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 theTampa Bay Raysorganization 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 hometownPadres.
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.”
