Major League Baseball

Every day is Father's Day for Bell

Published Jun. 16, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

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It’s not easy to be a great ballplayer and a great father. Think about the schedule of a typical Major League Baseball player: He’s at spring training for at least six weeks. He plays 81 road games. He might not play the other 81 at “home,” either, if his family doesn’t live in the city where he’s playing. He might spend 200 nights away every year.

Money and fame can’t buy quality time. You have to sacrifice for it. Heath Bell understands this.

Bell, 33, is one of the best closers in baseball. He’s been an All-Star the past two seasons and is likely to represent the San Diego Padres again this year. He’s earning $7.5 million this season, after which he will become an even wealthier free agent. His name will get a lot of play over the next six weeks, as one of the most sought-after pitchers on the midsummer trade market.

But he doesn’t spend much time thinking about those things away from the ballpark.

He’s too busy being Dad.

“When I go home,” Bell says, “I just watch the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon — something with butterflies and elephants and catching them with your nose.”

Bell even does what he can to make road trips feel like home. For a series at Dodger Stadium earlier this year, he received permission from the Padres to stay at a Disneyland hotel with his wife and four children, rather than with the team in Pasadena.

After closing out a 5-2 Padres victory on April 30, Bell checked the clock as he iced down in the clubhouse. It was already after 10 p.m., but he talked excitedly about his plan to squeeze in a couple of rides before closing time at the amusement park.

Well, he made it: Not long after retiring Marcus Thames to complete his sixth save of the season, Bell found himself riding through the Temple of the Forbidden Eye on Indiana Jones’ Adventure.

Twice.

“It’s a satisfying feeling for me,” Bell says. “Even if I get back from a game at 1 o’clock in the morning, I’m going to get up and take my kids to school. They know, at the end of the day, that I spend every moment I can with them. Even if I’m on a road trip, they know Dad cares.”

Bell moved from Florida to San Diego in 2009, so his family could live in the same home year-round. Bell and his wife, Nicole, chose the location carefully, based on which schools could offer the best special education classes; Jordyn, their 9-year-old daughter, has Down syndrome.

Many of Bell’s days begin with Jordyn waking him at 6 a.m. — even if he arrived home from a trip only a few hours before.

“She’s her own little person,” he says, smiling. “You know, when your child is born, you know they’re going to eat with a fork, they’re going to go to school, they’re going to drive a car, they’re hopefully going to go to college, they’re going to have a family . . . When you have a child with a disability, you have to re-look at what’s important.

“I’m just amazed at the stuff she does. She’ll tell you which rides she likes, which rides she doesn’t like. She can read. She can write her name. When you’re around her, you really can’t get mad. She’ll be like, ‘Dad! Dad! He hit the ball far! Did you see that?’ ”

Bell pauses and grins.

“Yeah, it was off me,” he continues. “She doesn’t care. She just saw the people jumping around, and that was cool. It reminds you: This is just a game, at the end of the day. I try to do the best I can, but I don’t take it home with me.”

Jasmyne, 12, is the couple’s oldest child, followed by Jordyn and sons Reece (7) and Rhett (1-1/2). As he travels from city to city, Bell carries three cherished items in what is otherwise an ordinary-looking, team-issued toiletry bag: a necklace that Jasmyne gave him; a set of Chinese stress balls in honor of Nicole, who is Chinese-American; and the dog tags worn by his father, Jim, in the United States Marines.

Bell wears the necklace in every game — and it shows. (“It cost $11.99,” Bell says. “The paint is all tarnished. It’s a piece of metal now, basically. I’ve super-glued the hook on the end of it a number of times.”) He wears the dog tags on special occasions, such as the Padres’ military appreciation days at Petco Park — and Father’s Day, too. A camouflage undershirt is another staple of Bell’s in-game wardrobe.

“When I’m on the mound, I think of my family and that I’m doing what I can to provide for my kids,” he says. “Jasmyne’s my oldest, so I have the kids around my neck . . . Before the game, I’ll rotate the relaxing balls in my hand — that’s my wife, soothing me. My camo shirt represents what my dad went through in the Marines. He showed me how to play baseball.

“I don’t like to say that it’s superstitious, because it’s not. It’s that I’m representing my family. I try to keep them as close to me as I can.”

It doesn’t take long to see why Bell has such perspective on life, in and outside of baseball. He walked on at Rancho Santiago (Calif.) Community College and was never drafted, instead signing with the New York Mets as an amateur free agent. When Bell was selected to the National League All-Star team in 2009, he says it was the first time he’d been an All-Star — ever. Not in Little League. Not in high school. Not in college. Not anywhere.

There was even a time when Bell endured difficulties at home.

“In any marriage, you’re going to go through some tough times,” he says. “The Lord had a plan for me to have a great marriage, and then go through some really bad times, but then we decided, ‘Let’s work on this.’ I love my wife more than I ever have. I really understand how to raise my kids.”

Bell loves Father’s Day. He says it’s “one of the best feelings in the world” to receive homemade cards from the kids. But Bell, like every player in the big leagues, has to work on Sunday.

Since they can’t have a big cookout at the house, the Bells are doing the next-best thing: Heath’s parents will travel from Texas on Sunday for the Padres’ three-game series at Fenway Park, which starts Monday. Around the same time, Nicole and the kids will take a cross-country flight from California.

The Padres are playing in Minnesota on Sunday afternoon, but Bell hopes the team plane touches down in Boston with enough time to (technically) celebrate Father’s Day there.

“If everything is on time,” he says, “there should be an hour left.”

He never knows when — or where — those precious family memories could be made. But it’s not a surprise that Heath Bell wants to preserve them. He’s a closer, the kind of guy who refuses to let the big moments slip away.
 

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