Brandon Belt would like to be swinging a bat in San Francisco rather than San Jose sometime soon, but the Giants first baseman on a rehab assignment in the minor leagues made his last game in Class AA one to remember.
Belt hit a home run in San Jose's 8-3 victory over Visalia on Friday night. That wasn't all that noteworthy until a story emerged after the game that Belt's first-inning home run came just minutes after he promised a local cancer patient that he would hit a home run for her.
The San Jose Mercury News reported that 12-year-old Lyndsey Dworkin, who had a brain tumor discovered almost two years ago, threw out the first pitch of San Jose's game Friday night wearing a Giants T-Shirt with Belt's name and number on the back of it.
After seeing the T-Shirt, Belt hopped out of the dugout after Dworkin threw her pitch to say hello and at the end of the conversation told her that he would hit a home run for her.
"I thought, 'What a sweet thing to say. He seems like a nice guy,' " Kristine Dworkin, Lyndsey's mother, told the Mercury News.
Lyndsey told the newspaper she had forgotten about the promise until she was presented with Belt's home run ball with a message from Belt inscribed on it. It read: "To Lyndsey, my good luck charm."
Belt won't play again for San Jose after leaving for Class AAA Fresno on Saturday, but he has extended an invitation for Lyndsey and her family to visit him in San Francisco when he returns to the Giants.
Lyndsey also has the memory of throwing out the first pitch.
"A little bit to the right," she told the newspaper, "but it was better than I thought it was."
Forget something?
As if traveling on the road as a minor-league baseball player isn't hard enough, the Tacoma Rainiers ran into another road horror story last week.
The Rainiers, the Class AAA team of the Seattle Mariners, were traveling from Seattle to El Paso, Texas. When they showed up, the Rainiers weren't able to play the scheduled 7:05 p.m. start because an airline had lost their luggage.
So the team made it to Southwest University Park just fine, but their gloves, uniforms, bats and cleats were still in Houston, where they caught a connecting flight. The game was postponed and made up part of a doubleheader Saturday.
"I've never seen this happen in 20 years of minor league baseball," El Paso General Manager Brad Taylor told the El Paso Times. "It is unfortunate and I feel bad for our fans. This doesn't make anyone happy, but close to or more than 70 percent of Tacoma's luggage is sitting on a tarmac in Houston."
No peanuts here
In an attempt to make the fan experience more friendly, Northwestern University announced last week that it will not sell peanuts in its concession stands during three college football games this season.
The school said Thursday that it received so much feedback after not selling peanuts at one game last year that it has decided to do it and expand it to three games. Mike Polisky, the school's deputy athletic director, said in a statement that the ban allows fans with peanut allergies to attend a game.
"We learned of so many families that were able to experience Big Ten football for the first time [last year]," Polisky said. "This year we're excited to be able to offer tens of thousands of Chicagoland families perhaps their first opportunity to experience college athletics at the highest level across a number of our programs."
Sports quiz
Q. Off of whom did Brandon Belt hit his first major-league home run?
A. Belt's first home run came off the Los Angeles Dodgers' Chad Billingsleyon April 1, 2011.
Sports on 06/30/2014