Ballplayer James “Cool Papa” Bell received his nickname early in his career in the Negro League and carried it until his death in 1991. To this day streets in Mississippi, the state of his birth, and Missouri, the state of his death, bear the Hall of Famer’s moniker. But competing theories about how Bell, one of baseball’s fastest players, was given the name are at the center of an unusual lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan.

Bell’s daughter, Connie Brooks, has filed suit against a baseball card company, Topps, over the description of Bell that the company provides on the back of a 2001 special edition card. The short biography concludes by saying that Cool Papa “earned his nickname after falling asleep right before a game.”

To many eyes the statement seems innocuous enough. But Ms. Brooks calls it, in court papers, a “bogus painful lie,” and said it belittles the difficult lives of the players of the Negro League.

Topps’s story, Ms. Brooks claims, insinuates that her father was an alcoholic or drug addict and unable to keep his eyes open.

“In his life he did not smoke or drink,” Ms. Brooks, of Manhattan, told The New York Sun. “But they take a Negro Leaguer and think it’s okay to make him a little buffoonish, a little clownish, and suggest that he’s nodding off. That’s an insult to a man’s legacy.”

In the days before Jackie Robinson integrated baseball, the black ball players, barred from playing with white counterparts, had their own league of teams. In addition to the hardships itinerant athletes ordinarily faced, these ballplayers had to deal with a racism so rampant they were outlawed from even passing through many towns after dark, Ms. Brooks recalled.

In a sport whose history is recorded on the backs of trading cards, Ms. Brooks says Topps failed to give Bell his due.

“Did Topps put that bogus lie on their sports cards to amuse people for business gain or to belittle ‘Cool Papa’ because he played in the Negro League?,” she wrote in legal papers.

James Bell played for teams across the Midwest between 1922 and 1950. Towards the end of his career he scouted out young black talent for the integrated major leagues. As a young player, he began as a pitcher until his batting ability and running ability made him an everyday player. His speed prompted legends, and Satchel Paige famously claimed that Bell was so fast he could switch off the lights at night and be under the covers before the room went dark. That anecdote is also included on the back of the 2001 Topps card.

But what does not appear on the card’s back, Ms. Brooks said, is the true story behind her father’s nickname. As part of the suit, Ms. Brooks submitted a letter describing the origins of the name by a professor who has researched Bell’s life.

The professor, Charles Bolton of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, said that the nickname dates to Bell’s days as a rookie knuckleball pitcher for the St. Louis Stars.

“He was put in a tight situation as a rookie and the manager told him not to worry about it,” Mr. Bolton said in an interview. “He went in and mowed them all down and he was real cool about it. He just wouldn’t get rattled at all.”

That, Mr. Bolton claims, is how James Bell became “Cool Papa” Bell. It is the story Ms. Brooks endorses. But there are more than just two tales.

A researcher at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Claudette Burke, said the reference book on nicknames in use in Cooperstown tells of how Bell, traveling on a Pullman to Detroit, was unexcitable when told he would pitch the upcoming game. In that telling, Bell was awoken from a nap to hear the news.

Ms. Brooks filed her lawsuit in February on her own behalf. Ms. Brooks is in her 70s and said that Topps failed to contact her about issuing cards of her father.

Ms. Brooks said Topps may have issued at least seven cards of her father in recent years. In addition to monetary damages, she demands that Topps collect all the cards of her father so she can destroy them, according to legal papers. Lastly she wants Topps to print a photograph of Bell and a short biography in six newspapers or magazines every Sunday for six years — the number of years Topps printed the cards.

Legal observers say the suit has little chance of success. Under New York law, libel suits cannot claim that a dead person has been defamed, a partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler and the former Attorney General of New Jersey, Peter Harvey, said.

But Mr. Harvey, a baseball fan with no connection to the case, said a better legal claim would be to argue that Topps cannot use Bell’s likeness for business purposes without the permission of Bell’s estate.

The case is currently before Judge Denise Cote of U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

A lawyer for Topps, David Ebert, declined to comment. Topps has denied wrongdoing and said that the statute of limitation has expired, according to court papers.

Topps has been willing to settle with Ms. Brooks. At one point, the company offered her $35,000 and said it would “consider producing another card of Cool Papa” featuring copy provided by Ms. Brooks, according to a letter from the Director of Sports Licensing for Topps, Philip Carter.

Regardless of the outcome, Mr. Bolton, the professor, said: “We should all be so lucky to have children like her. She is so respectful of her father’s legacy.”