plate and on base. He could run out the bunt; he could get extra bases on slapped hits that for most players would be a single. In almost every game he played he stole at least one base. In 1933 Pittsburgh Pirate star Paul Waner told this story about his experience with Bell's speed, printed in Phil Dixon's The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History, "He was on first base and the next batter hit a single to center. This fellow Bell by that time was rounding second base and watching me as I ran. He never stopped. I made a motion, thinking to get him at third. As I started the throw I saw I was going to be too late. So I stopped … but he didn't. He kept on for home plate. By the time I could get the ball away, he had slid in there, was dusting himself off and walking calmly away." Satchel Paige's catcher Frazier Robinson in Voices from the Negro Leagues described Bell's base-stealing ability. "The only way I threw him out, he would telegraph when he was gonna steal. I knowed when he was goin'. If he'd take a big lead he wasn't goin' nowhere, but the minute he stood on that base—didn't take no lead—you better hurry up and get rid of that ball. And he could run! A lot of times he'd be thrown out but he knew how to slide. He'd trick the second baseman or the shortstop. … He didn't hit the long ball but he could get on that base—bunt and drag the ball. He'd run over you if you get in his way." Run over opponents he did. During the ten years that the switchhitting Bell played with the St. Louis Stars, he led the team to league titles in 1928, 1930, and 1931.

Chronology

Awards and Accomplishments

"Plays for Love of Game"

Bell played baseball almost continuously for thirty-four years, playing in both summer leagues in the United States and winter leagues in California, Cuba, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. "It was good times," Bell recalled to Fallstrom. "I just played for the love of the game. I didn't intend to play that long, it just happened." When the NNL fell prey to the Great Depression, Bell joined the Detroit Wolves, an East-West League team, but the team disbanded before the season was over. Bell then played the remainder of the season with the St. Louis Monarchs and played winter ball in Mexico in 1933. The lure of Mexico was strong for several reasons. Though Bell had been paid $90 per month to play for the St. Louis Stars, playing south of the border was even better. He played winter baseball in Cuba from 1928 to 1930, the Dominican Republic in 1937, and in Mexico from 1938 to 1941. Not only did Bell earn a high of $450 per month touring Mexico with the Tampico, Torreon, Veracruz, and Monterrey clubs, he received the respect that black players lacked in the United States. In Cuba, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic, dark-skinned and light-skinned players played on the same teams and against other "integrated teams." It was the norm, as were good accommodations and interracial socializing. "Everyone was the same down there. We could go in any restaurant, stay in hotels, and oh, the fans? They loved us," Bell remarked in Black Diamond: The Story of the Negro Baseball Leagues, by Patricia C. McKissack and Frederick McKissack, Jr. Blacks also got the chance to measure their skills against those of white players when exhibition teams of players from the Major Leagues, often organized by star players, came south. Bell accumulated impressive statistics in the Latin American leagues as well. According to Negro League player Buck Leonard, as quoted in Black Diamond, "He was a hero down there. He did so well, a lot of the boys thought they'd take a look for themselves."

When Bell came back to the United Sates in 1942 he joined the Chicago American Giants. The following year he began a rewarding stint with the Homestead Grays. With Bell in centerfield, the Grays twice won the World Series championship against the Birmingham Black Barons, in 1943 and 1944. At age forty-three, Bell retired from professional baseball. For a short time he played semiprofessional baseball with the independent Detroit Senators. Then in 1948 he hired on to coach the B team of the Kansas City Monarchs (also called the Kansas City Stars or Travelers). Thus Bell passed on his knowledge to future generations of players, some of whom (such as Ernie Banks ) would eventually join integrated Major League Baseball teams after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947.

Inducted into Hall of Fame

After retiring from baseball, Bell received offers to play with Major League teams, but he declined them. "I got letters from everybody, every team," Bell told Associated Press reporter R.B. Fallstrom. "I said, 'I'm through.' I broke every record there was and I still could hit but my legs were gone. I used them up." Bell worked at St. Louis City Hall as a custodian and security guard for twenty-one years and he and his wife lived on Cool Papa Bell Avenue in north St. Louis for more than thirty-five years. There the Bells kept a collection of Negro league memorabilia and Cool Papa was happy to regale visitors with stories of old-time baseball. In 1974 Bell was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, one of the first players to be so honored in a belated effort to recognize the ability of deserving Negro league players. "Contemporaries rated him the fastest man on the base paths," reads Bell's plaque in the Hall of Fame. Indeed. Bell once explained that in a match-up against Olympic sprinter Jesse Owens , Owens could win the straight one-hundred yard dash, but it was he, Bell, who was the faster rounding the bases. Once the two sprinters were supposed to race between games of a doubleheader in Cleveland, Ohio, but when the time came, Owens declined. "He said he left his track shoes at home," Bell said in a video clip at the Major League Baseball Web site. "I didn't have any track shoes." When Bell learned that he was to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, he said that his election was his highest honor, but his biggest thrill "was when they opened the door in the majors to black players," wrote Robert McG. Thomas, Jr. of the New York Times.

Career Statistics

In his later years, Bell suffered from glaucoma. Clara preceded him in death on January 20, 1991, and Bell suffered a heart attack in February and passed away at University Hospital in St. Louis on March 7. He was interred at St. Peter's Cemetery in St. Louis. Yet Bell's feats linger still. In 1996, to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of Negro league baseball, Bell and two other Hall of Fame players from the Negro leagues were featured on limited edition boxes of Wheaties cereal and on "historic" baseball trading cards. Many baseball fans were pleased to see even such late recognition. For his part, the unassuming Bell had simply played the game he loved within the confines society placed on him. "When I was young, all I wanted to do was play," Bell is quoted as saying by Dixon. "And, thank the Lord, I got the chance to play for half my life, even if it wasn't in the majors. … I didn't think about major league baseball. It wasn't just baseball then; it was everywhere. I don't feel regrets. That's how it was when I was born. I had to live in that time."

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum Legacy Awards

In 2001, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) established the Legacy Awards, to recognize and honor the best Major League baseball players, managers and executives with awards given in the name and spirit of Negro Leagues legends. "The Legacy Awards were created by the Museum to pay homage to America's unsung heroes and to insure that their contributions to the game of baseball and the advancement of American society are never lost," said Bob Kendrick, the NLBM's director of marketing, on MLB.com.

The Legacy Awards include the Satchel Paige Award (presented to the pitchers of the year), the Josh Gibson award (presented to the home run leaders), the Cool Papa Bell Award (presented to the stolen base leaders), the Buck Leonard Award (presented to the batting champions), the Oscar Charleston Award (presented to the most valuable players), the Andrew "Rube" Foster Award (presented to the executives of the year), the C.I. Taylor Award (presented to the managers of the year), the Larry Doby Award (presented to the rookies of the year), the Hilton Smith Award (presented to the relievers of the year), the Jackie Robinson Lifetime Achievement Award (presented to an individual for career excellence in the face of adversity), and the John "Buck" O'Neil Award (presented to a local or national corporate/private philanthropist for outstanding support of the museum). Players from both the National League and the American League are honored in each category.

Past recipients of the Legacy Awards include Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens (Satchel Paige Award), Sammy Sosa (Josh Gibson Award), Ichiro Suzuki and Luis Castillo (Cool Papa Bell Award), Larry Walker (Buck Leonard Award), Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds (Oscar Charleston Award), John Schuerholz (Andrew "Rube" Foster Award), Tony LaRussa (C.I. Taylor Award), and Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson (Jackie Robinson Award).

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

Clark, Dick and Larry Lester, Eds. The Negro Leagues Book. Birmington, AL: Society for American Baseball Research/EBSCO Media, 1994.

Dixon, Phil with Patrick J. Hannigan. The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History. Mattituck, NY: Amereon House, 1992.

Gardner, Robert and Dennis Shortelle. The Forgotten Players: The Story of Black Baseball in America. New York: Walker & Company, 1993.

Holway, John. The Complete Book of Baseball's Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History. Fern Park, FL: Hastings House Publishers, 2001.

Holway, John B. Blackball Stars: Negro League Pioneers. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1988.

Holway, John B. Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1975.

Kelley, Brent. Voices from the Negro Leagues: Conversations with Fifty-two Baseball Standouts of the Period 1924-1960. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1998.

McKissack, Patricia C. and Frederick McKissack, Jr. Black Diamond: The Story of the Negro Baseball Leagues. New York: Scholastic, 1994.

McNeil, William F. Baseball's Other All-Stars: The Greatest Players from the Negro Leagues, the Japanese Leagues, the Mexican League, and the Pre-1960 Winter Leagues in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2000.

McNeil, William F. Cool Papas and Double Duties: The All-Time Greats of the Negro Leagues. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2001.

Ribowsky, Mark. A Complete History of the Negro Leagues, 1884-1955. New York: Birch Lane Press, 1995.

Periodicals

Banks, James. "Flying Feet: The Life and Times of Cool Papa Bell, the Fastest Runner Baseball Has." Baseball History (fall, 1996).

Fallstrom, R.B. "James 'Cool Papa' Bell Takes Things as They Come." Associated Press (February 10, 1990).

Fallstrom, R.B., "Cool Papa Bell." Associated Press (March 8, 1991).

"James 'Cool Papa' Bell Still Keeps Cool at 86." Jet (March 5, 1990): 48.

"Profiles of Prominent Negro-Leaguers: James 'Cool Papa' Bell." St. Louis Post-Dispatch (February 4, 2001): D10.

Rhoden, William C. "Cool Papa's Legacy Lives with a Statue in St. Louis." New York Times (September 17, 2001): C18.

Thomas, Robert McC., Jr. "James (Cool Papa) Bell, 87, Dies; Legendary Star of the Negro Leagues." New York Times (March 9, 1991): 11.

Other

"Speed to Burn: Bell Was the Fastest Player Ever." Major League Baseball. http://www.MLB.com/ (October 1, 2002).

Sketch by J. Lesinski