Albert Belle has the determined look of a storm chaser as he hurries down the interstate. When Sunday dawns blustery, he rolls south in search of a golf course, hoping the weather is better away from the lake.
Prepare to see him, in fact, at a golf course near you soon. The new White Sox left-fielder has a map of the Chicago area at his house, with circles around the golf courses.
“How far’s Gary (Ind.)?” he asks. “I hear Gary has a couple good courses.”
Lenny Spacek and Nick Zambataro, his golfing buddies, aren’t surprised Belle is driving them more than an hour south of Cleveland to Bolivar, Ohio. There, they play Wilkshire Country Club through slicing wind and snow that sends a bevy of other insane hackers to the clubhouse where some look at a calendar, learn it’s almost Christmas and go home.
No, what stuns Spacek and Zambataro is that a reporter is riding shotgun in Belle’s Dodge Caravan without a rope around his neck. Belle has left the Lexus at home and appears to be the family man he’s not in his mini-van.
“Marriage!” Belle says in curselike fashion, happy to be a bachelor at 30. “Gone out five years with my girlfriend. But marriage, that’s different.”
Belle raps along with his mini-van CD player and rips Cleveland Indians General Manager John Hart and owner Dick Jacobs. He criticizes the 1995 Sox team for lacking guts and praises the 1996 Sox for killer instinct. He reflects about how he often watches the John Goodman movie about Babe Ruth and wishes Ruth had been smart enough to get promises in writing from Yankees management.
He shrugs off comparisons as a modern-day Ruth, and says Frank Thomas merits that attention. He speculates that if he had spit in an umpire’s face as Roberto Alomar did, he would have been suspended for the playoffs. He berates the media for creating his bad-boy image to suit itself. In between, he endlessly banters with his friends, who know Belle sails in his own Bermuda Triangle.
“I’ve seen the good, bad and ugly with Albert,” says Jeff Helmick, who used to be on these weekly golf caravans before becoming engaged. “He doesn’t want to be a choirboy. He could have owned Cleveland and didn’t want it. He told me he likes thriving under some of the pressure he creates. But people never focus on the good. Here’s a guy who takes time, for example, to talk to a Cleveland State baseball player whose father died.
“Some days, though, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone, even his own shadow. I’ve said to him when I’ve seen him turn down autographs, you could have done that with more tact, Albert. But we all have up days and down days, and Albert’s no different, except people talk about his bad days, not his good ones.”
Belle wants his public image renovated. He has no wish to compete with Dennis Rodman for freak of the week. That’s why he has a reporter within arm’s reach after shunning the media for years “because I’ve been burnt and butchered.” He admits to making mistakes and poor judgments. That will change in Chicago, he vows–up to a point.
“It’s a starting-over period for me,” Belle says of leaving Cleveland for the Sox, who paid the free agent $55 million to change them and himself. “I talked about it with (Sox Chairman Jerry) Reinsdorf, who talked to me more in two hours than (Cleveland owner) Dick Jacobs did in two years. I’m willing to be more open-minded than I was.
“The Indians didn’t help me in dealing with the media. I think they wanted to keep my market value down. I’m moody. I know that. I’ve made some mistakes. But if I was a bad person, would someone want to pay me $55 million a year, would I have a scholarship fund my mother runs that pays for kids to go to school?
“I’m not perfect, like people think athletes should be. I’m to blame partly for some of this. I’m stubborn. And I’m not saying there won’t come a time in Chicago when I don’t want to talk after a bad day. I definitely won’t talk before games, and in the past, some people have messed with me over that, sassed me for that, and I’ve sassed back and then there’s trouble. But after games, whenever, I’ll talk. I’ve been misinterpreted.”
The Sox were concerned enough to run a background check on Belle.
“We found he made hospital visits, did one-on-ones with kids from broken homes, a lot of good stuff that never got mentioned,” General Manager Ron Schueler says. “But we know it’s a risk, that he flares up. We just think Albert wants to change.”
Hart denies Belle’s assertion that the team failed to guide him with the media.
“There’s a lot of things that could be opened up about Albert, but it serves no purpose,” he says. “I don’t think the Cleveland-Chicago rivalry needs any more fuel. I don’t want to talk about Albert in the personal sense.”
Belle feels trapped in a negative image he can’t reverse. While he acts friendly to golfers surprised to see him at Wilkshire and eager for autographs, one still can’t help stabbing him in the back when he walks away.
“Sure, now he’s making $50 million, he’s trying to be friendly,”the cynic says.
Belle knows he won’t convert everyone.
“No matter what I do, half of ’em are going to hate you, half like you,” he says. “I hit 48 home runs last year (after smacking 50 in 1995) and some people thought it wasn’t enough. You can’t please some people no matter what.
“No one can change me but me. Just because it’s a new city, new team, doesn’t mean anything. I have to take responsibility for Albert. Sure, I have a temper. Doesn’t everyone? But I never hear anything good about me.”
Sunday, as he stretches before a TV at the country club, he looks at the “Sports Reporters” show on ESPN and mimics the panelists. “Bad Boy Albert Belle, Bad Boy Albert Belle,” he says. “That’s all they ever say about me on that show.
“Then in the Cleveland papers I was greedy Albert Belle. Never anything nice the last year. I was ready to sign with the Indians last spring for $45 million for five years. I thought I was doing them a favor. But John Hart controls the media with what he tells them. John Hart feeds the team all that stuff about being a family, being loyal, and he made decisions he didn’t have to make the last two years to break up that family. So what’s he talking about?”
Belle believes he has left a sinking ship for a franchise on the make. He saw a critical change in the Sox from 1995 to 1996.
“We beat their brains out in 1995 and rolled over them,” he says about his new club. “You can see it in some teams’ eyes when they don’t want to be out there, and in 1995, Sox pitchers were just letting us hit the ball, laying it over the plate and not caring.
“But last year, they developed a killer instinct, a new attitude. That’s what I liked about them and one reason I signed. They pressured us into September. I wanted a team going the right direction. Not like the Indians.”
You have your share of modern players who think Babe Ruth is a candy bar. Belle, however, can talk about Ruth’s career, though he obviously has gleaned most of his “facts” from the Goodman movie. He particularly identifies with how Ruth was ill-treated by management.
“He wants to be a manager and after his boss tells him he will make him Yankees manager if he beats the Cubs in the World Series, he beats the Cubs and doesn’t get the job,” says Belle, a son of two high school teachers from Shreveport, La. “Should have got it in writing, like we do today.”
Belle is told his job will be to refill Comiskey Park. He hates the prospect of playing before empty seats.
“That would really bother me, if no one comes out,” he says. “I’ve been spoiled playing for capacity crowds in Cleveland.”
Belle thinks he can change Chicago in many ways, but he refuses to predict more than that he should hit at least 30 homers every year and drive in 100 runs.
“Problem is, so many people hit 30 homers last year it looked easier than it is,” he says. “But with a five-year deal, I should be able to win some championships there.”
Helmick believes the fans and the media will like Belle if they give him a chance. Helmick can testify to his fun-loving attitude and his eagle-eye vision.
“We had met two females a while before we went to Gund Center to see the (Cleveland) Cavs play,” Helmick recalls, “and Albert looks around and says, `There they are,’ spotting these women in the balcony sitting a long way from us, picking them out of 20,000.
“Now, I have 20-20 vision. I said, `How’d you do that?’ and he says, `How do you think I can see those fastballs? It’s not magic.’ “
If Belle can see the errors of his ways and correct them, that would be magic. And if he goes unscathed in Chicago by controversy, that would be a miracle.
“I just have to keep my head,” he pledges. “I’m back at square one.”
