Albert Belle's Corked Bat: the Bat Heist

On July fifteenth, nineteen ninety four, the Cleveland Indians were taking on the Chicago White Sox in Chicago, where one of the best hitters in the game, Albert Bell, was accused of having a corked bat. The umpires took the bat, but that's not what's crazy, as the Cleveland Indians attempted to steal the bat and replace it with another one to keep Albert Bell from getting suspended. Here's the story behind how all this happened. Today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to wrap a deep dive into sports history every day, and the trivia question to listen out for it in today's episode is what player's bat was traded for Alberts during the heist. Now, there was a time back in the nineteen nineties where Albert Bell was one of the best players in Major League Baseball and growing up. Albert, who went by Joey growing up as his father was also named Albert, was a boy scout and made his way all the way up to rank of an Eagle Scout. Growing up, was part of the Honor Society and the future business Leaders of America and was even able to make it to the Junior Olympics, where he played outfield and pitched in one game, winning a silver medal, and he would go on to accept a baseball scholarship to LSU, where he would excel, making first team All SEC in nineteen eighty six and eighty seven, which would catch the eye of the Cleveland Indians, who would take him in the second round of the nineteen eighty seven MLB draft. And Bell was a unique player as not only was he a consistent hitter, averaging almost a three hundred batting average for his career, but he also hit for power, as it would take him only two years in the minor leagues to make it to the majors in nineteen eighty nine, but it was nineteen ninety one where he really took off, hitting twenty eight home runs having a batting average of two hundred and eighty two, and he would continue hit success as he became the fourth player to have eight seasons of thirty home runs and one hundred RBIs, joining the likes of Babe Ruth, Jimmy Fox, and Lou Garrick, and later would be followed by Rafael Palmeiro, Manny Ramirez, and Alex Rodriguez. He would become a five time All Star, lead the league in RBIs three times, and be the home run Champion in nineteen ninety five. But Bell was always considered to be a hot heead in college, while the LSU was in the College World Series, he actually left the field to chase a Heckler to try to beat him up, and he was one who always argued with umpires. But in nineteen ninety four he was having arguably one of his best seasons, as he finished the season with the batting average of three hundred and fifty seven, finishing just behind New York Yankees Paul O'Neill, who hit three fifty nine, which was good enough to get him voted third for the AL MVP that year, finishing behind Frank Thomas and Ken Griffy Junior. But had it not been for what happened on July fifteenth, he may have just won the MVP, changing the directory of his career and giving him a different view. But here's what happened. On July fifteenth, nineteen ninety four, the Cleveland Indians were taking on the Chicago White Sox at Kaminski Park in Chicago, and in the first inning, Chicago White Sox manager Jeene Lament was tipped off that Albert Bell was using a cork bat. Now, under MLB rules, you're not allowed to have a bat that has been adjusted, meaning you need to have a bat that is one solid piece of wood. It cannot be pieces of wood. It cannot have a hole in it, it cannot have cork in it, it cannot have bouncy balls in it, it can't have anything else in it, just one solid piece of wood, which I officially made a rule in nineteen forty as many baseball players were using all different kinds of things to try to get an advantage on the field. And under this rule, a manager may challenge one opponent's baseball bat per game. And it was kind of a widespread rumor that Albert Bell used cork beats. So Jean told umpire Dave Phillips that he wanted to challenge Albert Bell's bet. So Dave Phillips, the umpire goes to get the bat from Albertbell and takes it back into the umpire's locker room and leaves it there because it's the middle of the game and they want to finish the game and then they will review it after the game. As most of the times when people are found out to use a cork bat, it's because the bat breaks and you can see, oh there's cork or there's a hole in it. But this bat was still intact, so they needed to take it to do X rays at a later time, so this allowed. So this was all going on during the game, and this allowed the Indians to do something a little different as they and Albert Bell knew for a fact all his backs were corked, so no matter what, he was going to be caught and he was challenging for the MVP, so he did not want to lose this. So they devised a plan that somebody would go into the umpire's locker room and replace his bat with a different pat that was not corked and they would never know the difference. But who would they get to do this, Well, relief pitcher would be the best, as you wouldn't notice him missing from the game or the dugout as they sit in the bullpen waiting to be caught up. So that's where relief pitcher Jason Grimsly comes in. Jason was a journeyman pitcher who first made it to the major leagues in nineteen eighty nine and would go on to pitch for seven different teams, But in nineteen ninety three he signed with the Cleveland Indians, and the plan was that Jason would go in the room next to the umpire's locker room and would climb up into the ceiling, as the ceiling had those poae tiles that you see a lot, maybe at schools or office buildings, So he just pushed a tile over, climbed up there, and crawled across the next wall to get into the locker room. So Grimsy grabs a bat. Now he doesn't know whip bat of Alberts is not corked, so he grabs another player's bat. He grabs Paul Sordino's bat and takes it with him into the ceiling. So Jason is crawling through the top of the ceiling using a flashlight in his mouth, and he lifts up the panel after he crosses over the wall into the umpire's locker room and makes his way down and finds the bat and switches it for the one he brought and goes back up through the ceiling. And the reason why they couldn't just walk into this was There was a security guard outside the umpire's locker room, which there is always. This isn't just because there was this quark bat incident. They'd always do this just to protect the umpires. Fans can be unruly, players can be unruly. It's just a way to protect the umpires. So they had to go through the ceiling. But when he went back up through the locker room, he had twisted a metal bracket in the ceiling, and so he left some clumps from the ceiling tile that fell down, and the ceiling title didn't match up perfectly as it did before and after the game. When the umpires came into the locker room, not only did they notice that, but the bats were different. The new bat wasn't as shiny as the old bat was, didn't have that new bat look, and it had Paul Sorrentino's signature on it. So what did they do, Well, this was the theft. So they called the Chicago police and the White Sox were threatening to do charges for burglary, and that Saturday, Major League Baseball called a former FBI agent to come investigate what happened. They dusted for fingerprints. They made it an actual crime. Scene. This is crazy because it was just a bat, but the American League knew this had to be someone with the Indians organization, so they ordered the Indians to produce the original, unaltered bat or they threatened to involve the FBI the authorities and possibly charged whoever was involved with burglary. And on July eighteenth, they finally sent the bat to Major League Baseball in New York. They did an X ray and they sought it in half in the presence of Albert Bell and the Indians' GM John Hart, and they found that the bat was corked and they suspended Bell for ten games. He appealed this decision and it was dropped down to seven. But by the time this happened, baseball was suspended due to a player strike that caused the season to end on July twelfth, so it ended up having no effect on the Indians or Albert Bell. But it wasn't until nineteen ninety nine when Jason Grimsley finally came out to the New York Times that he was the one that took the bat up. Until then, no one else in the Indians organization had said who had actually transferred the bats. But by this point, no one really cared and everyone had moved on from this situation. Grimsley would go on to win two World Championships with the New York Yankees in nineteen ninety nine and two thousand and retire in two thousand and six, and following in the next season, Upper Belt actually had arguably a better season. Now his batting average dropped to three seventeen, but he hit fifty home runs and led the whole league in home runs and in nineteen ninety seven. Interestingly enough, he would go on to play for the Chicago White Sox for a season before moving on to the Baltimore Oriolers Baltimore Orioles, where he retired in two thousand and would go on to become a Cleveland Guardians with the Indians changed their name to Hall of Famer, but will always be known for the time he tried to get away with corking his bat. And that's the story of the bat Heist. I want to thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History. It means so much to me. If you have a topic you would like us to cover, please leave us a review or send us a message at Daily Sportshistory dot com, tell us your name and what topic you would like us to cover, and we will get that done just for you, And come back tomorrow for more daily sports history. And did you catch the answer to today's trivia question whose bat was traded for Albert Bells? And the bat heist Paul Sordino whose bat didn't look like Albert's.