HE’S NO SONGBIRD : George Bell Might Be Cold With the Press but He’s a Red-Hot Blue Jay With the Bat

George Bell, alone in the Toronto Blue Jays’ clubhouse, is dressing slowly for batting practice. A reporter approaches warily. Disturbing things can happen when the Bell tolls.

He may, for example, direct a karate kick at the opposing pitcher. He may throw a bat in anger because of his position in the lineup. He may bump umpires, berate them and accuse them of discriminating against Canadian teams and Dominican players. He may greet reporters with a malevolent stare and chase them away with maledictions.

Then, too, wondrous things can happen when the Bell tolls. He is, for example, second in the American League with 47 home runs and first in runs batted in with 134. He is among the league’s top hitters at .310. He has virtually carried the Blue Jays into this weekend’s showdown with the Detroit Tigers for the Eastern Division title.

He has a club-high 16 game-winning hits; he batted .405 in September, and he seems certain to outpoll Tiger shortstop Alan Trammell in the voting for the American League’s Most Valuable Player.

He is also genuinely respected, admired and liked by teammates, and is regarded as a modern-day saint in the Dominican Republic, where he returns each winter with medicine, athletic gear and financial doles for the less fortunate.

The enigma that is George Antonio Bell accepts the reporter’s extended hand but turns down the request for a few minutes of questions.

“Sorry, but I don’t talk to the press,” Bell says politely.

The reporter tries again: “There have been times when you’ve talked. It would only take a few minutes.”

“Sorry,” Bell says. “It’s my policy.”

The reporter leaves with mixed emotions--frustration over his inability to have gained an insight or two and relief that he was not subjected to what Toronto Star columnist Jim Proudfoot recently described as Bell’s “gratuitous hostility.”

Others have referred to Bell in different ways.

Bill Buckner, then with the Boston Red Sox and now with the Angels, called Bell baseball’s “dirtiest player.” Detroit pitcher Walt Terrell said Bell was a “hotdog.” Angel Manager Gene Mauch has said he is “the most intimidating hitter in the league.”

Then there’s Toronto utilityman Garth Iorg, who stood near his locker the other day and said: “He’s funny. He’s supportive--he gives me the feeling that he gets just as much enjoyment out of seeing me make a contribution as if he had done it himself. He’s a great guy.”

Said Toronto catcher Ernie Whitt: “George may be the best teammate I’ve ever had. He plays well, he plays hurt, he plays hard. He wants to win, and he wants everyone to do well. I can’t think of anything he doesn’t do.”

Bell plays cribbage with Rick Leach before games, promotes the gallows humor of the clubhouse and is quick to address areas of concern. When a slumping Dave Stieb took to sulking in the clubhouse, Bell said to him: “Hey, you’re supposed to be a leader. Act like it.”

When shortstop Tony Fernandez was sidelined in a controversial slide last week, Bell cautioned replacement Manny Lee, who hails from San Pedro de Macoris, as do Bell and Fernandez, to avoid saying anything that might disrupt the Jays’ title bid. Lee, reportedly unhappy about spending much of the year in the minors, has refused to say anything about anything.

Many Toronto reporters have said, “No mas,” washing their hands of Bell, their view shared by Toronto Star columnist John Robertson, who once wrote: “George Bell was from the old school. He flunked civilization.”

But if Bell regards silence as golden and has now convinced Lee of it, it might not stem from hostility or dislike for the media as much as his initial problems with the language and an ensuing response to rejection.

Soon to be 28 and completing his fourth full season with the Blue Jays, Bell had never made the American League All-Star team until a midsummer publicity blitz landed him in the starting lineup, and he has yet to be voted his own team’s player of the year by the Toronto media.

In fact, Bell rigidly adopted his current policy after the 1984 season when the Toronto writers voted Dave Collins, who had hit .308 and stolen 60 bases in 128 games as a platoon player, the club’s player of the year over Bell, who had hit .292 with 26 homers in 159 games.

Bell, reached by a Toronto reporter in the Dominican Republic after the voting was announced, immediately denounced it as a racial issue. He has since said that he meant no disrespect to Collins but that Collins, a white player, got the award because he talked with reporters and Bell didn’t.

There was also an incident in the 1985 playoffs against the Kansas City Royals that prompted Bell to further retreat from the media.

He was quoted as saying that the Blue Jays were getting robbed on close plays because the umpires were biased against a Canadian team and Dominican players. Bell responded to the ensuing furor by saying he had made the remarks in jest to teammate Lloyd Moseby and had been overheard by prying reporters.

On a team rich in talent but poor in personality, Bell’s media stance has hurt the quest for recognition--both his own and the Blue Jays’. Is that changing?

Howard Starkman, the club’s public relations director, pointed out that Bell came to Toronto last winter to take part in a media caravan, that he has willingly attended several fan club luncheons and wowed the audience with humor of the type only close friends and teammates have previously been privy to. He said that Bell now agrees to periodic TV interviews, knowing his words won’t get twisted as he believes they have been in newspapers.

In a rare interview with the Toronto Sun in June, Bell looked back and said:

“It’s hard, very hard, for you in a new country and nobody likes you. My first year (with the Philadelphia Phillies’ farm club in Helena, Mont.) was terrible. The other players, both white and black, looked down on the Latin players. They didn’t trust anybody who spoke Spanish. If you were Latin American, they said, ‘You crazy and you like to steal.’ There were only a couple of us who spoke Spanish and to be called names, well, it hurt. It hurt a lot.”

Bell’s statistics have improved yearly. In his four full seasons, he has gone from 26 homers to 28 to 31 to the current 47. His RBIs have gone from 87 to 95 to 108 to the current 134. His current batting average is a career high.

His pride and intensity have created almost as many problems for Bell as his lack of communication.

He was suspended for two games in 1986 after bumping an umpire. He threw his batting helmet at Manager Jimy Williams’ feet recently and stormed up the dugout runway after being removed from a game for a pinch-runner. Williams chased up the runway after him and then reportedly demolished the helmet with a bat, his last reported communication with Bell.

There had also been an earlier incident in which Bell threw his bat after discovering that he was in the lineup as a designated hitter rather than left fielder.

Bell then had a pregame conference with Williams and General Manager Pat Gillick and was reinstated in left field, a concession that drew criticism from teammates and reporters. Bell, however, has been used as a designated hitter several times since.

The most infamous Bell incident is probably the one that occurred June 23, 1985, when he was hit by an inside pitch and charged the mound after Bruce Kison, the former Angel who was then with the Red Sox. Bell’s first move was to lash out with a karate kick, an assault that earned him a two-game suspension and the continuing animosity of Buckner and the Red Sox.

Bell has said that the memory of having his jaw broken by a pitch by Lynn McGlothen while at Syracuse in 1982 remains vivid and that he will never allow a pitcher to threaten his life and livelihood.

Bell shed additional light in Toronto magazine. He was quoted as saying: “Daddy made us aggressive in everything. Even at school he told us we had to fight for what we thought.”

George A. Bell is the son of George V. Bell, who went to the Dominican Republic from the British West Indies and worked on a sugar cane train that made short runs out of San Pedro de Macoris.

All three of Bell’s brothers have played professionally. Jose, 25, now works in a New Jersey factory. Rolando, 21, and Juan, 19, are in the Dodger farm system. A sister, Maricala, 24, is studying medicine.

The Phillies signed Bell when he was 18 for a $3,500 bonus, then sent him to Helena. He spent most of the season there on the disabled list and was not protected on the winter roster, the Phillies thinking that Bell had done nothing to influence another club to select him in the December draft.

Toronto scout Epy Guerrero, however, found a hale and hearty Bell hitting baseballs out of the stadium in San Pedro during an informal November workout and recommended to Gillick that they draft him.

The Blue Jays, who are good at that, acquired a future superstar for $25,000. That was December 1979.

Now, Bell, married and the father of three sons, is being paid $1.175 million, not counting the $50,000 bonus he received for making the All-Star team or the $50,000 he will probably receive for being MVP or the $50,000 he can make for being MVP of the playoffs or World Series.

Who needs the media? Just let Bell toll. He obviously doesn’t need to tell.