"Cool Papa" Bell

Bell left Starkville for St. Louis at seventeen and joined the Stars in 1922. He earned his nickname that year by striking out Oscar Charleston, though some sources credit manager Bill Gatewood. He led the Stars to titles in 1928, 1930 and 1931, played in the Dominican Republic and won the Mexican League's Triple Crown in 1940. Afterward he worked as a security officer and custodian at St. Louis City Hall until 1970. He entered the Hall of Fame in 1974 and died in St. Louis in 1991.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge — 12 mi
  A 48,000-acre refuge of bottomland forest and lakes in Noxubee, Oktibbeha and Winston counties, rebuilt from worn-out farmland, with red-cockaded woodpeckers, alligators and winter eagles.
• Howlin' Wolf Memorial and Blues Trail Marker — 15 mi
  A Mississippi Blues Trail marker and granite memorial on East Broad Street honoring Chester Burnett, who was born nearby in 1910 and became the Chicago blues giant Howlin' Wolf.
• Waverley Mansion — 21 mi
  A National Historic Landmark mansion above the Tombigbee River, home of a plantation family that enslaved more than a hundred people, left empty for half a century before a family restored it.
• Tennessee Williams Welcome Center — 23 mi
  The 1875 Episcopal rectory where Tennessee Williams was born in 1911, moved to Main Street in the 1990s and now Columbus's welcome center and a National Literary Landmark.

More markers nearby

• Grierson's Raid — 0.9 mi
• Starkville — 1.7 mi
• First Presbyterian Church — 1.8 mi
• Johnny Cash "Starkville City Jail" — 1.8 mi