James “Cool Papa” Bell: A Brief Biography
By Eric Enders
Published in Scribner’s Encyclopedia of
American Lives (2001)
Cool
Papa Bell, fabled Negro League outfielder, is widely
considered the fastest man to ever play professional baseball.
In 1920 Bell joined the many African-Americans escaping
the impoverished South for urban centers of the Midwest, bringing their music
– and their baseball – with them. Bell moved to St. Louis because, he later
said, “you could just live better and make more money.” Four of his older
brothers already lived in St. Louis, where they played for a black semipro team,
the Compton Hill Cubs, on Sundays and holidays. Soon the wiry (5’11”, 145
lbs.) James was playing for the team too – as a knuckleball pitcher – while
also earning $21.20 per week laboring at the Independent Packing Company and
attending high school at night. The team disbanded in August 1921, and in 1922
Bell joined another semipro team, the East St. Louis Cubs, making $20 per week
for pitching on Sundays. On 3 May 1922 he signed with the St. Louis Stars, a
major power in the Negro National League, for $90 per month. He reportedly
earned his famous nickname as a rookie with the Stars, when he calmly struck out
the feared slugger Oscar Charleston in a crucial situation. The players began
calling him “Cool,” which manager Bill Gatewood later modified to “Cool
Papa.” Bell pitched and played the outfield occasionally until 1924, when, at
Gatewood’s urging, he made two changes that would be crucial to his later
success: He began playing center field exclusively, and he learned to switch
hit. (Although a left-handed thrower, Bell had always batted right-handed.) Bell
eventually became a defensive star in center field, known for playing unusually
shallow because his speed enabled him to reach most balls hit over his head.
Soon after switching positions, Bell’s baserunning
brought him renown as the fastest player in baseball. Because Negro League teams
neither played traditional schedules nor kept accurate statistics, the exploits
of their players survive mostly in anecdotal tales of dubious accuracy. The
stories about Bell’s blazing speed are among the most colorful. He was said to
have once been hit by his own batted ball as he slid into second base. Another
tale, Satchel Paige’s favorite, said Bell was so fast he could shut out the
lights and get into bed before the room got dark. Bell himself claimed to have
stolen 175 bases in 200 games during the 1933 season. However, despite such
unlikely exaggerations, there is ample evidence to document Bell’s
disruptiveness on the basepaths. He won the 1934 East-West all-star game when he
drew a leadoff walk in the eighth inning, then stole second and scored on a weak
hit for the only run in a 1-0 victory. Many years later, on 24 October 1948, the
45-year-old Bell scored from first base on a sacrifice bunt in an exhibition
game against a major league all-star team.
Bell played 10 seasons with the Stars, which by the late
1920s had become the premier franchise in the Negro National League. Led by the
trio of Bell, shortstop Willie Wells (Bell’s closest friend), and first
baseman Mule Suttles, St. Louis won championships in 1929 and 1930. The Stars
disbanded in 1931 along with the Negro National League, however, and Bell spent
the rest of his career moving from team to team in the often financially
unstable Negro Leagues. From 1933-38 he played for the Pittsburgh Crawfords, a
conglomeration of superstars often considered to be the greatest black team
ever. In addition to Bell, the team’s lineup included Josh Gibson at catcher,
playing manager Charleston at first base, Judy Johnson at third base, and
pitcher Satchel Paige. In 1943 Bell joined the Homestead Grays, whom he helped
to three consecutive championships.
On 8 September 1928, Bell married Clara Belle Thompson.
They honeymooned in Cuba, where Bell had signed a contract to play winter ball.
On 3 January 1929 he became the first player in Cuban League history to hit
three jonrones (home runs) in one
game. He led the league in both homers and stolen bases that season, the first
of four winters he spent in Cuba. Latin America was a popular destination for
many African-American players, who were drawn to the Caribbean leagues by warm
weather, high salaries, and a relative lack of racism. (Bell played so often in
Latin America that he eventually became fluent in Spanish.) In 1937 Bell and
other Negro League stars were lured to the Dominican Republic by exorbitant
salary offers from dictator Rafael Trujillo, who used his personal baseball team
as a publicity tool to preserve his political power. Bell also played in the
Mexican League from 1938-41, where he earned his highest salary: $450 per month.
In 1948 Bell became playing manager of a Kansas City
Monarchs farm team, where his charges included a young Ernie Banks. In 1951,
when Bell was 50 years old, the St. Louis Browns offered him a major league
contract, but Bell declined, saying he was too old to play his best. He retired
from baseball later that year, after playing for 29 summers and 21 winters.
Talented as he was, baseball did not make Bell rich. Left
without a pension, he immediately found work as a custodian at City Hall in St.
Louis. He was eventually promoted to night watchman there, a job he held until
his retirement in April 1973. On 12 August 1974, Bell received baseball’s
highest honor when he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in
Cooperstown, New York. He was the fifth Negro League star to be elected to the
Hall, where his Stars uniform – and his sunglasses – remain on permanent
display. In the ensuing years Bell lived on Social Security, his small pension
from the city of St. Louis, and a quiet stipend from the baseball
Commissioner’s office. He and Clara continued to reside in a modest home on
St. Louis’ Dickson Avenue, which was renamed James “Cool Papa” Bell Avenue
in 1987.
On 20 January 1991 Clara Bell died after 62 years of
marriage. A month later Bell himself was hospitalized after a heart attack, and
he died in St. Louis on 7 March 1991. He was survived by his only daughter,
Connie Bell Brooks, and was buried at St. Peter’s Cemetery in St. Louis. His
will specified that he have twelve pallbearers: six black and six white.
Bell impressed most who met him as a gentle, dignified,
and soft-spoken man, and he left behind a legacy of unparalleled achievement on
the baseball diamond. Although the lack of statistics makes it likely that the
degree of Bell’s greatness will always be debated, he is clearly one of the
most important figures to emerge from baseball’s Negro Leagues. The anecdotal
stories that contributed so much to Bell’s legend are an essential part of
African-American oral tradition, but they are also a grim reminder that
segregation caused a talent so great to be appreciated by so few. “So many
people say I was born too early,” Bell said shortly before his death. “But
that’s not true. They opened the doors too late.”
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
No full-length biography of Bell exists, and factual
information about him is hard to come by. By far the best source is the
collection of research files maintained by the National Baseball Hall of Fame
Library, which contain newspaper articles, correspondence, interviews, and the
scrapbook Bell kept of his playing career. An extensive interview of Bell was
done by the Oral History Program of the University of Missouri-St. Louis in
1971. In addition, two essential works of oral history contain chapters on him:
John Holway’s Voices From the Great
Black Baseball Leagues and Donald Honig’s Baseball
When the Grass Was Real (both 1975). The
Negro Leagues Book (1994), edited by Dick Clark and Larry Lester, is the
definitive source for information on the black teams’ rosters and statistics.
EricEnders.com
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