Giants 'captain' Belt showed up to Opening Day in a boat

Last season, Giants veteran first baseman Brandon Belt made a proclamation: He was the team's captain. It eventually inspired Evan Longoria to add a very makeshift electrical tape "C" to his uniform.

"Really, it just started on the plane the other day," Belt said last September. "I just felt like, in my heart, I've been the captain all year, and so I just told everybody to let me get off the plane first since I was the team captain -- and they did. It's like, when people know that you're the guy, they don't say anything. They just do it."

Well, we'll have to find out if this was planned by the team or if Belt just told people he was doing this because -- and I promise you this wasn't a fever dream -- he entered Friday's Opening Day tilt with the Marlins as if he were Poseidon, King of the Ocean. Belt emerged from beyond the left-field fence with the 'C' back on his jersey and a captain's hat perched upon his head as he was wheeled around the stadium in his very own little boat. (I guess he's just a big Lonely Island fan?)

Even better, while music from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies played, he chucked baseballs into the crowd like he was Lou Seal or a more athletic Crazy Crab:

"That was the main thing -- I wanted to feel superior to everybody else," Belt joked after the Giants' 6-5 walk-off victory. When I got to come in on a boat in a captain’s hat, I felt exactly that way."

Belt -- now the team's longest tenured player -- wasn't done, either. The first baseman then got atop the mound and threw out the ceremonial first pitch -- something he did as a part-time reliever at the University of Texas, but has never done on a big league mound. Well, consider this and the boat trip two things that he hasn't done in the Majors before.

"Each sport can have their own captain," Belt opined. "That’s totally fine. I just happen to be the captain of baseball."

The captain of baseball also contributed during the game, scoring on Darin Ruf's single in the third and then slugging his first homer of the season in the eighth.

"All I knew is I better do something today because you can’t come in on a boat and not do anything," he said. "I feel like if I’m going to come in on a boat, I have to do something."

The sea shanties don't need to end anytime soon, either: The Giants are giving away captain's hats to the first 20,000 fans at Saturday's game against the Marlins. Maybe this time Belt will enter the ballpark from McCovey Cove. I mean, would that really be any stranger than this?