From swinging the bat to fighting fires
Ted Bell used life skills learned in the game in another profession
Eleven seasons, 14 cities, 10 states, two countries — this was the baseball life of Ted and Norma Bell, residents of Pacific Grove for the past 60 years.
Seventy-two years, one marriage, two children — that was the Bells’ personal lives.
Ted Bell always wanted to be a ballplayer. That career ended in 1957 when he was but 28, and he turned to one more stressful than baseball. He became a firefighter for the city of Monterey, spending nearly three times as many years putting out blazes and saving lives than he did playing baseball.
Baseball was the foundation for Ted’s first career and helped him develop the ethos and determination for his second.
“I really was fortunate growing up in Los Angeles at the time that I did,” Ted, 91, says. “It seemed like kids had more freedom as far as playing. That’s all we did during the summer and on weekends. We played baseball or softball until night at a park and after it got dark we’d play basketball in the gym.”
At Fremont High in South Los Angeles in the mid-1940s, Ted met Norma Forbes, now 90. Norma had moved with her family as a young child from Pratt, Kansas, a town that she jokes had two water towers — “one for hot water and one for cold water.” Ted and Norma became high school sweethearts.
They sparkle with warmth, love and affection as they discuss their lives. Ted and Norma were married in an Inglewood church on Valentine’s Day in 1948, four days after Ted turned 19, eight months before Norma would.
A star high school shortstop, Ted signed with the New York Yankees for a $1,000 bonus just a few weeks after graduating in 1947.
Ted — his real name is Charles, but a brother started calling him Ted and it stuck — headed up the road from Los Angeles to begin his career with Ventura in the Class C California League, the second-lowest minor league classification.
“It was a little scary,” Ted recalls. “I assumed it would just be like playing baseball in high school. But when I saw all the talent on the field, I realized that I’m in for a long, long road. It was intimidating, but we survived.”
He hit .223 in his rookie season and began 1948 again with Ventura, accompanied by Norma, his bride of two months.
“I had a bad start in Ventura in 1948,” batting .195 in 54 games “and I was sent down to Class D,” then baseball’s lowest level.
“That really hurt me,” Ted says of the demotion. “It was a major disappointment.”
Adding distance to demotion, the Bells were sent to the Yankees’ farm club in Fond du Lac in the Wisconsin State League. Lacking a car, the teenagers traveled by train.
Reaching the majors from so deep in the minors was rare. None of the 27 players on the 1948 Fond du Lac team ever played in a single big-league game.
Ted hit .266 with Fond du Lac. He was elevated in 1949 to the Class C Twin Falls, Idaho, Pioneer League team, where he batted .242.
Norma was with him throughout 1948 and 1949.
“I went to almost every home game and some road games as well,” she says.
But 1950 proved to be trying.
Norma wasn’t with him, pregnant in Los Angeles with the couple’s first child.
Meanwhile, Ted was shuttled through five clubs in the Yankees’ system that season: Charleston, South Carolina; Norfolk, Virginia; Quincy, Illinois; St. Petersburg, Florida, and Victoria in British Columbia, a combination of A and B class teams. The Quincy player-manager, a second baseman, decided he didn’t want to compete with fellow second baseman Ted, who was sent packing.
With Norma nearing delivery, Ted detoured to L.A., driving day and night, stopping only for gas and food, to be present for their child’s birth.
“I sweated blood on that drive,” Ted says.
Delivery didn’t come when it was expected. Ted stayed for a few weeks until their baby daughter, Rikki, was born and then reported to Victoria.
The Bells’ second child, son Marty, was born in 1954.
Ted spent 1951 with Muskegon, Michigan, in the Class A Central League. He hit a robust .299 with 21 homers.
As the baseball seasons accumulated, Ted rose through the minors.
There were some excellent years. In 1954 he hit .286 and helped Modesto win the California League title. With Amarillo of the Western League in 1956, he again hit .286 with 20 homers. The team finished second.
Ted was with Sacramento in the Pacific Coast League, the closest level beneath the majors, for parts of three seasons.
One year a New York newspaper said that he was in line to replace shortstop Phil Rizzuto, the Yankees future Hall of Famer. It didn’t happen.
“My best ability was my fielding. I had good hands,” Ted says.
But, figuratively, they were tied.
“In those days, when you signed a contract it was for life,” Ted says. There was no free agency then.
Monthly salary? As little as $300.
“Sometimes we might get something more under the table, perhaps $25 or $50,” Norma says.
In the offseason, Ted often drove for United Parcel Service.
At the end of 1957, his 11th in the minor leagues, Ted decided to retire. There was one regret, however, that he couldn’t shake.
“I did the dumbest thing in high school. I turned down a full scholarship at the University of Southern California. I probably would have been an architect. But as a young man, you think that baseball is something you are going to do for life.”
Out of baseball at 28, Ted heard from a firefighter friend in Southern California that Monterey might be looking for firemen. The friend tutored him. Ted drove north and applied and passed the necessary tests in Monterey. He started work on Sept. 1, 1958. In 1960, the Bells bought a home in Pacific Grove, the one in which they still live.
In one of the many fires over the years that the department battled in abandoned Cannery Row canneries, Ted and a fellow firefighter barely got out after a backdraft sucked the fire in.
“They’re pretty dangerous,” Ted says. “I fought 16 fires on Cannery Row. Playing baseball and being a firefighter both agreed with me. I loved both professions.”
“Baseball and the fire department were both like family,” says Norma. “We became close to others in each.”
In 1987, after 29 years, Ted retired from the Monterey Fire Department as a captain.
Two years ago, Ted made non-baseball history.
Despite working out five days a week, he had serious heart issues. Surgery was necessary.
“The surgeon, Steven Goldberg, and I had a pretty good rapport. He was a semipro shortstop.”
According to a copyrighted article in the July 2018 issue of Pulse, the magazine of the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, Ted’s heart valve, “stiffened by aortic stenosis, was forcing his heart to work harder to pump blood, putting him in danger of heart failure or a heart attack. Blood was leaking back into his heart through the faulty valve, his blood pressure was low, and he was dizzy, short of breath, and tired. He also suffered from sleep apnea and anemia. His cardiologist, Dr. Richard Gray, suggested an alternative: a procedure new to Monterey County and available at only about 10 percent of the nation’s hospitals. And that’s how Bell became the first patient at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula to have a transcatheter aortic valve replacement or TAVR.”
According to the Pulse article, benefits of transcatheter aortic valve replacement include that it is minimally invasive, less painful than traditional open-heart surgery, has a faster recovery time, and improves the quality of life. Did the surgery succeed? “He’s still here,” says Norma.
Looking back through seven decades, was their getting married as teenagers the right decision?
“I sure think so, but my wife is not so sure,” Ted says with a laugh. Says Norma, “I knew what I was doing.”