Many baseball fans may know Andrew Bellatti as the reliever drafted by the Rays in 2009, who was able to experience a career renaissance with the Philadelphia Phillies. But fewer fans know of the personal struggles that the right-hander had to overcome off the field. Bellatti in 2010 pled guilty to vehicular manslaughter after a automobile accident he caused earlier that year that killed 50-year-old David Reid and injured Reid’s 17-year-old son Garrett. Bellatti received just an eight-month sentence after Reid’s wife Lyn asked the judge for leniency in the punishment.
Bellatti and the Reid family were profiled Sunday on ESPN, with the pitcher reading the letter he wrote to the family while he was awaiting sentencing, and meeting both Lyn and Garrett Reid for the first time.
Watch the SC Featured piece from ESPN senior writer Andrea Adelson below.
Steve Carney is the founder and publisher of St. Pete Nine. One of the people most associated with baseball coverage in Tampa Bay, he spent 13 seasons covering the Rays for flagship radio station WDAE, first as producer of Rays Radio broadcasts, then as beat reporter beginning in 2011. He likes new analytics and aged bourbon, and is the owner of one of the ugliest knuckleballs ever witnessed by baseball scouts.
