Baseball Hall-of-Famer hospitalized after accident

Friday, December 31st 2004, 2:25 pm

By: News On 6

LITTLE ROCK (AP) Baseball Hall-of-Famer George Kell of Swifton will need some physical therapy to recover from a broken left leg and a broken left arm sustained in a traffic crash, his wife said Friday.

Carolyn Kell said her 82-year-old husband was ``doing very well'' but remained hospitalized for treatment of injuries from his Tuesday crash with a tractor-trailer near Newport.

``Considering the magnitude of the wreck, God was just with him,'' Mrs. Kell said.

She said her husband had watched a little football during the day Friday but doctors were giving him medicine to sedate him.

``He's going to need a little rehab'' to get over the broken bones, she said.

The crash occurred on U.S. 67 near Campbell Station, north of Newport. He was taken to a local hospital, then transferred to a hospital in Little Rock.

Kell played 15 years of major league ball, and he won the 1949 American League batting title. He was a 10-time All-Star and was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1983.

Kell played with five teams, all in the American League, beginning with the Philadelphia Athletics and then moving to the Detroit Tigers, Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox before ending with the Baltimore Orioles.

Kell was a broadcast announcer for the Detroit Tigers from 1959 to 1996.