Meet Your Beavers - "We'll Just Call You Belle"

It was the first ever Beaver game, summer of 1991. The roster was made up of mainly guys from Kirkwood High and Parkway South grads; with one exception. A roommate of Rake's from college was going to join the squad. Dave Petlansky go to the game and introduced himself to Gee, who was making out the roster. After several attempts of pronouncing his name, Gee says, "We'll just call you Belle". Dave just said, "whatever" and played the game. When Rake make it to the next game I had to ask why "Belle?", it made no sense that I could figure out.

Turns out all along Gee heard something like "Bellansky", not knowing how to spell that, he shortened it. Here it is 2009 and the name lives on. There have been many iterations of Belle, basically think of anything that has Belle or Bell in it and that was his nickname. One other nickname worth mentioning is "Boots" - he earned this moniker when he forgot his cleats to a game and had to play wearing his steel-toed work boots.

Belle has spent most of his Beaver career manning left field and left centerfield. Known more for his "Belleisms" than his bat he has been a steady player in the lineup from the beginning. He leads the team in games played as well as stories that seem to start out of no where and end much, much later.

Wearing #86, in honor of "86ing things", Belle gets the nod as our leadoff hitter for the Meet Your Beavers segment.