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Bozo the Clown's grandson taken in MLB draft?

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

No clowning around, Craig Bell considered starting the Grand March around the living room Tuesday at the family home in Shadow Hills, Calif., after learning the Los Angeles Angels had selected his son, Trevor, with the 37th overall pick in baseball's amateur draft. "We didn't have the baton because I think it's in Chicago, but if we did, I'd have led the way," kidded Craig Bell, the son of Chicago legend Bob Bell, who was known for 25 years on morning television as Bozo the Clown, according to the CHICAGO TRIBUNE.

Trevor Bell, a power pitcher born two years after his grandfather hung up the clown suit in 1984, flirted with the Cubs before the Angels took one of California's top high school pitchers from Crescenta Valley High off the board. It was the realization of a lifetime goal for the 6-foot-1-inch, 190-pound right-hander with a 94-m.p.h. fastball who announced to his mother, Barbara, at age 7 that baseball was his destiny.

"Since I was 5, there has not been a day that has gone by when I didn't think of being a ballplayer," Bell said.

He used to share those dreams with his famous grandpa before Bob Bell died at 75 on Dec. 8, 1997, after a long illness. Bell's grandson often would sit on his lap and laugh at the Bozo voice that became a fixture in households all over Chicago for more than two decades beginning in 1959.