When George Bell kicked off a lifelong fandom | Baseball Raconteur-ing

On this date 40 years ago, this athletics supporter got a taste for baseball with bloodlust, and became a Blue Jays fan for life. The brawl might have affected the outcome of multiple World Series.

George Bell, folks. (via Mark Hebscher/YouTube.) Edited with LunaPic.

George Bell, what a ding-dong, my mother used to say, and that was a life lesson.

It passed along ideas about loyalty to your people despite their flaws — fondness for Bell, who has not graced the Blue Jays for 3½ decades, flows from him being our ding-dong. On this date in 1985, he was a literal launch point for a lifelong fandom when he charged the mound and karate-kicked Boston pitcher Bruce Kison for hitting him in the shoulder with a pitch.

This was, for Young Sags, early exposure to what baseball can be like when opponents have a bone to pick with one another. It brought that child outside of the clichés about baseball being a chill zone where you can have chitchat about anything and everything and nothing in between pitches and tracking the flight of batted balls. Most of the time, it is that. On another June 23, it was not, and it was awesome, and it might have played a part in how the World Series played out in 1986, 1992, 1993, and 2004.

More than that, though, it formed how I initially related to baseball, at least in the Blue Jays’ halcyon days. Some of that has been smoothed out by something approaching maturity, but one keeps a space for hoisting the black flag and getting off on a José Bautista bat flip. Most of the time, baseball is a game, but seeds from long ago mean injecting some particular Canadian identity into it, especially when there’s bafflement that it’s a No. 1 sport.

For this adventure, you will need some rudimentary knowledge of late 20th-century baseball history. A small belief that numerology is not just quackery for people with the brainpan of a stagecoach filter is also an asset.

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Origin: through a child’s eyes

Hockey had that primacy in the corner of Canada where I came into consciousness in the 1980s. Baseball, the summer game, likely contributed more to understanding and appreciating our differences.

It was an introduction to being all-in with people who looked different than you. When I started becoming aware of major-league baseball, as it was known, Black American players were much more visible in the sport, and the presence from the Caribbean was steadily increasing. Those 1980s Blue Jays teams straddled both those waves — Lloyd Moseby and Jesse Barfield were Great Migration stories; first baseman Willie Upshaw was quiet but efficient; their outfield mate Bell and the middle-infield combo of Tony Fernández and Dámaso García hailed from the Dominican Republic.

On Sunday afternoons, during CTV regional telecasts, I could learn about another part of the world by appreciating them as baseball-playing people. Later, you could understand it was just an arbitrarily chosen group of guys wearing hats with a maple leaf added to them for marketing purposes. And it was 85 percent similar when the CBC had a Montréal Expos regional cast with those two Hall of Fame outfielders, Andre Dawson and Tim Raines.

Those Jays were my guys, and still are. Remember, at this time, soccer received limited exposure in North America, and Toronto was a decade away from getting the NBA Raptors. Coverage of female-identified athletes outside the Olympics and tennis majors was nonexistent.¹ Baseball was a window to the world, along with learning to pronounce the names of Québécois, Swedish, Finnish, and Eastern European hockey players.

That led to pestering my mum to check out baseball books from the county library, and learning about Jackie Robinson, and valuing that sports should offer everyone a fair chance. And, as far as community sports went, the ambience around the ball diamond was easier for a shy child than the hockey rink. More supportive, and you met more kids since it was a cheaper activity.

The habit of checking the standings started to take form. The agate page in the Kingston Whig-Standard showed the Blue Jays at the top of the seven-team American League East Division (or ‘AL East’).

Emotions are the coin of the realm for a small child, and one could hear the adults talking with a note of excitement about how the Jays were getting along. It was, of course, tempered by a slight worry that it was all fleeting, that success in sports is always more sporadic than sustainable. Above all, I come from an area where a lot of people have Scottish and/or Irish genes with commensurate above league-average senses of irony. Nothing good is expected to last; someone with visions of empire is coming for it — the land, or the water. Just you wait.

At the time

How much exposition is needed when spinning a yarn? You could probably let your followers off with, “Remember the time George Bell karate-kicked the pitcher?”

Beef History, this ain’t. However, clicking through Baseball-Reference lights up the dots you could never see with the naked eye, or your physical memory.

One need not belabour that, in 1985, the Blue Jays were a ninth-season team that kind of embodies the game in present form. They have entered contention in the division that produced the last two World Series champions — the 1984 Tigers and 1983 Orioles.

Exhibition Stadium is a bad baseball stadium, and a bad football stadium at the same time. It does the job. However, the team is young and on the rise, and the V-neck jerseys with the team insignia on the chest — a bit like a hockey sweater without being obvious — look cool.

Jesse Barfield, cooler than Ice Cube wearing snow-skis.

The Red Sox have been around as long as anyone can remember. They wear nondescript grey; the jerseys are simply lettered “Boston” in navy letters, and there are no names on the back above the numbers, including the No. 29 of Kison. Make a note of that, since 29 will come up later.

Over the next year or two, reading up on the game’s history will colour in the page. They have not won a World Series since the last year of the First World War, when Babe Ruth was their star lefthanded pitcher and dabbled as a power-hitting outfielder. Boston was the last franchise to sign a Black player; by the time I was 10, I was aware the Bruins beat them to that when Willie O’Ree débuted in the NHL in 1958. It’s not all about ethnicity and racism, of course, and I worry that I am oversimplifying, but then and now the Jays seem to be more on the side of fair and good.

In any event, Young Sags became wired to check the TV Times, the insert that came with a Saturday newspaper, to see what Sporrrts! he could watch.

June 23, 1985, was a Sunday afternoon. Boston Red Sox against the Toronto Blue Jays on Channel 6, CJOH from Ottawa, one of two Canadian stations whose signal reached the TV aerial, along with WWNY-TV and WPBS-TV out of Watertown, New York.

Bell v. Kison: Reconstruction team, assemble

There’s an obscure joke that George Bell was so loved in Toronto that a hockey arena was named after him.

There is, by happenstance, a George Bell Arena near Runnymede Park in Toronto — it is named after someone else. It works since George Bell, of San Pedro de Macorís, had a temperament that just as easily could have been forged in the fires of board battles in arenas in Peterborough and Marmora.

Bell never minded showing who he was; people who covered his career could better share the details. It made him what coaches nowadays called an identity player; someone without any Effs to give.

In a hockey-brained country, it made ballplayers seem relatable. Some, not all, Canadians of my vintage needed that to form an entry point into getting into baseball, even though it has been as played as long on one side of the Great Lakes and 49th Parallel as the other. There was the appeal to the outsider, but it could also push the same buttons emotionally as hockey.

The Jays present as an underdog since they represent Canadians in baseball, regardless of who is in the lineup. Their existence goes against the grain of American stereotypes of Canada. They also seem surprised that we like mostly the same things. And there is some vice-versa and vis-à-vis.

One very tangential example I have ranted about to anyone who probably did not care to listen. When fellow Eastern Ontarian Dan Aykroyd starred in The Blues Brothers, some movie reviewers said the movie did not properly explain why two white siblings (Jake and Elwood, ah-duh) had such an immersion into Black music and culture.

That missed the point. What is to explain?

One should like what they like. As an independent mind and neurodivergent person, Dan Aykroyd found rhythm and blues hit him where he lived, and rolled with it.

That is one problem with being neurodivergent. You do not think to explain; you presume people know this about you already. Aykroyd has pointed out he came of age when Ottawa, sleepy little government and university town, had promoters who went all out to bring in blues performers to little hangouts to create a music scene. And that ties to how people move; if the circuit took someone to play in Montréal, get them to Ottawa, fewer than two hours away. But I digress.

Anyway, George Bell gave the Jays a power bat and a heel. This is a key to building Eff-You Cred.

In this period, the Maple Leafs had a coach named John Brophy — the one-time minor-league goon who is the namesake of an opposing player in the film Slap Shot, the opposing centre who tells Reggie Dunlop he’s “shit-faced” drunk and “if anyone throws me up against the boards, I’m gonna piss all over myself.”

Per author William Houston, John Brophy was drawn to George Bell, and loved sitting in the general admission seats in left field to be close to him. Houston wrote that Brophy believed Bell would have made an ideal left-winger, the one who digs pucks out from the corners for the playmakers and the scorers.

The hockey adage is you hate to play against a guy like that, but you would love to trade for him. The second part likely does not enter into it in June 1985.

Simmering tensions

On this Sunday, the starting pitchers are Should Be In The Hall of Fame Dave Stieb for the Blue Jays. The Red Sox are countering with Bruce Kison, who is a little older and has been around; the commentators, Don Chevrier and Tony Kubek, mention that he helped the Pittsburgh Pirates win the World Series twice back ‘in the ’70s.’

So, he’s ancient.

The context that counts is that the Red Sox and Blue Jays are meeting for the seventh time in 11 days amid a tight divisional race. Tensions elevate when that happens. This was when the NHL often had bench-clearing brawls, and my mother would explain that when teams play each other several times in a short span, they’re more likely to fight. Life is like that.

Without getting into what specifically was said, Bell said in the autobiography he collaborated on with Bob Elliott that some of the Boston pitchers had been yelling at him during batting practice early in the four-game series. The trash talk continued through the first three games of the series, with Toronto winning the first two to keep Boston at bay.

Is there a non-zero chance racism was involved?

This is the time when there is still a lot of hooey floating around baseball that Black and Latino players can be intimidated if they are pitched ‘up and in.’ Institutional racism is strong. All of the 26 teams have a white dugout manager, with mostly white coaching staffs and front offices. The infamous Al Campanis Nightline interview will touch that third rail soon enough.

These lines might seem intertwined, since the Red Sox pitching rotation also has Dennis (Oil Can) Boyd. It is about the power structure, not the faces on the baseball cards.

It is daunting not to read Peter Gammons’s Sports Illustrated cover feature on Boyd’s trials and tribulations in 1986 Boston. Gammons’s description of the pitcher’s rural Mississippi background calls to mind both rural depopulation, and how the institutional knowledge within generations of Black-led baseball was just left to wither away after Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, and Johnny Ritchey broke the racist lines.

The Boyds have lived in Meridian (pop. 46,577) for four
generations, and the men grew up playing baseball at the Lake Erie
Ballpark on 10th Avenue. These days, the grandstands are warped and
the outfield fences have collapsed, and while a MERIDIAN A'S sign
is to be seen and another reads WILLIE BOYD, OWNER, MANAGER, there is
no semipro baseball at the field anymore. Just a lot of dust and
debris. ''My granddaddy played here at the turn of the century,''
says Willie Boyd, Oil Can's 58-year-old father. ''So did my daddy,
my cousins. I pitched to Henry and Tommie Aaron and Willie Mays on
this field. Satchel Paige pitched here. Generations of Boyds learned
the joy of baseball here.''

''People ask me where I come from, and I tell them 'I come from
baseball,' '' the Can says. ''The Boyds carried a mark of baseball.
When I went off to play pro ball in 1980, I told my mother, 'This is
it. The last of the Boyds. I gotta make the big leagues.' When I made
it, it took a burden off the family because they were so into
baseball. When I was called up to Boston in September 1982, I called
them when I arrived at the Sheraton and said, 'We made it. We all
made it,' and they all cried. Brother Don told me, 'Since you | got
there, my life has just stopped, because to be a Boyd is to be a
baseball player.' Everyone in our neighborhood, in Meridian, knew
that these six boys were such good players that one of them had to
make it. The other ones didn't make it for racial problems, or
because scouts didn't pass through here.'' (Sports Illustrated, August 1986)

It is notable that, in his auto-bio, Bell questions the 1980s-vintage Red Sox’s openness to signing players who would be listed as a visible minority. Of course, a kid twigged to root for underdogs will reject that.

The Blue Jays are not saints, but they are not limiting the scope of their unending search for talent. Years later, one could read they even considered signing Cuban corner infielder Omar Linares and playing him only in home games to elude the United States’ trade embargo.

A beautiful Sunday for base-brawl

So the game is on, Boston trying to salvage a split, the Blue Jays trying to assert themselves by taking 3-of-4.

Dave Stieb is in-form, and shuts Boston out for three innings, with no hits allowed. Professional hitter par excellence Rance Mulliniks put the Blue Jays in flight with a two-run home run in the second.

Is it worth going to newspapers.com to see what Kison, who died in 2018, told the Boston Globe or Boston Herald after the game? No, since this is an exercise in ‘you saw it, write it’; write about how it affected you and your points of view.

Bell, the No. 5 hitter in the lineup, comes to bat in the fourth inning. A righty batter, he has a stance where he puts his front (left) foot close to the plate, then rounds his upper body so he’s leaning in. He’s looking for a pitch to drive; he’s a good RBI man, as you would remember from the backs of baseball cards.

The delivery comes up and hits Bell in the left shoulder. And Bell uncoils and races out to the mound to deliver the kick. Then he gets in a one-two combo on the catcher, Rich Gedman, before being dragged away.

No one knows then what will happen to the 1986 Red Sox at Shea Stadium the following October. And, as we know from Homer Simpson, karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos.

Notably, Kison is wearing No. 29.

Gedman would have called the pitch. And, in his book, Bell and Elliott call out the first baseman, Bill Buckner, for crossing a line during the mêlée. According to their book, Hardball, Buckner kicked Blue Jays bullpen coach John Sullivan in the face multiple times.

A season later, you know what happened. Gedman had a Bob Stanley pitch get by him to allow the tying run to score in the fateful bottom of the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. There was a somewhat more infamous play where Bill Buckner was the principal misplayer.

Boston winning two World Series during the aughts and Larry David being a mensch helped Buckner (1949-2019) complete his redemption arc. He never deserved the flak for his fielding flub, and hopefully left this life fulfilled.

It just does not seem for nothing that two of the Red Sox involved in that brawl had the Fates turn on them so wickedly a season later.

Anyway, Bell was ejected for precipitating the fracas and later received a two-game ban.

Kison stayed in, and an inning later, Ernie Whitt crushed a grand slam to put the Jays well in front. Whitt called Kison every foul name he could as he circled the bases, with the Jays now on their way to an 8-1 victory and a series win.² That run support was an exception to the rule for 1985 Dave Stieb, since untold people probably remember that he won the league earned-run-average crown at 2.48 but was credited with a 14-13 record.

Paul Skenes, you are not alone.

Have you seen Sully?

Now, John Sullivan (1941-2023), the coach whom Buckner kicked (allegedly), sustained turf burns on his face while trying to separate players during the dust-up.

Seven years after the Bill Buckner game, it was again Game 6 of the World Series on a Saturday night, with an AL East team trying to close out an NL East team to win the whole schebangabang. The Blue Jays are at home against the Phillies.

Mitch Williams, a 2-and-2 pitch down and in to Joe Carter with two on and one out. Youknowit.

But do you know who caught the home run ball in the Skydome bullpen when Carter touched ’em all? John Sullivan. Who did the Blue Jays get to unveil the 1993 World Series banner? John Sullivan, since he was retiring from baseball.

29 reasons to believe

Recall that Bruce Kison wore No. 29.

Baseball-Reference has info on jersey numbers. They are the code for Remembering Guys. Whoever had the number first when one starts following a team, that’s their number.

So, to this day, it looks weird that seeing any Blue Jays position player wearing No. 22, which is now sported by Blue Jays infielder/tryhard Ernie Clement. That is a pitcher number due to the fine work of lefthander Jimmy Key, who has not thrown a pitch for the Blue Jays in 33 years. And any Toronto reliever who takes No. 50 needs to realize that it is not okay unless they are as lights-out as Tom Henke.

When Bell was tossed from that June 23, 1985 game, he was replaced by Barfield, who wore No. 29.

When that Moseby-Bell-Barfield Best Outfield In Baseball aged out a few seasons later, Joe Carter was signed to be a mid-order RBI-producer and corner outfielder. Carter took No. 29.

The Red Sox, of course, eventually ended the Curse. Who finished up in the clinching game? Reliever Keith Foulke, wearing, wait for it, No. 29.

No one can say one event caused the other, of course, but part of the fun of baseball is making up the filament as you go, so a game 40 seasons ago feels like yesterday, and feels like it still affects the state of play in the present, even though all of those player are retired, and in some cases, passed on.

And fandom is firstly about what you pass on, less how much money changes hands. Loyalty to the Jays was seared in one early summer Sunday when there was a baseball game on TV, and a hockey game broke out.

Damn right George Bell deserves to have that arena named after him.

Related reading

All of this was written from memory and more or less off the top of my head after seeing an awesome post from Kevin Glew’s social media group Cooperstowners in Canada. Give his site the assist, or blame, for stimulating an exercise in remembering to help deal with my isolation.

Other texts I have read that helped shape this amateurish prose…

• Hardball, George Bell and Bob Elliott (Key Porter, 1990).

• Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game by Dan Barry (HarperCollins, 2011; two copies available at Hamilton Public Library).

• Raceball: how the Major Leagues colonized the Black and Latin game by Rob Ruck (Beacon Press, 2012).

• Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston by Howard Bryant (Routledge, 2002).

• Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original by Howard Bryant (Mariner Books, 2022).

Friendly reminder about resistance

I post about current affairs in Notes and on Bluesky (n8sager). Hopefully, this is enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind.

June 23, 2025
Hamilton, Ont. : traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas.

1. My father always seemed to cheer for Chris Evert, so Martina Navrátilová became my favourite. I was a ‘That Kid.’

2. The grand slam by Whitt opened a 6-0 lead. Final score was 8-1. Some of you would have received a version with a typo.