SAN FRANCISCO — After the speeches and ovations, after the wry one-liners from Bruce Bochy and Buster Posey, there was still one last thing for Brandon Belt to do on the day the Giants celebrated his stealthily memorable career.
The brief private tribute took place after the on-field ceremony last Saturday, this time in a hallway on the back side of the Oracle Park broadcast booths. That’s where the player nicknamed The Captain found a quiet moment to salute his unofficial first mate.
“Thank you for sticking up for me,” Belt told her.
This was a coronation of sorts, an acknowledgement of Carmen Kiew’s years of distinguished service in the so-called Belt Wars, delivered by the man himself. Kiew, who by day is a mild-mannered marketing executive for a cottage cheese company, is best known as a five-star general during the prolonged conflict. She defended the Giants’ polarizing first baseman against all comers (at all hours) as far back as his first minor-league season in 2010.
Though they were strangers at that point, Belt took notice from afar. He became aware early in his big-league days that some feisty fan was unleashing a barrage of tweets on his behalf. Belt sent Kiew a quick DM of gratitude, then bowed out of online combat forever.
“There was a pretty quick deletion of any social media right after that,” Belt said Saturday. “I didn’t know what kind of went on after the first year or two. Some people liked me, some people didn’t. I think it kind of boiled down to expectations of me. And if you don’t meet them, they think you’re the worst thing that ever walked the face of the Earth.”
The Giants commemorated Brandon Belt’s career on April 25, when the former first baseman celebrated with his sons, Augie, center, and Greyson, right. (Darren Yamashita / Imagn Images)
The player joked Saturday that he could declare victory in the Belt Wars. After all, this was about an hour after the Giants’ celebration to honor the two-time World Series champion and 2016 All-Star. Belt amassed an .814 OPS over 1,310 career games with the Giants. And though he never reached the towering heights of Willie McCovey and Will Clark, his famous forbearers at the position, the left-handed hitter was an on-base machine who played Gold Glove-caliber defense during the Giants’ dynasty.
“There was a tendency to take his contributions for granted,” Posey said during the ceremony.
“Tough, unselfish and deeply connected to the city and the fans,” broadcaster Mike Krukow said.
“We don’t win (the World Series) in 2012 or 2014 without him,” Bochy said.
Essentially, the odes on Saturday echoed what Kiew had been saying/shouting/typing for a decade. So on the day the first baseman basked in long-overdue appreciation, it was fitting that he found time to share the moment.
“I knew you had my back all the time,” Belt said to Kiew.
As it turns out, a big winner in the Belt Wars was a Malaysian-born psychology major from Pitzer College, whose vocal support of her favorite player changed her life beyond comprehension.
Kiew, 43, became so associated with one guy, and so distinct in her voice, that she emerged as a mini-celebrity on the Bay Area media landscape, with regular radio and television appearances. Apparently, there are perks to being the world’s foremost Brandon Belt expert.
“People recognize me,” she said with a laugh. “I remember going to Mazda, and some guy was like, ‘You’re Carmen! Let me do your car for free.’”
Kiew’s improbable journey stands as a testament to anyone who has ever had a favorite player. Who knew there was a benefit to arguing with randos online?
J.T. Snow was her gateway first baseman. Kiew was 14 years old when her father, Kelvin, would make the drive from the San Jose area to Candlestick Park, the Giants’ bygone home, to watch the graceful defensive whiz on his way to six Gold Gloves.
But she had to share Snow, who was then a popular, established veteran player. When the Giants selected Belt in the fifth round of the 2009 draft, she had a chance to get in on the ground floor. Kiew was aboard from the start.
“The year following that draft was the first time I’d really tracked minor-league stuff,” she recalled. “And he fascinated me. I almost felt like it was special, because I picked a guy and then he moved up so quickly. And then I was like, ‘Oh my God. Here he is.’”
Belt made his major-league debut in 2011, arriving as a strapping 6-foot-3, 230-pound Texan heralded for his power potential. And therein lay the curse that hung over Belt’s career. The promised power was false advertising.
Belt would top 20 homers just once in his 13 big-league seasons. The only totals from his stat line that made him look like a slugger were his strikeouts — he topped 100 Ks in a season eight times for the Giants.
These numbers served as ammunition for the Belt Wars. On one side was an army that wondered why the big lug couldn’t hit the long ball. On the other side, the Kiew side, was a faction that looked at OPS, OBP and stellar defense and wondered why Belt couldn’t be deemed valuable under a different criterion.
“What I heard all the time that would piss me off is, ‘He’s a first baseman. He needs to hit 20 home runs,’” Kiew said. “I was like, ‘Since when? Why?’
“Part of me coming to his defense was my frustration around people not really understanding the romance of the game and the intricacies of the game. I felt like they were almost like cavemen about baseball — ‘Well, the game should be played this way.’”
“Why is the game not allowed to evolve? I feel like Brandon was in this wave of players that were playing differently and maybe not getting the accolades that they should have because they weren’t as advertised.”
Beyond the numbers was what to make of Belt’s personality. There was a gawkwardness that prompted Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper to dub him “Baby Giraffe.’’
Even Belt’s self-given nickname, “The Captain,” came with an air of cheekiness. The sloppily applied duct-taped “C” on his uniform only sold the joke.
Kiew laughed. Not everyone did.
“You could tell he was a young guy with lots of jokes who didn’t take himself too seriously,” she said. “And that pissed people off even more when he wasn’t performing. So the more he did that, the more it made one side love him, and the more it made the other side really hate him.
“I think his polarization was just off the charts — more than any player that I’ve really ever seen.”
So at some point, Kiew took to Twitter (this was long before X) and never stopped. Armed with stats, GIFs, wit, indignation and a staggering tolerance for profane backlash, she jousted with anyone who owned a keyboard.
“I felt like it was my whole personality, to be honest with you,” Kiew said. “It was to the point where if he did something, I would get tagged by internet strangers. ‘Hey, Brandon did this!’ Everybody knew my fandom.”
At the time, Kiew was living in Seattle and working as a media planner at an agency, buying online ads for clients at Best Buy. On the side, she freelanced for a Giants-themed blog called McCovey Chronicles. And a piece she wrote on Nicole Vogelsong, the wife of Giants pitcher Ryan Vogelsong, caught the attention of Marty Lurie, who hosted weekend coverage on the Giants’ flagship station.
“So Marty asked me about the interview and had me on,’’ Kiew called. “And he liked me so much, he invited me the next day to do the postgame show with him. I did that, and he was like, ‘Do you want to keep doing this?’”
With that, Kiew had a regular gig as Lurie’s on-air producer for his pregame and postgame shows.
She also had a new forum to bang the drum for Belt. Among her anti-Belt tormenters was Bonta Hill, a KNBR intern at the time who now hosts studio shows for NBC Sports Bay Area.
Hill remembers it well.
“There was one time on Twitter when we just went at it about Brandon Belt. Just at it,” he said. “Yeah, it got nasty with Carmen. And think, for a little bit, it set us back a little bit in terms of our friendship. Maybe it got a little too personal when it wasn’t personal. But that’s how polarizing this guy was. You couldn’t bring him up around certain people without getting reamed. And it divided so many fans on Twitter.”
From there, an unlikely media career blossomed. Kiew also appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area as the co-host of a loosey-goosey Giants wrap-up show called “Triples Alley.”
“When they were looking to develop a new show, they asked all these people who were basically, like, Giants Twitter famous,” Kiew said.
When the producers invited her for an audition, she balked.
“I said, ‘Hey, I just want you to know that I’ve never been on TV. I’m not trained. I just want you to know’,” Kiew said. “And they just said, ‘Yeah, we know’.”
In retrospect, Kiew laughs at the absurdity.
“I basically got all of these opportunities because Brandon gave me a personality to have, right? He made me different than other people. My love for him, my deep knowledge of him … I was basically a beat reporter for Brandon Belt.
“I knew about everything he did. You could catch me on any day being able to defend him with any given stat. And I made sure every day I knew it, because I knew somebody was going to come s— on him.”
Belt was a candidate for the fan vote leading up to the 2016 All-Star Game. It should be no surprise by now that Kiew made a relentless push on his behalf. And when Belt made the final group, he thanked her by messaging her the scoop. “He was like, ‘If you want to report it first, I want you to know first,”’ Kiew recalled.
At some point along the line, Kiew became a credentialed member of the media. Belt was always a willing interview subject. Even if he had to say no, in the moment, he’d promise to do it at a different time.
“And then I’d be like, ‘He’s gonna forget because he’s Brandon and he has, like, no memory of basically anything,’” she said. “And then I’d see him standing in his flip flops in the hallway waiting for me at 3.”
Kiew eventually created a badge of honor for Belt loyalists. The Giants used to hand out souvenir pins known as a Croix de Candlestick for the hearty fans who could withstand an extra-inning night game at the windswept old yard.
Kiew created a Croix de Belt Wars for survivors of the blustery Twitter arguments. At one point, she gave one to Belt.
“Just so you know,” she told him, “we’re riding at dawn for you.”
That ride came to a close after Belt’s celebration on Saturday, when Kiew gathered with other media members for a press session in that hallway at Oracle Park.
The Belt Wars are over. Peace at last.
“This feels crazy. It’s just like a crazy imposter syndrome,” she said. “I never really felt like I belonged. I still don’t. I feel like I tricked people into allowing me to do this. But here we are. And one of the things I’m really proud of is that I’m an Asian woman on air talking about baseball, right?
“It was important that I do it, even though it goes against a lot of my shyness and being embarrassed to do certain things. It was the opportunity of a lifetime.”
At ease, Carmen.
