Dodgers fan names daughter after Mookie Betts following home run promise
“I can’t wait to meet Francesca,” Betts said. “That’s going to be my girl.”
A Los Angeles Dodgers fan welcomed a daughter to the world Aug. 7, and in doing so, he held up his end of a deal with Mookie Betts.
While Betts was on deck during the second inning of an Aug. 2 game against Oakland, he struck up a conversation with Giuseppe Mancuso, who said that if Betts hit a home run, he would give his soon-to-be-born daughter the middle name Mookie.
“I turned around and told him, ‘No, don’t do that, man,’ ” Betts, who played for the Red Sox from 2014-19, recalled in a video posted to social media Tuesday. “Your wife wouldn’t like that.”
Sure enough, four pitches later, Betts launched a 436-foot home run to left-center field — his longest as a Dodger and the fifth-longest of his major league career. Betts rounded the bases and offered a fist-bump to Mancuso, not expecting the fan to make good on his word.
But less a week later, Betts saw on social media that Mancuso had posted a photo — alongside a birth certificate — of his newborn daughter, Francesca Mookie Mancuso.
Betts said in the video he posted Tuesday that the experience was “one of the coolest moments” of his 10-year MLB career.
“I can’t wait to meet Francesca,” Betts said in the video. “That’s going to be my girl.”
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