When I started this little blog of mine, I did so mostly because I needed a place to vent my frustrations with the handling of a certain awkward, but talented, first baseman by the name of Brandon Belt.

Tired of watching one of the five best offensive players on the roster wasted day-in and day-out by a coaching staff who seemingly reveled in ruffling the Orange and Black feathers of those of us in the #freeBelt camp, I simply felt compelled to speak out.

I defended our beloved Baby Giraffe and did my best to conduct the #freeBelt campaign in the face of those who wanted to see him benched, traded or demoted. So imagine my surprise when none other than Belt himself decided it was time to call out little old me on Twitter for all the world to see. How did that happen, you ask? Here now, the story, of that one time, I got called out, on Twitter, by Brandon Belt. That last sentence works best when spoken in suspense-movie-trailer voice.

It was a late on a Saturday night in early March and I was minding my own business, checking out Twitter in the hopes of getting the opinion of ESPN’s Keith Law on what he had seen earlier that day when he visited Scottsdale Stadium to watch the Giants. Starved for info on how our defending champs were shaping up early in the spring, I tweeted this at Keith…

@keithlaw How did Belt look today? — Adam Doctolero (@AdamDoctolero) March 10, 2013

Seemed like an innocent enough question to me, but Keith’s response was certainly not what I wanted to hear…

It was at this point that I began to get hit with tweets from Giants fans who had noticed the answer to my oh-so-innocent question, wondering what in the world Keith meant by “same”. As a fan of Keith’s work, I knew immediately what it meant and explained it in several tweets and one in particular…

@SPORTSKlNG Yep, hip flying forward, jumping at the ball, not being patient and trusting his hands. I was afraid the #'s were a mirage — Adam Doctolero (@AdamDoctolero) March 10, 2013

This fellow Giants fan and I then engaged in a friendly chat about what we thought of Belt and how the big league staff had tinkered with his swing. During the course of the conversation this fan decided to tag Belt in one of his comments, mentioning that he hoped Belt would see the conversation, and see it he would.

Now this is where the story gets a little fuzzy as Belt has since deleted all of his tweets from that day. Let’s just say he was none too pleased with two nobody’s discussing his swing and all that was wrong with it, and then tagging him in the discussion to boot. While I can understand how this would tick someone off, in my own defense, I was not the one who tagged him initially and when I did, my comments were generally positive…

@SPORTSKlNG Haha, @bbelt9 will handle his business. He's a talented player and I believe he can get the job done. — Adam Doctolero (@AdamDoctolero) March 10, 2013

This of course mattered little to Belt who, while yours truly was sound asleep, decided it was time for him to interject himself into the discussion and ask just how exactly I came to the conclusions I came to about his swing and how I would “fix” it. Somewhat inevitably, a lot of this happened…

Hahahahah called out RT @bbelt9: @AdamDoctolero @sportsklng so how did you come to this conclusion? — Carmen Kiew (@carmenkiew) March 10, 2013

At this point I certainly could have apologized profusely and begged the forgiveness of the professional baseball player who clearly knows more about his own game than I could ever hope to. But if you know anything about me, you know that I’m not one to back off of my opinions if I feel strongly enough about them. I did tell him that the scouting report I had regurgitated in the conversation had come from Keith, but pointed out that I had seen many of the same things and said so right here on this lowly blog. I then set about answering his “fix it” question…

@bbelt9 I thought where you were at in early 2011 was good. More of an all-fields approach, more direction back through the box. I thought.. — Adam Doctolero (@AdamDoctolero) March 10, 2013

@bbelt9 …your comments late last year about getting back to hitting line drives was right on. You have plenty of power no need to force it — Adam Doctolero (@AdamDoctolero) March 10, 2013

He replied that he was feeling great and that this was the most comfortable he had felt since reaching the big leagues. The numbers certainly bear that out too as he has torn the cover off the ball this spring. He also mentioned that taking the ball the other way and getting back to that all-fields approach was a focus of his, which I let him know was a great thing to hear. Things seemed to be going well and I was feeling good about the way I had handled what could have been an awkward situation. Little did I know that the awkward was right around the corner.

Suddenly, without warning, I was introduced to what happens when you stand too close to a baby giraffe. Namely, you get kicked square in the teeth. Now I wish I had been able to save this tweet, and you will forgive me if I paraphrase just a tiny bit, but after a nice, calm exchange between myself and the first baseman from the San Francisco Giants, he hit me with the haymaker.

“Bottom line,” he said, “if you’re going to have a conversation about how much you think I suck, you don’t have to tag me in it.”

I won’t lie, I nearly fell over in my chair as that tweet smashed up against my new found confidence and sent it flying against the wall that is my unwavering fandom of all things San Francisco Giants. My brain scrambled, I defended myself, barely…

@bbelt9 Fair enough, but I never said anything about you sucking. — Adam Doctolero (@AdamDoctolero) March 10, 2013

As I waited for the next angry response, a million thoughts ran through my head, not the least of which was that this blog was truly doomed as I had effectively turned its namesake against me. Thankfully, just as quickly as the tone had changed, it flipped again and I received apologies from young Mr. Belt via a tweet letting me know he didn’t mean to come off as harsh and a DM to much the same effect.

Suffice to say I was relieved and in the end I think he understood where I was coming from. Not to be left out of course was Keith, who tweeted…

@bbelt9 @SPORTSKlNG @adamdoctolero Brandon, you're hitting well and feeling good, so feel free to ignore my observations — keithlaw (@keithlaw) March 10, 2013

I couldn’t have agreed more and ultimately it was a fun, sometimes uncomfortable, conversation to have with a big league ballplayer. I found myself feeling better about Belt’s overall progress and he later confirmed that his success down the stretch last season actually had more to do with approach as opposed to his mechanics.

The at-bats that I have seen this spring have looked much better and even though I still see some of the same mechanical issues that I saw before. I am hopeful that Belt’s talent will be able to overcome and that 2013 will be the breakout year we are all hoping for.