Staying the Course
Heath Bell and Tom Hager
In partnership with Athletes For God
I was about as far away from Major League Baseball as I could get in my profession, but on this particular day I was closer to God than I had ever been before.
I had talked to God my whole life, but it wasn't until a few years after this day I ever began to call myself a Christian. Before that, I would talk to God without really believing in who was listening on the other end. But on this particular day, God decided to talk right back.
I wasn't in Triple-A ball, or Double-A, or even in the minor leagues at all. I was several years deep into this personal saga just to throw a major league pitch, and I was sitting in a bullpen in Venezuela. And thanks to God's intervention – as well as my daughter's – they prevented me from making one of the biggest mistakes of my life.
This was right in the thick of the steroids era in baseball, but at that point I was one of the players who still hadn't used it. I was initially scared of the stuff, because there was no quality control back then, and some players were taking chances on supplements that turned out to be animal steroids that gave them breasts like a woman. It was not a risk I felt like taking, even though there was no steroid testing in baseball at the time.
But as my big league aspirations began to creep farther away with each passing day, the thought of using steroids started to seem more tempting. I wasn't in my early 20s anymore – I was a grown man with a wife and kids in America – kids who needed a father who could provide for them. I eventually got desperate enough that I cracked under the pressure, but it was right in that moment that God changed the course of my life.
With promises of throwing 100 miles per hour if I started using it, I finally approached somebody about taking steroids. When I get back from my road trip with the team, I told him, I want to try some. He was happy to grant my request.
As soon as we got back - with an off day to begin my downward spiral into steroids – I got a message. My daughter, who has Down Syndrome, was having seizures.
Come home.
I know that this was God's way - and my daughter's way - of saying don't do it dad, come home.
So I did just that, and I never asked for steroids again.
But just because I passed one of the biggest tests of my life didn't mean my journey to the big leagues was any closer. Our family needed God's help then as much as we ever had.
When I got to the minor leagues, I kind of assumed I would have to work my way up, because that's the way it had been my whole life.
I didn't reach the varsity level in high school until my senior year, despite hitting over .500 at the plate as a junior. Once I made to varsity I was named the No. 4 starter...on a two-man rotation. I did get into games as a relief pitcher, and by the time conference play had rolled around I was off to a 4-0 record. That didn't mean I got to crack the rotation, however, and even though I pitched more innings than anybody else on the team that year, I never started a single game. I got my innings by pitching long relief in back-to-back-to-back games throughout the season.
That performance was good enough to earn a college scholarship, but not at the Division 1 level. I attended junior college, but only because my dad – an ex-marine who dropped out of high school – took me to lunch and convinced me to get my education. I was going to be the first person in the Bell family to get a degree.
I headed off Santiago Canyon College, where I became a freshman All-American. That earned me the right to be drafted by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
In the 69th round.
If that sounds bizarre for someone to be picked that late in a draft, that's because MLB changed the draft format after that year. At the time though, in 1997, teams were pretty much drafting people with almost no intention of actually signing them. It was called a “draft and follow” and they signed me just so they could hold onto my rights for the next year. Teams would hold onto those picks until a week or two before the next year's draft and decide at that time whether or not they wanted to hold onto my rights.
They didn't.
The next year, with the draft down to just 50 rounds, I thought it would be funny if I was the last player chosen in the entire draft. That wasn't to be the case, and I went all 50 rounds without hearing my name called. Still, I had played well enough as a sophomore for the New York Mets to take a chance on me, and they signed me for the hefty price of $500.
That decision began an eight-year journey to reach the majors, but it nearly ended as soon as it started. The Mets only had 14 guys for spring training going into rookie ball that year, and teams need 25, so they signed 11 guys to fill the squad, including me.
During that time, it was apparent what kind of odds all of us were facing. One at a time, the Mets started cutting guys from the roster – guys that were tearing it up on the field. They cut one player who was hitting over .500 in spring training, just because they didn't see a future in him. And if they don't see a future in you, you're just there to fill in the gap. And with my fastball clocking between 86-88, and other teammates throwing between 91-92, my baseball career looked to be on life support.
As I would find out later on, the Mets did want to get rid of me, but it was a man named Tim Foli that saved my career. He was my manager in rookie ball, and as I later learned he stuck out his neck out for me. He told the Mets that I had something special, which was probably because he noticed I was the first one to show up each day and the last one to leave.
As it turned out, of the 11 players the Mets signed to fill their rookie ball roster, I was the only one to reach the minor league system. Now all I would have to do is grind another 8 seasons to reach the majors.
I didn't know it at the time, but that's because God had plenty of lessons to teach me before I could get there.
When I started my minor league career in Single-A ball, I met the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life.
My dad was participating in a bowling league in Orange County, and on one particular day he was unable to go, so he had me fill in for him. I'll never forget the day, because it was Valentine's Day.
I noticed this girl down one of the lanes, and found the courage to approach her.
“How's your Valentine's Day going?” I asked.
“Oh,” she remarked, “I didn't know it was.”
Right then and there, the light bulb went off in my mind. I realized she was probably single, and asked if she would like to go out on a date sometime.
“I'll give you my number and see if you call,” she told me.
“How long does it take you to get home?”
“I don't know, 15 minutes?”
“I'll give you a call in 20.”
And with that, my life changed forever. Nicole claims I stalked her, because when she walked in the door, the phone was ringing. Back then we didn't have cell phones, so I kept my word and called her in 20 minutes.
Life was better now that I had someone to share it with, but at the same time, things weren't necessarily getting easier. It may have something to do with a prayer I used to say when I was younger.
Even though I had stopped going to church with my mom when I was a pre-teen, that didn't stop me from praying to God. I would still talk to Him, and many times I would pray that I could take on the suffering of other people. I knew that He made me a big, strong individual, and I asked if He could let me take on the pain for others.
God decided to answer that prayer pretty emphatically.
My wife and I ended up falling in love and having our first child when I was almost 23, but God threw me a far bigger curveball than I've ever thrown on the mound.
Our daughter was born with Down Syndrome.
I had already been a parent by that point, as Nicole was taking care of a one-year-old when we met, but finding out your first baby together has Down Syndrome was really difficult news to take. I initially blamed myself, even though it wasn't anyone's fault.
You have to realize that when you have a child, you think they're going to grow up and go to college, and get married, and live out all these amazing dreams. When she was born, all those dreams of your child are gone.
But later on I realized in many ways that people with Down Syndrome are just like everybody else. They want to be loved and respected, and they can still have a normal life. You just have to change your perception of what is normal.
Of course, playing for eight years in minor league baseball has a way of doing that to you anyways.
So in order to understand what was going through my mind as I sat in that Venezuelan bullpen, you have to understand was going on in my life by that point. I wasn't just taking care of Jordyn, our daughter with Down Syndrome. Nicole and I were also trying to take care of our oldest daughter, Jasmyne, and our youngest son at that point, Reece. We would have another son down the road, Rhett, but at that point we were struggling as a family just to raise the three kids.
I was trying to make a living with a job that was barely paying anything, and I didn't want my kids to grow up with financial struggles. I already knew what that was like at their age.
My desire to be such a good dad came from having an incredible example set before me. My dad, Jim, was exactly what you would want in a leader – he was hardworking, loving, and selfless. He didn't go to church with me and my mom growing up, but as I later realized he was a Christian and everything he taught me had biblical principles. He taught me about having compassion for others who were mean, because you didn't know if they were having a bad day, and taught me about the Golden Rule, which is to treat others how you want to be treated.
My dad had a heart of gold. What he didn't have was a big or steady paycheck.
He would work odd jobs on the side just to support us, and he would leave at 6 in the morning and come back at 6 or 7 at night. My dad was still doing that when I was 16, but it was at that time I found out my dad had lost his job three months earlier and hadn't been able to find any work.
He was getting up in the morning and leaving the house just to give us the impression that our finances were okay. As it turned out, my dad was skipping meals so we wouldn't have to be hungry.
I went out and got a job at 16 years old and became a janitor.
It was now my turn to help support the family, and that didn't change just because I got a baseball scholarship in junior college. I worked a job nearly full-time operating a fork lift, and it was only later on in life I realized that this wasn't the normal route to the big leagues for most players.
I remember towards the end of my career when I was on the Diamondbacks, we were having a conversation in the locker room about who had a real job with an interview before their baseball careers. This was in September, when the roster had expanded to 32 guys, and of all the men in the locker room, Eric Chavez and I were the only ones to ever interview for a job and work nearly full-time as young adults.
I think those struggles made me a better person, but no parent wants their child to worry about where their next meal is coming from, so just like my dad, I took on the brunt of the suffering when I had a family of my own.
During my minor league career, I remember eating in grocery stores. At the clubhouse they would have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with graham crackers, and that would be my meal. I wouldn't go and get a Subway sandwich because I didn't have the money. I didn't have four or five bucks to get a sandwich.
I was already paying clubhouse dues for the locker room food, so I took full advantage of that. I would make myself one PBJ and pack another one for the road, especially on a long bus trip. You see, the thing is, in order to eat healthy, you actually have to spend money. And I would buy whatever was on sale. I would go to the 99 cent store and that's where I would sometimes buy my groceries. I remember on road trips, rather than treating myself to a soda, I had water out of a hose.
We were so poor that when I was in the minor leagues, my primary source of food was from host families. We had booster clubs that would sponsor Taco Tuesday or Thursday Burritos or Monday Lasagna, and I would go to everybody's house and eat. I didn't want to go. I wanted to go home and go to bed, but I didn't have money for food and I was hungry, so for five or six nights a week I would go and spend two hours at somebody's house to get a meal. Sometimes I didn't really know the people, but I just went there anyway. I would think to myself this is awkward, but my hunger mattered much more to me than whether or not I was embarrassing myself.
And yet as poor and hungry as I was in the minor leagues, it was my weight that seemed to prevent me from reaching the majors.
With my background as a blue collar worker, when life required something extra out of me, my approach to the solution was always the same: just work harder.
Unfortunately at that point in my life, I was concerned that hard work wasn't going to be good enough.
Regardless of how I played, the New York Mets did not believe in me. They even told me at one time that I don't look like a pitcher in a Mets uniform.
If you've ever seen me in person, it was easy to read between the lines. They thought I was fat.
When I played in the minor leagues with the Mets, I was the lightest I've been. During my best years in the majors I weighed in at about 240-255 pounds, but back in the minors I was 215-220. It didn't matter to the Mets. It wasn't good enough.
I averaged 12-13 percent body fat when I was in the big leagues, and at one point I was as low as 9 percent, but I just couldn't shake this false perception of me. Every time I had a bad game or a couple of bad outings, the Mets started weighing me in body fat. After a while it started being routine. They said they were doing it randomly, but when I would go two weeks without giving up a run I didn't touch the scale.
It seemed like my baseball career was just going in circles with the Mets. Meanwhile, my kids appetites weren't getting any smaller, and I felt like I was running out of options.
My wife asked if I should change careers, but I just knew in my heart I was going to make it.
“How do you know?” she would ask.
“I don't know, I just know it,” I would explain.
So I would continue to do what I knew best: work harder. I would get up at 4 in the morning, if you can call it that when it's still dark outside, and go the gym to work out. Then I would come home, wake up the kids, take them to school, go for a run, go to work, come back home for dinner and do it all over again. I barely slept.
But it was during my trek through the minors I began to discover God again. As a relief pitcher, you would spend a lot of hours in the bullpen with your teammates, and I remember sitting there with Todd Bellhorn. His brother, Mark, went on to play in the big leagues, but back then Todd was a minor leaguer with big dreams and an even bigger faith. And he was the perfect teammate to have, because I had plenty of questions for him.
Todd never judged my questions, and embraced my eagerness to learn. He either always had the answer, or promised to find out for me.
I began to go to baseball chapel on Sundays, and I started to become a believer.
Things started to take shape in my life, because the Mets also traded me to the San Diego Padres. I was born in Oceanside and grew up in Orange County, so for me this was a chance to go back home.
I had technically thrown a major league pitch with the Mets in 2004, but continued to bounce between the big leagues and the minors until the Padres acquired me in November of 2006. I got to learn under Trevor Hoffman in 2007 and 2008 before he signed with the Brewers before the 2009 season.
I was taking over for one of the most legendary closers of all time, and a future Hall-of-Famer. But I wasn't planning on filling his shoes. I couldn't even if I wanted to, because he wore size 14 and I was size 13.
So my plan was to be the best Heath I could be, and thanks to God's help, all my hard work and pain started to pay off. I pitched a scoreless inning to start the year, and just kept going. I was 31 years old in my first real big league season, and I was making up for lost time.
By the time I completed a save against the Giants on May 20 of that year, I had converted all 11 of my save opportunities and my ERA was 0.00. Within two months, I was heading to the All-Star Game. I had started my career when many guys had already passed their prime, and yet my career was just starting to blossom.
In 2010, God blessed with the kind of success I could have only dreamed of when I was a kid. On May 29, I began the most amazing streak of my career. I earned the save that game, as well as the next and the next. By the time the season ended, I had yet to blow a single save opportunity since the streak began. I didn't allow any of the inherited runners to score the whole season, and I won my second NL Rolaids Relief Man of the Year Award.
I'm not saying this to brag, but to show how amazing God's plan can be.
The streak would ultimately stretch into the following season, reaching 41 consecutive converted saves before an error stopped the streak there. But when that happened, I wasn't even mad at my teammate, Chase Headley. We won the game anyway, and afterwards I joked around with him to show it was okay. Plus, I was on my way to my third straight All-Star game, and after years of struggling, my family didn't need me to shop at the 99 cent store anymore.
As someone who lives in Southern California, I often enjoy going to Disney World with my family. I love Disney movies, which always have inspiring stories and happy endings. But my story is a little too surreal for even Hollywood to believe.
That's because it's God's story, too. And it's perfect.