CLEARWATER, Fla. — The car ride to meet Lyn and Garrett Reid is quiet, each mile taking Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Andrew Bellatti back 13 years, to the accident, the jail cell and the darkness.
The Reids wait for his arrival. They pace and check their watches. They, too, are transported 13 years back, to the accident and the funeral for their beloved David and their relentless pain and grief.
They all want this meeting to happen, but nobody knows what to expect. Bellatti wonders what he will say. The Reids wonder how they will feel. One tragedy has tethered them together, but this is the first time they will actually speak to one another since the day everything changed, Jan. 22, 2010.
On that day, Bellatti was driving too fast on a wet road and crashed his Ford Mustang head-on into a Dodge Caravan. Garrett Reid was critically injured. His dad, David, was killed. Bellatti, an 18-year-old prospect in the Tampa Bay Rays organization at the time, was arrested and charged with vehicular manslaughter.
As newly widowed Lyn Reid tried to navigate how she and her two kids would live without David, she felt certain about one thing in the months that followed the accident. She did not want Bellatti to go to prison. Some of her friends vehemently disagreed and bluntly asked, “How could you not throw down the gauntlet?”
Lyn could never find the right words to explain how she felt. She just knew she needed to forgive Bellatti so she could move forward and, she says, “not sleep with rage.” So she asked the judge for leniency in sentencing. He granted it. Bellatti spent less than a year in jail, and resumed his baseball career.
Now here they are on a hot day during spring training, a new season dawning. Bellatti pulls into the driveway of a house ESPN has arranged as a meeting place for both parties. He’s with his wife, Kylee, 3-year-old daughter and brother-in-law. His face, already flushed.
He opens the front door.
“Hello,” Lyn says in a sing-song voice as they enter. Garrett stands next to her.
She stretches out her arms. Bellatti walks toward her, his head bowed. This is the woman who saved him, who gave him his life back and allowed him to live out his dream as a baseball player when few others thought she should. This is their story: One about tragedy, yes, but also about forgiveness, second chances and the healing power of both.
They embrace.
Bellatti tries not to cry.
BOTH THE REID and Bellatti families made their homes in San Diego. Lyn and David Reid met in the Navy, had two kids and were married for 23 years. David volunteered in the drama department at Steele Canyon High School, where his kids, Garrett and Katy, attended. He was known as the “Drama Papa,” and Garrett was active in the Steele Canyon Players drama club. Lyn and David would run the concessions stand together for performances.
Both Lyn and Garrett describe David as “the life of the party,” with a keen sense of humor and fiercely devoted to his family. “I never had to ask my dad to be involved,” Garrett says. “He was just ubiquitous.”
“He was fiercely devoted to my sister and I, and unwaveringly supportive of whatever endeavor we wanted to do. We went for a cruise, and I was like, ‘I think I want to do scuba diving.’ And next day, we were scuba diving. We got home to San Diego and we were taking courses within the month. Then I had all the scuba gear I could ever possibly want.”
Andrew Bellatti attended Steele Canyon as well, and graduated a year before Garrett Reid (they did not share the same social circles). Bellatti, the youngest of three children, was a star on the baseball team. He was known as the “Strikeout Machine” and dreamed of making it to the majors and playing for the hometown Padres.
After the Rays drafted him out of high school in 2009, Bellatti made his first big purchase: a brand-new, red Mustang. He loved the color, the speed, the sound system. “I felt really proud of that because I was getting hand-me-downs, being the youngest,” he said. “My mom had a car that she gave to my sister. My sister had a car she gave to my brother. And then I was left with it at the very end. So getting my own car was something that was really special.”
Bellatti was back home for the offseason the day of the accident. He was running late to take his then-girlfriend to her basketball game. As he approached Steele Canyon High, a car pulled out in front of him. Rather than slam on his brakes, Bellatti decided to try and pass. But he did so illegally, crossing a double yellow line — and right into oncoming traffic.
David and Garrett Reid were traveling home from the movies in the opposite direction.
“I’m looking out the window, not paying attention and I hear tires screeching,” Garrett Reid says. “I look to my left and see just a blur of red. My dad pulls to the right hard. And the last words I hear are, “Oh s—.”
“I know for a fact, I was going fast. I didn’t really judge how fast,” Bellatti said. “I don’t know if I should have hit my brakes. But I know I was in a hurry to get to where I was going. Then after that, I just blacked out.”
David Reid died in the accident. He was 50. Garrett Reid sustained fractures to his skull, cheekbone and wrist.
Bellatti does not remember much about the accident, nor the days immediately afterward. He was able to play rookie ball with the Princeton Rays before returning to San Diego to face criminal charges.
In October 2010, Bellatti pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter. He faced between five and seven years in prison.
Thoughts about his own future mixed with thoughts about the Reid family. As Bellatti sat in his jail cell awaiting sentencing, he had an overwhelming desire to reach out to the Reids. He had to somehow tell them how sorry he was for what he had done. What he really wanted was the chance to sit down and talk to them. But it was too hard, too painful, too awkward and uncomfortable. So he wrote a letter instead.
Bellatti stared at the blank page in front of him for hours before picking up the pencil.
“I was holding a lot of stuff on the inside,” he says. “Just saying that I felt bad is such an understatement. Saying that I was sorry couldn’t even come close to how I actually felt. I wanted to get something to her, some sort of ‘I’m sorry,’ even though I know it wouldn’t even matter.”
Dear Mrs. Reid, Garrett Reid and Katy Reid,
I’m writing you to tell you how very deeply sorry I am that you are going through all this pain due to my actions. My intentions that day and every other day of my life was not to cause pain to anyone.
I made a horrible mistake, and I’ve learned from this more than anything else in my life. Not a day goes by that I don’t recall that night and cry alone. I can’t stop. I cry myself to sleep. This horrible situation will live with me for the rest of my life.
I’m sorry to Garrett and Katy, because I couldn’t imagine what they are going through, losing their father. I am so very sorry, Garrett and Katy. I’m very sorry to you, Mrs. Reid. You do not deserve this at all, and I can’t imagine how my mom would feel if my dad was gone. It’s so hard to write this letter, but I just thought that you should know how I felt and to say how sorry I truly am.
With the upmost sincerity,
Andrew Bellatti
Lyn Reid received the letter, but says she has no recollection of reading it at the time. Though prosecutors wanted a prison sentence, Lyn Reid had already determined she wanted leniency.
During the sentencing hearing, prosecutor Curtis Ross laid it out simply: “The conduct and the level of recklessness that Mr. Bellatti displayed that day would normally warrant a prison case but for him victimizing an extremely kind and compassionate family,” Ross told the judge he would abide by her wish and recommend that Bellatti avoid prison time.
Bellatti was sentenced to eight months in jail and five years’ probation.
“It wasn’t forced,” Lyn Reid says. “It didn’t hit me like a bolt of lightning or anything like that. It was just how I felt. I knew we couldn’t have Dave back. How much carnage do you want from one event? There’d been enough.”
Lyn Reid laughs when asked whether she has always been a forgiving person.
“I took a personality test, and I’m to the left of Gandhi or something like that,” she says. “That’s kind of who I am. I’m not religious, but I was raised with religion, and I do believe that a lot of the prophets give us the best advice. Forgiveness is usually No. 1 on those lists.”
But there is one more point Lyn wants to make. Her forgiveness came with her husband in mind.
“Dave would have forgiven him before I even did,” she says through tears.
“Dave had a very generous spirit. Even when I couldn’t explain what I wanted to do to anyone else, it’s what Dave would have wanted. He would have wanted us to move on. He would have wanted us not to throw the book at a dumb kid. He understood that everyone makes mistakes, and everyone deserves a second chance.”
FOR GARRETT, FINDING forgiveness took more time as he grappled with the accident and loss of his father. What did forgiveness mean? Did it mean absolution? Did it mean trying to push anger aside to repair what is left of a life? Did it mean being selfless when everything else says be selfish?
On the first day back at school after the accident, Garrett, then 17, remembers reaching a breaking point. He had a cast on his foot and a cane to help him walk. He slipped on a set of stairs and fell backward. Two girls started giggling as he stood up, and that reaction triggered something inside him.
“I howled,” Garrett says. “I realized what I was living with, and the pain. It was primal. I was filled with malice. Rage. I lived with that rage and nightmares and fantasies for quite some time, for several months. It wasn’t until I realized that hate at such a severe caliber was consuming me: waking moments, days, nights, dreams. It was all consuming.”
Garrett had vivid nightmares, in which he exacted revenge for what Bellatti did to his father.
“Evening the score,” he says. “Truly at the heart of it, in the darkest moments, it was ending his life. It was costing me myself. I remember reaching this first part of having to forgive Andrew. But it wasn’t absolution for him. I think most of us associate forgiveness with this benevolent, godly thing. In this moment, forgiveness was for me.”
Garrett says after he made the decision to let go of his rage, he understood he had to work on what he calls “the emotional gauntlet that was thrown down in my life.” He also supported his mom and her decision to ask for leniency. But going through all of that made him reconsider what it means to forgive.
“I think we all like to think of it as: I’m sorry, I forgive you,” Garrett said. “But you can forgive someone and still hold them accountable for their actions. You can forgive someone and still be angry at them. Forgiving Andrew doesn’t simply fix things. Forgiving Andrew let me sleep at night. Forgiving Andrew let me acknowledge his humanity, and the mistakes that he made.”
It has taken years for Garrett to reach this point, where he can talk about both his grief and his father with clarity and perspective. He describes his grief “like the waves.”
“With time, the tide got lower,” he says. “I still have to live with the loss of my father for the rest of my life, and that will be my own journey. But even when I had processed that rage and gotten rid of it, if I’d have a meltdown around a success, like, ‘I wish I could call my dad and tell him,’ it was never a slim thought of, ‘Screw [Andrew]. He took that from me.’ There’s still the pain. But it’s softened. The edges are rounded out versus sharp.”
LYN KEPT THE letter Bellatti wrote to her from jail, putting it in a box with everything from the accident. She cannot explain why, but at some point last summer, she went to clean out her garage and found it in a “needs to be filed” pile. Her first reaction was to put it in the shredder. She had not thought about Bellatti or the letter in years.
Now remarried and living in South Dakota, Lyn asked her husband, John, to read the letter first and to then research what had happened to Bellatti.
After he was released from jail in early 2011 after serving three months, Bellatti resumed his baseball career. The Rays left a roster spot for him, and he played short season A ball in Hudson Valley. In an interview with the Tampa Bay Times in 2015, Rays farm director Mitch Lukevics said Bellatti was “an outstanding young man who was involved in a sad and unfortunate accident.”
That same season, Bellatti made his major league debut with the Rays. But shoulder, arm and elbow injuries derailed his career for the next five years. At one point, he found himself out of baseball altogether. But in 2021, he decided to give it one more shot — signing with the Miami Marlins before moving on to the Phillies in 2022.
Finding out that Bellatti was pitching for the Phillies shocked Lyn. It just so happened on the day she found the letter, he was pitching in San Diego. Intrigued, she followed the Phillies through their World Series run, one that saw Bellatti make eight playoff appearances out of the bullpen. His 2022 postseason included nine strikeouts and a 1.29 ERA. Watching Bellatti pitch brought her back to dates at the ballpark with David. The two used to go to Padres games together, sitting behind home plate. They both loved baseball.
Thinking about David and baseball triggered her grief all over again, but in different ways.
“It’s amazing what you can’t process when it’s too close, that you think you’ve dealt with, and you haven’t,” she says. “You go through the whole grieving process all over again. [I] did a lot of talking about Dave. But it was easier. It was easier to talk. Easier to remember the funny stuff and the good things.”
Around the time the Phillies made the World Series, Lyn got a call from The Philadelphia Inquirer. During her conversation with the Inquirer reporter, Lyn learned Bellatti had mentioned he never heard back after he wrote the letter. She thought, “I have to reach out.”
The article that published last December, allowed both Reid and Bellatti to connect in a new way — Lyn learned about his 12-year journey to get to the major leagues, one filled with multiple injuries, various setbacks, stints with multiple organizations and time away from the game. Bellatti learned the Reids had a happy life, and Lyn still had that letter.
The story facilitated their first face-to-face meeting.
Going back in time, thinking about where he is now — married, a father, finally a major leaguer — forces Bellatti to confront both powerful emotions and powerful questions. One month before his meeting with the Reids, Bellatti is reliving it all again, 18 years old, driving a red Mustang. He wants to talk about what happened, because he feels sharing his story means shining a light on Lyn, and what it means to forgive. “I just want this to be something that can inspire people,” he says.
Bellatti had thought about meeting Lyn Reid for years.
“That by far would be the most emotional day of my life,” he says, blinking back tears.
What would he say? How would he say it?
“What I want to say and what comes out, I have …,” he pauses to collect himself.
“I don’t know,” he says. “But I know I want to say I’m sorry.”
THE MOMENT IS here. After he hugs Lyn, Andrew turns to Garrett and hugs him, too. For Garrett, the hug allows him to breathe again. Because, in all honesty, Garrett remained skeptical about why Bellatti wanted to meet with them.
Garrett wants to support his mom, but he needs to see Andrew for himself, to judge his true sincerity. The hug begins to ease his doubts.
They exchange pleasantries to fill the awkward silence. But everybody knows Bellatti came here to do one thing. He steels himself and says what he has wanted to say for 13 years, looking Lyn and Garrett in the eye.
“No. 1, I want to say I’m sorry,” Bellatti says, his eyes welling with tears. “I know I wrote you a letter, but writing is … you can read words, but I want to tell you face to face. I just want you to know I’m sorry. Somehow you didn’t want me to rot in the ground for the rest of my life. You honestly had a hand in where this life is.
“And you had a hand in her,” Bellatti says, motioning to his daughter, Brylyn, who is playing with toys near the couch. “So I also want to say thank you.”
Lyn nods her head. As she begins to speak, her voice starts cracking.
“I’m so proud of you because it’s really easy to just lay down and play dead, and it’s really hard to come back around and create a life,” she says. “You did it. Accidents happen, and the one who would’ve been the most forgiving is Dave. It was just a bad time, and a bad day in the wrong place.”
Garrett allows his skepticism to subside as he listens to Bellatti and watches how he still grapples with both the pain and fallout from what happened that day.
“I have to say it does matter what you say,” Garrett tells Bellatti. “It’s peculiar. I had never read the letter. By choice, by purposeful decision, I can’t really say. But I never read your letter. And the night before I left [for the meeting], I read it, and it made me just reflect on this dynamic that we’ve ended up in together.
“When I sit and think about our two positions, I’d rather be on my side,” Garrett continues. “To have to live with what you’ve been living with and to tackle those demons, I empathize. I share those sentiments, just not wanting to go through life hurting someone to that level.”
Lyn and Garrett repeat what they have both told themselves, their friends and the public since: There was no malice. Just a terrible accident.
Then Lyn acknowledges what has been hanging over them for a decade.
“I don’t think we could have done this 10 years ago,” Lyn says. “It would have been too hard then. Don’t you think? I mean, I feel like there’s parts of it I can just deal with now, you know?
“It’s God’s timing in all this,” Bellatti says.
They talk more about their lives. The Bellattis reveal they are expecting their second child; Lyn talks about her infant granddaughter.
Lyn turns to Bellatti.
“Do you feel better?” she asks. “I’m sorry I didn’t reach out to you sooner.”
Bellatti shakes his head. “No, no …”
“I didn’t want to put more pressure on you,” Lyn says. “I just never felt like there was anything to gain from it. But now I really think we’ll all be able to move on a little lighter.”
The Reids and Bellattis spend about 30 minutes together. As it turns out, the Reids do most of the talking — perhaps to put Bellatti at ease, perhaps to fill some of the uncomfortable moments, perhaps so Bellatti understands what is left to do: forgive himself.
The two families say goodbye and go their separate ways. When the Bellattis get in their car, Kylee notices that Andrew is emotionally exhausted. But a weight has been lifted, and the quiet in the car feels different this time. Less tense. More reflective.
As the Reids head back to their hotel, their route takes them over a bridge toward Clearwater Beach. Their view is breathtaking: Directly ahead, the sun is setting over the ocean. Their car ride is quiet, too, as Garrett and Lyn see the beauty in front of them.
Rodriguez led all the way to win the $750,000 Wood Memorial on Saturday, earning enough points to move into the 20-horse field for next month’s Kentucky Derby.
Breaking from the rail, the Bob Baffert-trained colt ran 1 1/8 miles on a fast track in 1:48.15 under Hall of Famer Mike Smith in light rain and 45-degree temperatures at Aqueduct in New York. Rodriguez won by 3 1/2 lengths.
The victory was worth 100 qualifying points for the May 3 Derby, potentially giving Baffert three entrants as he seeks a record-setting seventh victory in his return to the race from which he was banned for three years.
Later Saturday, Baffert was to saddle Citizen Bull, last year’s 2-year-old champion, and Barnes in the $500,000 Santa Anita Derby in California, where it was sunny and 82 degrees.
He sent Rodriguez to New York to split up his Derby contenders. The colt was sent off at 7-2 odds in the 10-horse field and paid $9.30 to win the 100th edition of the Wood. He is a son of 2020 Kentucky Derby winner Authentic.
“Bob told me this horse is probably quicker than you think,” Smith said. “He can get uptight pretty easy, and the whole key was just letting him alone out there. I don’t think he necessarily has to have the lead. He just wants to be left alone.”
Smith has twice won the Kentucky Derby. Rodriguez would be his first mount since 2022. At 59, he would be the oldest jockey to win.
“That’s up to all the owners and Bob,” Smith said. “I was glad they pulled me off the bench and I hit a 3-shot for them.”
Grande, trained by Todd Pletcher, was second. He went from having zero qualifying points to 50, which should get him into the Derby starting gate for owner Mike Repole, who is 0 for 7 in the Derby.
Passion Rules was third. Captain Cook, the 9-5 favorite, finished fourth for trainer Rick Dutrow, who hasn’t had a Derby runner since 2010 after winning the 2008 race with Big Brown.
The $1.25 million Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland was postponed from Saturday to Tuesday due to heavy rain and potential flooding in the region. That race and the Lexington Stakes on April 12 are the final Derby preps of the season.
LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska receiver Hardley Gilmore IV, who transferred from Kentucky in January, has been dismissed from the team, coach Matt Rhule announced Saturday.
The second-year player from Belle Glade, Florida, had come to Nebraska along with former Kentucky teammate Dane Key and receivers coach Daikiel Shorts Jr. and had received praise from teammates and coaches for his performance in spring practice.
Rhule did not disclose a reason for removing Gilmore.
“Nothing outside the program, nothing criminal or anything like that,” Rhule said. “Just won’t be with us anymore.”
Gilmore was charged with misdemeanor assault in December for allegedly punching someone in the face at a storage facility in Lexington, Kentucky, the Lexington Herald Leader reported on Jan. 2.
Gilmore played in seven games as a freshman for the Wildcats and caught six passes for 153 yards. He started against Murray State and caught a 52-yard touchdown pass on Kentucky’s opening possession. He was a consensus four-star recruit who originally chose Kentucky over Penn State and UCF.
The opening weekend of the 2025 MLB season was taken over by a surprise star — torpedo bats.
The bowling pin-shaped bats became the talk of the sport after the Yankees’ home run onslaught on the first Saturday of the season put it in the spotlight and the buzz hasn’t slowed since.
What exactly is a torpedo bat? How does it help hitters? And how is it legal? Let’s dig in.
What is a torpedo bat and why is it different from a traditional MLB bat?
The idea of the torpedo bat is to take a size format — say, 34 inches and 32 ounces — and distribute the wood in a different geometric shape than the traditional form to ensure the fattest part of the bat is located where the player makes the most contact. Standard bats taper toward an end cap that is as thick diametrically as the sweet spot of the barrel. The torpedo bat moves some of the mass on the end of the bat about 6 to 7 inches lower, giving it a bowling-pin shape, with a much thinner end.
How does it help hitters?
The benefits for those who like swinging with it — and not everyone who has swung it likes it — are two-fold. Both are rooted in logic and physics. The first is that distributing more mass to the area of most frequent contact aligns with players’ swing patterns and provides greater impact when bat strikes ball. Players are perpetually seeking ways to barrel more balls, and while swings that connect on the end of the bat and toward the handle probably will have worse performance than with a traditional bat, that’s a tradeoff they’re willing to make for the additional slug. And as hitters know, slug is what pays.
The second benefit, in theory, is increased bat speed. Imagine a sledgehammer and a broomstick that both weigh 32 ounces. The sledgehammer’s weight is almost all at the end, whereas the broomstick’s is distributed evenly. Which is easier to swing fast? The broomstick, of course, because shape of the sledgehammer takes more strength and effort to move. By shedding some of the weight off the end of the torpedo bat and moving it toward the middle, hitters have found it swings very similarly to a traditional model but with slightly faster bat velocity.
Why did it become such a big story so early in the 2025 MLB season?
Because the New York Yankees hit nine home runs in a game Saturday and Michael Kay, their play-by-play announcer, pointed out that some of them came from hitters using a new bat shape. The fascination was immediate. While baseball, as an industry, has implemented forward-thinking rules in recent seasons, the modification to something so fundamental and known as the shape of a bat registered as bizarre. The initial response from many who saw it: How is this legal?
OK. How is this legal?
Major League Baseball’s bat regulations are relatively permissive. Currently, the rules allow for a maximum barrel diameter of 2.61 inches, a maximum length of 42 inches and a smooth and round shape. The lack of restrictions allows MLB’s authorized bat manufacturers to toy with bat geometry and for the results to still fall within the regulations.
Who came up with the idea of using them?
The notion of a bowling-pin-style bat has kicked around baseball for years. Some bat manufacturers made smaller versions as training tools. But the version that’s now infiltrating baseball goes back two years when a then-Yankees coach named Aaron Leanhardt started asking hitters how they should counteract the giant leaps in recent years made by pitchers.
When Yankees players responded that bigger barrels would help, Leanhardt — an MIT-educated former Michigan physics professor who left academia to work in the sports industry — recognized that as long as bats stayed within MLB parameters, he could change their geometry to make them a reality. Leanhardt, who left the Yankees to serve as major league field coordinator for the Miami Marlins over the winter, worked with bat manufacturers throughout the 2023 and 2024 seasons to make that a reality.
When did it first appear in MLB games?
It’s unclear specifically when. But Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton used a torpedo bat last year and went on a home run-hitting rampage in October that helped send the Yankees to the World Series. New York Mets star Francisco Lindor also used a torpedo-style bat last year and went on to finish second in National League MVP voting.
Who are some of the other notable early users of torpedo bats?
Corking bats involves drilling a hole at the end of the bat, filling it in and capping it. The use of altered bats allows players to swing faster because the material with which they replace the wood — whether it’s cork, superballs or another material — is lighter. Any sort of bat adulteration is illegal and, if found, results in suspension.
Could a rule be changed to ban them?
Could it happen? Sure. Leagues and governing bodies have put restrictions on equipment they believe fundamentally altered fairness. Stick curvature is limited in hockey. Full-body swimsuits made of polyurethane and neoprene are banned by World Aquatics. But officials at MLB have acknowledged that the game’s pendulum has swung significantly toward pitching in recent years, and if an offensive revolution comes about because of torpedo bats — and that is far from a guarantee — it could bring about more balance to the game. If that pendulum swings too far, MLB could alter its bat regulations, something it has done multiple times already this century.
So the torpedo bat is here to stay?
Absolutely. Bat manufacturers are cranking them out and shipping them to interested players with great urgency. Just how widely the torpedo bat is adopted is the question that will play out over the rest of the season. But it has piqued the curiosity of nearly every hitter in the big leagues, and just as pitchers toy with new pitches to see if they can marginally improve themselves, hitters will do the same with bats.
Comfort is paramount with a bat, so hitters will test them during batting practice and in cage sessions before unleashing them during the game. As time goes on, players will find specific shapes that are most comfortable to them and best suit their swing during bat-fitting sessions — similar to how golfers seek custom clubs. But make no mistake: This is an almost-overnight alteration of the game, and “traditional or torpedo” is a question every big leaguer going forward will ask himself.