Good morning, baseball fans!

Late last year, the San Francisco Giants announced that they would be hosting a celebratory event honoring the contributions of former first baseman, Captain, All Star, baby giraffe, and first-ballot Goofball HOF Brandon Belt.

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Belt debuted for the Giants in 2011 and played for them until 2022, before signing with the Toronto Blue Jays for a resurgent 2023 final season. The Giants have since honored his fellow Brandon, Brandon Crawford, but fans have yet to get their moment to honor him.

That changes this year, however, as Belt will get his celebration on April 25th. An event I’m greatly looking forward to attending in-person.

Recently the Giants’ social media team produced a highlight video of the best of Belt’s moments as a Giant. Sadly, the video seems to be limited to actual baseball contributions, and doesn’t include his vast catalogue of hilarious Giants commercials (which I think might be his best contribution to the team). But it does have some of the most memorable moments on the field.

So I thought we would watch that today, and maybe talk about some of our favorite Belt memories.

It’s hard for me to narrow down my list of favorite Belt memories, as he was my favorite player for the better part of a decade.

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One of my favorite moments has to be the time he hit a home run almost directly at me during an exhibition game against the Sacramento River Cats back in 2016. My grandfather would pass away later that night while I was at the game, but for a short period of time I got to be distracted about nearly getting decapitated by that homer.

Then there was the time he hit his first grand slam. I was driving when he came up to bat with the bases loaded, and I pulled over so I could tweet “Give me a Brandon Belt grand slam or give me death” as I was wont to do. And the second I hit send, he did just that. I was very glad I had pulled over because I was losing my mind. And in true Brandon Belt fashion, he went on to hit another home run in that game, essentially being a one-man offense, and the team managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory anyway.

Another personal favorite has to be the day he was named as a 2016 All Star. I helped lead the charge on social media to get him voted in, and I got to be there in person the day it was announced and celebrate with tons of other fans.

Those are my personal favorites. What about you?