GLENDALE — Sitting in a Salt Lake City airport on Monday afternoon, Trevor Bell was about to turn his cell phone off before making one last call. It hadn’t stopped ringing since Saturday night.
When asked how he was feeling less than 48 hours prior to what will be the biggest game of his life, he let out a deep breath and replied, “I’m tired.”
To say the last three days have been a whirlwind would be an understatement for the 22-year-old Crescenta Valley High graduate.
“I’m just now starting to be able to realize how long it’s been,” said Bell of his days playing baseball, going from a Little League phenom to a top prospect in the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim organization. “The dream is finally here, it seems like I’m living something out that’s been written in a book.”
A storybook perhaps.
On Saturday, Bell was pulled rather quickly from his start with the Salt Lake Bees, the triple-A affiliate of the Angels, and informed by Bees Manager Bobby Mitchell that he had been called up to play for the Angels.
“I pretty much just started crying right there,” Bell said.
The former News-Press Athlete of the Year and multiple-time All-Area Baseball Player of the Year said it had not quite set in that he was now a Major League Baseball player, but added that it likely would today, as he’s scheduled to join the team a day before his scheduled Major League debut against the Tampa Bay Rays at 12:35 p.m. Wednesday at Angel Stadium.
“I’m as thrilled for Trevor as I could be for my own son,” said Bill Hertz, Bell’s agent who’s known him since coaching him in Little League. “Trevor, for me, is more than a player, he’s like one of my sons.
“He’s worked really hard and he deserves this.”
After throwing two scoreless innings for Salt Lake against visiting Memphis, Bell was told by Mitchell that the young right-hander looked a bit off. Mitchell asked Bell if he was hurt, to which Bell, puzzled, said he was fine. Nonetheless, Mitchell told him he was pulling him from the game, puzzling Bell further before Mitchell came clean that he had been called up to the majors.
Hertz was one of many who received a call from Bell after he received news. Another was Crescenta Valley High Coach Phil Torres, who skippered Bell for all four seasons with the Falcons.
“We’re excited for him,” Torres said. “He’s really, really worked hard.”
