GAINESVILLE, Fla. --Â During his three-year stint as manager of the Salt Lake City Trappers, former UF baseball player Nick Belmonte earned a championship ring when the Trappers won the 1991 Pioneer League title.
The bling Belmonte picked up two days ago at Wrigley Field is in a different league.
"A very humbling experience and one of those as a kid you can only dream of, getting something like that,'' Belmonte said Tuesday afternoon prior to joining Gators radio play-by-play man
Mick Hubert in the booth to call the Florida-North Florida game for the SEC Network. "My hand was the most photographed hand that day in Chicago. Everybody wanted their picture taken with my hand."
Belmonte, who still holds UF's single-season record for stolen bases with 42 in 1976, received a Cubs World Series ring on Sunday. Theo Epstein, Chicago's president of baseball operations, presented Belmonte the ring in his private suite at the end of the first inning. Cubs General Manager Jed Hoyer was there, too.
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Belmonte was unable to attend the Cubs' official ring ceremony a few days earlier, so after working games in Cincinnati and West Virginia on Thursday and Friday as part of his broadcasting career, Belmonte traveled to Chicago for the special moment.
Belmonte is a pro scout in the Cubs organization and once served as a base-running instructor for Chicago. When Jared Porter, now Arizona's senior vice president/assistant general manager, moved from the Red Sox to the Cubs in late 2015, he asked if Belmonte, who worked as a pro scout for Boston under Porter, wanted to join him with Chicago.
Belmonte agreed and in his first season the Cubs won their first World Series in 108 years.
Belmonte slipped on his new ring immediately and wherever he and his wife went the rest of the day, Cubs fans wanted to see the ring up close. One longtime Cubs fan started to cry as she took a picture.
"The experience the other day was absolutely incredible," Belmonte said. "It's an amazing thing that happens, the love affair of those fans with that team. An Easter Sunday I will never, never, ever forget."
How does his World Series ring compare to the Pioneer League ring?
"That was awesome,'' he said. "Obviously, this is the pinnacle."
