Southcrest Area Renamed for Legendary Little League Umpire Shelley Curtis White

A San Diego neighborhood is celebrating certainly one of its most well-known residents, baseball umpire Shelley Curtis White, by naming his office after him. It’s not a standard enterprise, however a Little League area on the 4100 block of Newton Avenue.

Shelly White was old skool, revered and maybe even feared by the lots of of younger women and men who performed with White behind the plate or working the bases. His son Deron recalled his father “was a no nonsense type of man.”

White, who died in the summertime of 2021, was a legendary determine, an imposing umpire calling balls and strikes not simply domestically however on many different diamonds, together with ones in Japan, Korea and at each ends of the nation in Hawaii and on the Little League World Sequence in Williamsport, PA.

However his dwelling area was in Southcrest. To honor his extraordinary service to the younger folks for whom he set examples, the park’s advisory board unanimously voted to rename the baseball diamond as Shelley Curtis White Area for his a few years of constructive affect on lots of of coaches, households and gamers who performed the sport he cherished and revered.

In recommending the identify change, the Rev. Wendall Bass, retired highschool principal from the unique Lincoln Excessive Faculty, wrote how White was a revered citizen, chief and volunteer.

“He was a mentor to youth and their mother and father, if crucial,” he stated.

Bass recalled that a number of days per week White would assist college students with their studying.

“Mr. White labored and volunteered in numerous settings and his final want was to make our world a greater place,” he wrote.

“Mr. White” — not Shelley or ‘ump’ — was how he usually was addressed. A high athlete at Hoover Excessive, he went to Korea and returned dwelling to work at Basic Dynamics and started his 60-year run as an umpire.

The Southeastern Little League performs on the park that will likely be be named for White. Its present president James Trowsdell performed there as a younger man after which finally coached.

“Mr. White, he devoted a whole lot of time to the sport, to the children, to the sector, to the league,” Trowsdell stated. “He was very organized, he would be sure video games began on time, be sure the video games progressed as they need to, and made positive everybody knew he was answerable for that sport.”

Trowsdell recalled how White confirmed him the way to “deal with and take care of powerful conditions, like the way to take care of a coach going, you realize, loopy.”

He remembers an occasion when White kicked his personal son out of a sport.

“I rapidly advised him that might be the final time I get embarrassed as a result of my son received kicked out of a sport,” Trowsdell stated. “And it was the final time.”

We requested White’s son Deron what it was like rising up together with his larger-than-life father. Deron stated the 2 had their variations, so it wasn’t at all times straightforward. However he was completely happy and grateful that his father is being honored.

So far as baseball, the youthful White was a pitcher, and when his father known as the sport, the strike zone shrunk, he stated, demonstrating by holding his palms a foot aside.

Whereas baseball was an essential connection between the 2 of them, Deron felt that his father hardly ever applauded his accomplishments. He recalled vividly the time his father wasn’t at a sport the place he hit a double, dwelling run and stole a base. When his father arrived, he overheard the supervisor inform his father about his son’s success.

His response? “Is that each one?” Deron recalled his father saying.

Older now, Deron acknowledges that he and his dad had been each formed by the instances they grew up in. He was born in 1965, his father in 1933, and “we noticed the world in a different way, and generally we as males will compete with one another,” he stated.

Baseball was his love, he stated, sitting in a room within the dwelling he grew up in. There are wall-to-wall mementos of his father’s lengthy profession as an umpire. His mom is alive however not in good well being.

He mused that “you realize, it was like a contest with him. However I didn’t take a look at it as that, you realize, I’m only a child. I’m simply taking part in the sport the best way I understand how to play it.”

As he grew older, Deron got here to raised perceive his father.

“I do know the place he got here from, what time and what period. So it made me step again and never put the strain on him like I had been, and provides him a break. He solely did what he knew the way to do. You recognize, whether or not he accepted it or not, I understood it. “

Dwayne Hill has performed a significant position in main the trouble to call the sector after his godfather.

“Mr. White has been in my life all my life,” he stated. “He was my scoutmaster and my baseball coach. He was my soccer coach. Mr. White was an incredible athlete. If you happen to go take a look at Hoover Excessive Faculty there are some data that also haven’t been damaged.

“Throughout these instances not everybody who wished to be on a workforce received on a workforce, you needed to earn your spot. There was at all times one other child able to take your house.”

White was instrumental, Hill stated, in making the league a shelter for a lot of younger males with out fathers, a particular place for them and for adults prepared to be a part of the trouble. He added that White was the coach of all of the umpires. Some are nonetheless working right this moment.

“He was the gold commonplace,” stated Hill. “Baseball was like a faith to Shelley.”

Trowsdell recalled when White was watching different umpires work a sport.

“He had no downside mentioning in the event that they weren’t in the precise place,” he stated. “And he was simply as large on serving to the coaches and gamers and all people concerned to benefit from the sport and understood that there have been guidelines.”