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A borderline HOF player, arguably the most productive of the 90s, inarguably the most hated
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00:00Hello, I'm Chris Fowler for SportsCentury. His bat was all fury and thunder. It matched his disposition.
00:08Albert Bell was one of only four players in history with at least eight consecutive seasons of 30 home runs
00:14and 100 RBI.
00:15And no one knocked in more runs in the 1990s, not even Mark McGuire or Barry Bonds.
00:21But his Hall of Fame numbers were overshadowed by a volcanic temper, and degenerative arthritis in his hip curtailed his
00:29career.
00:30As we'll see in the next half hour, pitchers couldn't figure him out. But then, neither could anyone else.
00:42When Albert Bell first came to the big leagues, he was so intense that pitches that he thought he should
00:47hit, and he swung and missed or popped them up or whatever,
00:50he would scream and holler obscenities at the pitcher, man. I mean, he just, and he did it all the
00:55time.
00:56This was in the Cape Cod Lake. There's a one-one count. Umpire goes, strike. And he goes, one and
01:05two.
01:05So he says, let me see the indicator.
01:08The umpire took it out of the umpire's hand, put it down on the home plate, took his bat, bam,
01:12cracked the indicator, looked at the umpire and said, hmm, it's two and one.
01:17He was known as Mr. Freeze because he would set the thermostat so low in the clubhouse, and it became
01:24uncomfortable for other players.
01:26And it was adjusted back up one day, and Albert came over and saw that it was set too high
01:33and turned it back down and then busted it and hit it with a bat.
01:37He was a scary guy. He was scary not just to the media. He was scary to some players that
01:42played with him and against him, too.
01:44Albert Bell suspended for three games today. This is a result of a bench-clearing brawl with the Kansas City
01:49Royal.
01:50I think part of his game routine was getting in a mood of hatred, I guess, and he felt like
01:56he performed better that way.
02:02If anger fueled his motivation, it was unacceptable in the college ranks.
02:07Albert Bell was kicked off the LSU team in 1987 after a series of emotional displays that included throwing his
02:14helmet and not running out balls.
02:17Three years after signing with Cleveland, Bell landed in a clinic for anger management and alcohol abuse.
02:23Albert had had an alcohol problem at one time, and this guy wouldn't let him forget about it.
02:28I turned around and looked at this guy, and he just winged him and hit him right in the chest
02:30with a baseball.
02:31Oh, when you saw it, you thought, no, I didn't really see that. He didn't really do that, but yeah,
02:38he did.
02:39Based on instructions from my attorney, I would not comment on the appeal. Thank you.
02:45Now a friendly little warning for you trick-or-treaters in the Cleveland area.
02:49When you get to Albert Bell's house, just keep walking.
02:53Kids upset about getting no candy at Bell's house, threw eggs at his front door.
02:57Well, Bell came out, chased the kids, allegedly brushing one of them with his car.
03:02For all his problems outside the batter's box, inside it, Bell was the model of focus.
03:08In 1995, he became the first major leaguer to hit 50 homers and 50 doubles in the same season,
03:15as he led the Indians to their first pennant in 41 years.
03:22But that fall, under the heat of World Series media scrutiny, he exploded.
03:27Albert had an incident with Hannah Storm in the dugout that blew up.
03:32It was a tough thing for us to have to fight through, and at the end of it, it potentially
03:37was a distraction as we went into that first World Series.
03:40John Hart had his press conference, and I think he considered it to be the culmination
03:45at that point in his career.
03:47And instead, he was asked about Albert dropping the F-bomb.
03:50It was very embarrassing to me, my coaches, our organization, and his teammates.
03:55I mean, his teammates didn't like it, but I never saw Albert really show that he really
04:02cared to embarrass the rest of us.
04:04Here he goes again, up over the screen.
04:08No excuse for what he's done, regardless of the taunting that he was getting from the fans.
04:13With three league suspensions for anger-related incidents, Bell in 1994 was sat down for seven
04:20games for corking his bat.
04:21He had cast himself into a star villain.
04:24Then, against Milwaukee in 1996, he added still another notch to his gun.
04:30There it is, Vigne.
04:34And Albert just crossed him with a forearm.
04:36I mean, he just leveled him.
04:38It looked like, he looked, Vigne looked like roadkill.
04:41Earlier in the game, first base coach Dave Nelson criticized Bell for not trying to break
04:46up a double play, and told him not to let it happen again.
04:50Now, Fernando is thinking that Albert's going to let him tag him again, and it's going to
04:56be another easy double play.
04:57Well, there was no double play.
05:00And I mean, it was not a dirty play at all.
05:02League president, Gene Budick, says the AL has opened an investigation of the Bell and
05:05the Ball incident.
05:07How and why Albert Bell threw a baseball at Sports Illustrated Photographer Tony Tomsic.
05:11After the incident in April of 1995, Bell was ordered by the league to attend anger management
05:18sessions.
05:18Sitting down next to Charlie Mayer, the team psychologist, and I see Albert coming down the
05:25left field line, and he's looking at us.
05:27And I was walking down the dugout runway, and he stopped me.
05:30And he goes, if you use anything about my case, I'm going to sue you, I'm going to sue the
05:35paper, I'm going to sue him, and I'm going to sue the ball club.
05:37I think he was always sure that somehow somebody was out to get him.
05:55It seemed to me he came from a little racially charged atmosphere at home, where it was black
06:02against white, or white against black, and it didn't seem like the two should mix at
06:07any more than an arm's length.
06:08Shreveport has had an emergence of strong segregationists, a strong segregational setting, and little
06:21by little, the barriers began to be broken.
06:29Born just four minutes before his twin brother, Terry, on August 25, 1966, in Shreveport, Louisiana,
06:36Albert Jawan Bell, who would be known as Joey, grew up in a middle-class neighborhood.
06:42It was at home that the seeds of suspicion and perfection were planted.
06:46His parents are black school teachers in a segregated city.
06:51The civil rights movement is starting to pick up a lot of steam and get really ugly.
06:55You understand why his parents raised him the way they did.
07:01Be cautious.
07:03Be careful.
07:05You know, be careful in who you trust.
07:08He came from a very matriarchal family.
07:12His father never did seem to take the lead in speaking up.
07:17He's a very quiet man.
07:18We hear about ice-skating mothers, and I think this might have been the ice-skating mom in
07:24baseball.
07:26Mrs. Bell raised her sons to be perfectionists.
07:30And I don't mean just to get an A on a project.
07:33A's not good enough.
07:34It's got to be A+.
07:36Albert was such a perfectionist, even as a little leaguer, that there's a game where he
07:40came up, and he hit a big home run, and he hit it to right field.
07:44And he circles the bases, and he comes in the dugout, and he flips off his batting helmet.
07:49And his teammates are jumping up and down and congratulating him.
07:51His coach comes over and says, gee, Joy, you know, what's the matter?
07:55He goes, I was trying to hit it to center field.
07:58I can just remember all these talks with his mother, and she used to say to me,
08:05Pastor, pray for, you know, our boy.
08:09He just gets so upset when something goes wrong.
08:15A baseball and football star at Huntington High School, Bell graduated sixth in his class
08:21of 266 students and was named most intellectual by his peers.
08:26Along with Terry, he enrolled at LSU, where he made his mark in baseball.
08:31He could hit it for distance, for average.
08:34He could run.
08:34He could throw.
08:35He had everything he'd look for, and a superstar.
08:38As a sophomore in 1986, Bell powered the Tigers to their first College World Series appearance.
08:44But his volatile, sometimes combative nature earned him frequent reprimands and the occasional
08:50benching by Coach Skip Burtman.
08:52As a junior, Bell's 21 homers and .349 batting average not only attracted Major League Scouts,
09:00they made him a target of race baiters.
09:02We got to the SEC tournament that year.
09:05From the time we got off the bus in Georgia, you know, a group of frat guys go by on
09:11a pickup truck,
09:12you know, screaming and hollering, Joey, we're going to be here tomorrow.
09:16You know, see you tomorrow.
09:18When tomorrow came, Bell's Tigers lost to Mississippi State in the championship game.
09:23But that didn't quell the surges of racial tension running through the stands.
09:29There was one fan up behind him.
09:32The fan had a two-by-four over his shoulder.
09:35And he was yelling, Buckwheat.
09:38Buckwheat.
09:40Buckwheat.
09:41Finally, the umpire goes, timeout.
09:43And Joey, he started running for this fan.
09:47Running up the hill.
09:48Our first baseman, the umpires, went to stop him.
09:52He jumped the fence.
09:54Albert got stopped before he got there.
09:57Next to bat, he came to the plate after that incident.
10:00He hit a bomb to center field.
10:03Everybody thought it was gone.
10:04He crushed it.
10:05He felt like, you know what, this is my exclamation point.
10:08These guys are ragging me.
10:10They're all over me.
10:11Everybody's been over me all year, and, you know, just to stick it in their face.
10:16And so he stands there and watches it.
10:18It hits at the base of the wall, and he has to leg out to get a single.
10:22That was the last time I ever played with him, because after that incident, he got kicked off the team.
10:29I think Skip was at a point where he said, me and the team have put up with this the
10:33entire year,
10:34but now it's gotten to the point where I think it may be a distraction to the team.
10:40Obviously, that's right before the June draft.
10:42People backed off, and they went another direction.
10:45Position player-wise, we had him rated as the second-best player in the country that year in the draft.
10:49Ken Griffey Jr. obviously was the first pick in the draft, and we had Albert second.
10:55Labeled a gifted troublemaker, Bell was the 47th pick in the 1987 Major League draft.
11:01Frustrated and angry, he would bear deep scars of racism for many years.
11:06And some of the comments that were thrown at him really hurt him.
11:11And that caused him, I think, in a way to build a wall around him, to question people's intentions.
11:18There was a movie that came out, Mississippi Burning, and he said, Frank, that's a true story.
11:24That's what really occurs in the South.
11:26I mean, I got a feel from the stories he had told me over the years that he got a
11:30piece of that,
11:31not to the same extent as the movie, but got a piece of that, and that really shook him up.
11:44Bud Shaw was doing a column on Albert, and Davey Nelson told him, you know, that he keeps his book.
11:51Bud wrote the column, and then the next day we're down in the locker room,
11:54and they start going nose to nose, screaming at each other.
11:57He accuses Bud of going into his locker looking for his picture's book,
12:01and Sandy goes over and gets between them, and pulling Bud away, and he says,
12:06stay away from him, don't even talk to him, he's crazy, that guy's crazy.
12:09When he wasn't accusing someone of violating his privacy,
12:13Bell's obsession with organization extended to the most improbable aspects of his daily life.
12:19He ritualized almost everything.
12:21After games where he went 4-4-4, he would be in the cage with Terry hitting a lot.
12:26In between at-bats and games, when we played at home at LSU, he'd run to the cage and won
12:31a hit.
12:33After every single at-bat, he used to come in from his at-bat, go to his locker,
12:37sit down, open up a notebook, and write down every single pitch sequence,
12:41how the pitcher got him out, or how he got a hit off him.
12:43He had a regiment that he did, and he did it religiously.
12:51Now, anybody who tried to crash into that regiment surely were about to provoke his raft.
13:01Usually, when you got the glare, you just knew not to go near him,
13:04or you certainly couldn't go near him while he was eating his five yogurts.
13:07I think that was a superstition. After every game, he had five yogurts.
13:09Some people drink coffee, half coffee, half milk.
13:12He'd drink half coffee, half Pepsi.
13:14I'd saw him one year eat a banana after every at-bat.
13:17I took Albert out to eat one day.
13:19I noticed the way he eats, he only eats one thing at a time.
13:22He was very meticulous, very organized.
13:25I mean, he ate one thing first, then moved that aside, ate the other,
13:30and he would go in order, and that's the way he always prepared.
13:36I would have lunch with Albert at noon on game day, the game that evening.
13:41And we'd sit there and chat and have just a wonderful time talking about any number of topics.
13:46By 4.30, I might pass Albert going from the dugout up to the clubhouse.
13:51And I'd go, hey, B, how you doing?
13:53And he'd look at me and walk past me like I was invisible.
13:57The transformation, that was the essence of Albert.
14:00I've talked to people who sat maybe a row behind the family at some games.
14:04I thought it was odd that they never seemed to speak to each other through nine angles of the game.
14:08They were almost as focused as Albert was.
14:10I think he was more of a perfectionist out on the field,
14:13and he wanted to perfect everything the right way.
14:15And if it didn't, he was more upset with himself.
14:18But sometimes it made him look bad.
14:20He was just taking it out on himself and just kind of moped around.
14:25If his tightly wound patterns of daily ritual, occasional rages, and deep mental focus
14:31were merely Bell's way to climb the scale of perfection,
14:34they would be regarded as no more than idiosyncrasies of a uniquely talented player.
14:39But in August of 1990, Bell revealed a new component to his persona.
14:45Albert came to us and said he felt he had an alcohol problem at that particular time.
14:51So we provided help through the Cleveland Clinic.
14:55After 10 weeks in treatment, Bell announced that he wanted to be known as Albert instead of Joey.
15:01But his identity problems ran considerably deeper.
15:05I struggled to see Albert as an alcoholic.
15:07I never felt that Albert was weak.
15:10If he was a drinking man, we'd probably have seen it.
15:13He'd tell me that he'd go to AA meetings.
15:15He'd tell me that he was an alcoholic.
15:18I'd wrestle with that because I never saw him drink.
15:21He would tell me about the few times when he would just go out and just get blitzed
15:27because something happened that would cause that.
15:31Apparently, there were issues that dealt with alcohol abuse that we weren't aware of.
15:35According to the psychiatrists, probably lent themselves to some of the issues Albert had with anger management.
15:43I was told by people who worked with the Indians that it was Albert trying to come to grips
15:47with just getting so angry and so enraged, throwing a ball in the stands or doing things
15:52that he was trying to come to grips with them.
15:55Because the one thing about Albert is that this man wanted to be the greatest hitter ever.
15:59He had that same drive Ted Williams had.
16:05But hidden beneath Bell's drive for perfection, his tirades and suspicions,
16:09was a reservoir of high intelligence and love of the game.
16:13Media will never get to see him as a teammate gets to see him.
16:17So teammates ragged on him.
16:19He liked being around players.
16:21He didn't like to isolate himself, contrary to popular belief.
16:25There's Albert.
16:28I know you don't talk to anybody, but you can talk to me whenever I want.
16:31So, say something to him.
16:33Say hello to Major League Baseball.
16:34Right.
16:34At least turn around and show him your face.
16:36Say hello.
16:36It's Albert Bell, ladies and gentlemen.
16:38Nice going.
16:39He's going to go ahead now.
16:41All right.
16:41Wireless mic goes off for a little bit.
16:43He'd press the alarm with me.
16:45He'd sit down with you and just want to sit and talk or just watch TV with you, not even
16:50talk.
16:50And if you got up to leave the room, hey Frank, where you going?
16:54Albert comes over to me.
16:54I've spoken to him twice in my life.
16:58He's not speaking to the media.
17:00He goes, I saw you play chess with Brady once.
17:03Want to play chess?
17:04I won the first game.
17:05One more.
17:06Very competitive.
17:08I won the second game.
17:09At the end of the second game, where it was apparent that I was going to win, stood up, looked
17:13at me and said, where the hell did you learn how to play chess?
17:15He's a very smart guy.
17:17He used to crush crosswords.
17:19Probably still does, I'm sure.
17:21But yeah, with crosswords every day, I used to go over and get some answers from them and cheat off
17:24them a little bit.
17:25He wanted an outlet to express his thoughts.
17:29He would send in some editorials to our paper.
17:31He wanted nothing to do with us personally, but I guess maybe it's the competitor in him.
17:35He probably felt like he could do a better job than us.
17:37The first website that he had, part of the information on there was how to pick a stock.
17:44Now, how many baseball players are going to think of doing that?
17:50Still another aspect of Bell was a deep, abiding belief in the power of prayer.
17:56He would sign a baseball every time.
17:58Albert Bell, Philippians 4.13.
18:00Every single ball or picture that he signed.
18:03I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
18:07And that, he had those quotes on plaques in his house, on doilies in his table.
18:14Throughout his house was that scripture.
18:16In spring training of 1993, when a boating accident took the lives of Indian pitchers Steve Olin and Tim Cruz,
18:24it was Bell who stepped forward and took the lead.
18:27They closed the clubhouse, they were crying their eyes out.
18:31And in the midst of this, Albert Bell said, Grover, do you mind?
18:36I would like to call the team together and say a prayer.
18:38And he led the team in a five-minute prayer to try to get us together and to help us
18:44deal with this.
18:45Albert Bell.
18:49He's not the man he's portrayed to be by the media.
18:52A candy factory in Cleveland.
18:53And they named a candy bar after Albert Bell.
18:56And they had this big press conference planned, like I think at noon at the ballpark.
19:00Albert was going to come there to introduce the candy bar.
19:03And Albert didn't show.
19:04I don't know what happened, but I think he overslept.
19:07He said he couldn't get up in time to go to his own press conference to introduce his own candy
19:11bar.
19:12But when it came to playing the game, Bell always showed up.
19:16Not once in his 12-year career was he on the disabled list.
19:20He played every single day.
19:21He didn't take days off.
19:23I remember one time telling Grover, giving him a day off.
19:25My heart grew up.
19:25He said, I don't take no days off.
19:28I mean, I just rest whenever I retire.
19:31As a free agent after the 1996 season, he signed the richest contract in baseball with the White Sox.
19:37And he played every game for the next two seasons before moving to the Orioles.
19:42Then, in the spring of 2001, Bell was suddenly old at 34.
19:47To his credit, he tried to play.
19:49It must have been horribly messed up.
19:51It was a degenerative, arthritic hip.
19:55So he was basically running with bone on bone in that hip socket.
19:59And I had him in the lineup.
20:00And he came into my office and said, can I have the day off?
20:04I need to rest my hip.
20:05And I said, sure, no problem.
20:07And I had him in the lineup the next day.
20:09And he came in and he said, I need another day off.
20:10And I said, sure, no problem.
20:12It came to a point that he said, you know, he said, I've got a lot on my mind.
20:16There's a lot of decisions I have to make.
20:17I need to make some phone calls.
20:19Can I go do that?
20:20And I said, sure.
20:22And that's the last time I saw Albert.
20:24If he was a likable character, it would have been a tragic thing to watch.
20:29But I'm afraid that a lot of people were probably enjoying it.
20:32For a guy of his stature, who was kind of borderline Hall of Fame, it's one of the strangest exits
20:37I think baseball has ever seen.
20:40His leaving was no stranger than so many other aspects of the man who would be perfect.
20:45Although Bell fell short of that unreachable goal, he was arguably the most productive player of the 1990s and the
20:53most misunderstood.
20:54He should have been the MVP in 1995.
20:57I mean, Mo Vaughn had no business winning that award.
21:00Albert was the guy.
21:02Albert had resurrected the Indians.
21:04I picked Mo over Albert for MVP that year.
21:08I picked Albert second.
21:10Albert clearly had the better offensive numbers.
21:13But Albert was not a good citizen in baseball.
21:16And Mo was.
21:17That is something you would have to consider when you're talking about the most valuable player award.
21:21There is nothing to do with him.
21:22When stacked against his negative public image, Bell's 381 homers and more than 1,200 runs batted in may not
21:30weigh enough to get him through the door of baseball immortality.
21:34I mean, I've spoken to him about it.
21:36I really don't think he cares.
21:37I think he'd like to be in the Hall of Fame.
21:39But as far as how he treated the media and the media treated him, I don't think he has any
21:44regrets at all.
21:46The one thing that's a little unfair is there'll be a lot written and said that he was a detriment
21:51to his teams because he was eccentric.
21:55But I've always found that almost unanimously that his teammates respected him.
22:04And they did.
22:06Albert Bell was moody and reclusive and only rarely did he try to explain himself.
22:12Frequently, that task was undertaken by his twin brother, Terry, a former teammate of Albert's at LSU who has a
22:18master's in business administration.
22:20Terry reportedly issued statements on his brother's behalf, including one that said Albert refused to exchange an autograph for a
22:28home run ball because it had been caught by a possible heckler.
22:31Albert never said he's sanctioned having his twin brother act as his pinch hitter.
22:36For SportsCentury, I'm Chris Fowler.
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