The Chris Moeller Archives

Cool Papa

I struck out tonight. I've been putting together some pictures for the Cardinals baseball room in the new place, and found this one on-line that I just had to have. James "Cool Papa" Bell was the master of improvisation on the diamond, a 28 year veteran of the Negro Leagues, beginning in 1922 with the St. Louis Stars, and also reputed to be the fastest player to ever play the game. Teammate Satchel Paige said he was so fast that he could hit a hard ground ball through the box and get hit with the ball sliding into second. A less apocryphal Satchel story was that Cool Papa was capable of turning out the light and jumping into bed before the room got dark. Evidently that achievement can be attributed to a night spent in a hotel room that had a short in the light switch.

Coming across his picture, I went digging into my archives and found an article I remembered having about Cool Papa from Sports Illustrated by an author named Mark Kram. "No Place in the Shade" was written for the magazine originally in 1973, but I saw it first when it was one of SI's 40 classic stories reprinted in 1994 in conjunction with the magazine's 40th anniversary. It recalled Bell's tremendous talent and guile on the field, his criminal exclusion from the Major Leagues because of his race, and the forgotten times he experienced after he stopped playing the game. The SI piece in '73 is thought to have expedited Bell's induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, which then took place the very next summer. Sadly, SI protects the reproduction of the piece to the extent that no copy of the feature could be located online, a lucrative arrangement perhaps for SI, but unfortunate for the legacy of Cool Papa if young Americans are trying to find vivid images on the web of this great historical figure.

Here's a passage from Kram:

Papa could run all right, and he could hit and field as well. He played a shallow centerfield, even more so than Willie Mays did when he broke in. "It doesn't matter where he plays," Pie Traynor once said. "He can go a country mile for a ball." As a hitter Bell had distance, but mainly he strove to hit the ball into holes; he could hit a ball through the hole in a fence, or drag a bunt as if it were on a string in his hand. Bell never hit below .308, and one time when he was hitting .390 on the last day of the season he purposely gave up his batting title; he was 43 at the time.

"Jackie Robinson had just signed with the Dodgers, and Monte Irvin was our best young player," says Papa. "I gave up my title so Monte would have a better chance at the majors. That was the way we thought then. We'd do anything to get a player up there."


Bell was born in Starkville, Mississippi in 1903, but always dreamed of leaving the cotton fields behind, "going off" to the big cities like some of the older men:

An old, well-traveled trainman used to sit under a tree with them on Sundays and tell them of the stars he had seen. "Why, there's this here Walter Johnson," the trainman would say, "He can strike out anybody who picks up a bat!" "Is that right?" Papa would ask. "Sure enough, boy. You'd think I'd lie? Then there is two old boys named Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner. Well, they don't miss a ball, and they never strike out!" "Never miss a ball?" gasped Papa, "Never strike out? Is that right?" "I'm tellin' ya, boy. I've been to the cities and I know!" "Well, mmm, mmm," Papa would shake his head, "Only one thing botherin' me. What happen when this here Walter Johnson is pitchin', and these other two boys are battin'?" "Y'all go on!" the old man would yell, jumping up, "Y'all leave me alone. I'm not talkin' anymore. Don't none of ya believe. I should know. I've been to the cities."


When Kram found Cool Papa in 1973, he was 70 years old living in North St. Louis in a neighborhood under siege by junkies and violent crime. After his house had been picked on a couple times, a rustle outside the door would send Papa to the front window to sit for hours with a shotgun and pistol in his lap. He worked 22 years as a custodian and night watchman at St. Louis City Hall after retiring from baseball, taking in a game at Busch Stadium only on very rare occasions.

He would pay his way in and sit there in the sun with his lunch long before the game began; to those around him who wondered about him, he was just a Mr. Bell, a watchman. He would watch those games intently, looking for tiny flaws like a diamond cutter. He never said much to anyone, but then one day he was asked by some Dodgers to help Maury Wills. "He could run," he says. "I wanted to help." He waited for Wills at the players' gate and introduced himself quietly.

"Maybe you heard of me," Papa said, "maybe not. It don't matter. But I'd like to help you." Wills just looked at him, as Papa became uneasy. "When you're on base," said Papa, "get those hitters of yours to stand deep in the box. That way the catcher, he got to back up. That way you goin' to get an extra step all the time." "I hadn't thought of that," said Wills, who went on to steal 104 bases. "Well," Papa smiled, "that's the kind of ball we played in our league. Be seein' you, Mr. Wills. Didn't mean to bother you."


A statue of Cool Papa Bell stands today outside Busch Stadium, and the street on which he lived the last few years of his life has been renamed "James 'Cool Papa' Bell Avenue." Here's a combo link to his bio at the website for the Negro League Baseball Players Association and his New York Times obituary from 1991.

posted by CM @ 9:06 PM