They used to say, 'If we find a good black player, we'll sign him.' They was lying.

In 1999 Cool Papa Bell was ranked 66th on The Sporting News list of Baseball's Greatest Players one of five players so honored who played all or most of his career in the Negro leagues and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. Census shows him as the fourth of seven children living with his widowed mother Mary Nichols in Sessums Township just outside of Starkville. "
Paige also liked to tell a tall tale referencing one hotel at which he and Bell stayed in which there was a short delay between flipping the light switch off and the lights actually going off due to faulty wiring sufficient for Bell to jump into bed in the interim.

He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.