This baseball player just did something no-one has ever done before

Brandon Belt of the San Francisco Giants made history this weekend after he faced 21 pitches in a single at-bat – the longest ever in Major League Baseball.

An at-bat is a batter’s turn against a pitcher, and Belt’s face-off against Los Angeles Angels’ Jaime Barria saw him foul off a whopping 16 pitches, including 10 in a row at one stage. Here’s the footage.

The previous at-bat record was 20 pitches, and saw Bartolo Colon strike out Ricky Gutierrez back in 1998.

In total, Barria threw 49 pitches in the first inning, but that in itself wasn’t quite a record – Daniel Norris hurled a 54-pitch inning in 2015.

Belt was actually quite sheepish about putting his name in the history books.

“When I’m in the field I hate it when a batter keeps fouling pitches off,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Dude, just put it in play. It’s not that hard. Let’s go.’ So I basically had to apologise to everybody after that.”

Belt went on to be decisive in sealing the Giants’ 4-2 victory over the Angels, hitting a home run in the fifth inning.

The Giants play again on Tuesday, against the Washington Nationals, while the Angels will play the Houston Astros.