Whatever Happened to Gary Bell?

GARY BELL

• Pitcher, 1958-67
• Best season: 1959, 44 games, 16-11 won-lost record, 5 saves, 4.04 ERA
• Indians career: 419 games, 96-92 won-lost record, 45 saves, 3.71 ERA

Gary Bell was good, but never seemed to be as good as everyone thought he would be—or should be throughout his nine seasons with the Tribe, and the two seasons after he left Cleveland.

Bell signed as an amateur free agent in 1955 at the age of 18 for a $4,000 bonus, made it to the Indians in 1958, and went 12-10 as a rookie. He was traded to Boston on June 4, 1967, was claimed by the Seattle Pilots in the expansion draft on October 15, 1968, and on June 8, 1969 was dealt to the Chicago White Sox, who released him four months later.

“If only he’d be a little meaner … if only he wouldn’t be so easy-going, so laid back all the time.” Those are things people in the Indians hierarchy often said when Bell’s name was mentioned.

Perhaps the implied criticism was valid. Who knows? The only thing certain was that it didn’t please Bell. Still doesn’t.

“That’s a lot of [bleep]. I heard too much of it. I got tired of it,” he said with a scowl, and then reverted to his usual easy-going demeanor, which might have been a reason his nickname—”Ding-Dong “—was coined. Again, who knows?

“OK, so I horsed around. Still do. I laugh easily and I have fun. I don’t take myself or anyone too seriously. But when I pitched, that was something else. I tried as hard as I could, and I wanted to win as badly as anyone.

“Would I have been a better pitcher if I’d destroyed some furniture in the clubhouse or kicked the dirt when somebody got a hit?”

Then, not waiting for an answer, he said, “That’s baloney,” or, actually, something more expressive.

“Nobody can change a person’s personality. Nobody can teach somebody to be different. It would have been like your boss telling you to write like somebody else,” he said to the scribe interviewing him. “That wouldn’t have helped you.” And then Bell paused again, the twinkle in his eyes returning, and said, “Well, maybe it would have helped you.”

More vintage Bell. His record with the Tribe was 96-92 with a 3.69 earned run average as both a starter and reliever. He started almost exclusively from 1958 to 1961, when he went 49-47, but from 1962 to 1965 Bell pitched out of the bullpen 216 times and started only 15 games.

Overall, including his stints with the Red Sox, Pilots, and White Sox, Bell won 121 games and lost 117. He had 71 complete games and 51 saves in 519 appearances, and a commendable 3.68 ERA.

“I hated relieving, but in those days you had no choice. You did what the manager told you to do,” said Bell, who pitched for seven different managers during his nine-plus years with the Indians—Bobby Bragan, Joe Gordon, Jimmie Dykes, Mel McGaha, Birdie Tebbetts, George Strickland, and Joe Adcock. “I loved Gordon, and Dykes was a nice man, too. They were all OK, except for Adcock,” said Bell.

It was on the subject of his overall record that Bell admitted having one regret.

“With the stuff I had, I think I was good enough to win at least 200 games,” he said. ‘Tm not sure why I didn’t, though I’m damned sure it wasn’t because I wasn’t mean enough.

“I don’t know how hard I threw because they didn’t have radar guns then, but I tell people they used a sun dial to time me,” he quipped.

Then, serious again, he said, “I guess I got it up there in the mid-to high-90s [miles per hour],” which was a major reason for the high expectations the Indian chiefs had for Bell.

In Cleveland in 1967, before he was traded to the Red Sox, Bell was paid $27,000. “When I got to Boston, Dick O’Connell [ the Red Sox general manager] asked me how much I wanted [to earn for 1968],” said Bell. “I could hardly get the words out of my mouth. Finally I said, kind of hopefully and very softly, ‘$40,000.’ He told me, ‘I’ll give it to you if you promise you’ll win 20 games.’ I said, ‘OK, I will,’ and it was done.”

So how many games did Bell win in 1967? “I was 11-11, but we won the pennant, and I got the same money the next year.” [Editor’s note: In 1967, Bell was actually 12-8 with the Red Sox and 1-5 with the Indians, for an overall record of 13-13. It was the following year, 1968, that he was 11-11.]

In the World Series in 1967, Bell pitched in three games against St. Louis, two in relief and one as the starter (and loser) in Game 3. He also earned a save in Game 6 before the Cardinals won Game 7.

When Bell retired from baseball after the 1970 season, he returned to his hometown of San Antonio, Texas, and “bounced around” in various jobs. In 1987 he started his own sporting goods business—Gary Bell Athletic Supplies—which he and his wife, Rhonda, operate. They were married in 1978 and have two children, daughter Casey and son Cody, both of whom attend Texas A&M University. Bell also has three children from a previous marriage.

“Things are going well,” he said. “I had a heart attack in 1992, but I’m OK. It hit me when I woke up and felt sick one morning. It was like having a hangover, but I knew it was something more than that because I hadn’t been drinking the night before.

“That’s one advantage about being a drinker. You know when you’re supposed to have a hangover and when you’re not. Anybody who doesn’t drink wouldn’t know.”

He also plays a lot of golf. “I can still break 80 once in awhile,” and said his handicap “depends on who I’m playing against.”

Bell never aspired to get back into baseball as a scout, coach, or manager. “Back then scouts and coaches didn’t make any money. And now, the game has gone by us so much, I’d be lost. When I pitched, you picked up the ball and threw it. Now it’s all so technical. Everything is computerized … and complicated.

“And everybody is making so much money. It’s hard to believe the contracts that guys are getting. It proves that the money always was there, but in my day the players didn’t get much of it. Especially not if you played for guys like Frank Lane and Gabe Paul, which I did. They were really tight with a buck.

“After my first year with the Indians [1958], when I won 12 games and was making only the minimum, which at that time was $7,000—that’s $7,000 a year!—I tried to get a raise out of Lane. I was going to hold out for $12,000, and he flat-out refused. He told me, ‘We’re going to start the season without you if you don’t sign,’ which scared the [bleep] out of me, so I signed. That’s how it was.”

As for the game today and the money that players are making, Bell said, “We’ re all jealous, all the old guys. But I don’t have a problem with it. If the owners are stupid enough to pay guys $25 million a year, why not take it?

“We weren’t even allowed to have an agent. If you had one, they [ the owners] wouldn’t talk to you. We had a guy named Jim Baxes, an infielder who came over from the Dodgers during the [1959] season, and his wife wanted to negotiate for him. But Lane refused to let her, and when the season ended, [Baxes] was gone.

“And when people ask me how much I think I could be making if I were playing now, I tell them I’d probably get four or five million a year. But then, I guess I’d have to scowl a lot, not smile as much as I did, and break up some furniture in the clubhouse to prove that I could be a mean guy, a nasty S.O.B. like everyone back there thought I should have been.”

 

Author’s note

This article is excerpted from Whatever Happened to “Super Joe”? (softcover, $14.95/294 pages), 2006 by Russell Schneider. Reprinted with permission of Gray & Company, Publishers. The book is available online from Amazon.com.