Even back when he was Joey Belle at LSU he was the same jerk then that he is now. His temper tantrums at LSU were legendary. His parting shot to LSU, to which he owes much, in Sport Illustrated was an all-time jerk classic, and so was his comment about what Sports Illustrated could kiss.
Here's a good summary of Joey. Amazingly, it's from a promotion for a book about him (officially by him, but can you say "ghost writer"? Of course you can):
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Don't Call Me Joey: The Wit and Wisdom of Albert (Joey) Belle
How does baseball's best hitter end up hated by even his hometown fans? How does one man manage to finish consistently near the top of the "biggest jerks in sports" polls, year after year? Don't Call Me Joey brings you the full story, told in his own words, of one of the most disagreeable sports figures in recent memory, the most loathed pro baseball player since Ty Cobb. It's all here -- Belle's tirades and scufflings with reporters, including a profane outburst leveled at NBC reporter Hanna Storm during the 1996 World Series (which earned him an unprecedented $50,000 fine); his beaning of a fan with a baseball during a game; his high-speed chase of two Cleveland teenagers who had egged his house on Halloween; his unprovoked hit-and-run on diminutive Milwaukee second baseman, Fernando Vina; his obscene gestures to heckling Indians fans; his hate-hate relationship with the media; and his non-appearance (for his own safety) at the 1997 All-Star Game, held in Cleveland, where he had played for nearly a decade. Don't Call Me Joey provides all the wit and all the wisdom of a man whose monstrous contract is matched only by his monstrous ego, the man who ESPN's Bill Conlon has described as a "serial jerk" and whose former fans call "a money-hungry backstabber", a man who has done more, single-handedly, to set back the cause of baseball than anyone in recent memory.
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You have to love it.
That's from:
<a href="http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=194618&cat=18889&type=3&dep t=3920&path=0%3A3920%3A18888%3A18889%3A22203" target="_blank">http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=194618&cat=18889&type=3&dep t=3920&path=0%3A3920%3A18888%3A18889%3A22203</a>
If you want his CBS Sportsline "rap sheet" (which is funny reading), it's at:
<a href="http://cbs.sportsline.com/u/ce/feature/0,1518,3614315_52,00.html" target="_blank">http://cbs.sportsline.com/u/ce/feature/0,1518,3614315_52,00.html</a>
His career stats are much like Kirby Puckett's, only with more power. Puckett will make the Hall of Fame easily. Belle won't.