A San Diego community is celebrating one of its most famous residents, baseball umpire Shelley Curtis White, by naming his workplace after him. It’s not a traditional business, but a Little League field on the 4100 block of Newton Avenue.
Shelly White was old school, respected and perhaps even feared by the hundreds of young men and women who played with White behind the plate or working the bases. His son Deron recalled his father “was a no nonsense kind of guy.”
White, who died in the summer of 2021, was a legendary figure, an imposing umpire calling balls and strikes not just locally but on many other diamonds, including ones in Japan, Korea and at both ends of the country in Hawaii and at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA.
But his home field was in Southcrest. To honor his extraordinary service to the young people for whom he set examples, the park’s advisory board unanimously voted to rename the baseball diamond as Shelley Curtis White Field for his many years of positive influence on hundreds of coaches, families and players who played the game he loved and respected.
In recommending the name change, the Rev. Wendall Bass, retired high school principal from the original Lincoln High School, wrote how White was a respected citizen, leader and volunteer.
“He was a mentor to youth and their parents, if necessary,” he said.
Bass recalled that several days a week White would help students with their reading.
“Mr. White worked and volunteered in diverse settings and his ultimate desire was to make our world a better place,” he wrote.
“Mr. White” — not Shelley or ‘ump’ — was how he often was addressed. A top athlete at Hoover High, he went to Korea and returned home to work at General Dynamics and began his 60-year run as an umpire.
The Southeastern Little League plays at the park that will be be named for White. Its current president James Trowsdell played there as a young man and then eventually coached.
“Mr. White, he dedicated a lot of time to the game, to the kids, to the field, to the league,” Trowsdell said. “He was very organized, he would make sure games started on time, make sure the games progressed as they should, and made sure everyone knew he was in charge of that game.”
Trowsdell recalled how White showed him how to “handle and deal with tough situations, like how to deal with a coach going, you know, crazy.”
He remembers an instance when White kicked his own son out of a game.
“I quickly told him that would be the last time I get embarrassed because my son got kicked out of a game,” Trowsdell said. “And it was the last time.”
We asked White’s son Deron what it was like growing up with his larger-than-life father. Deron said the two had their differences, so it wasn’t always easy. But he was happy and grateful that his father is being honored.
As far as baseball, the younger White was a pitcher, and when his father called the game, the strike zone shrunk, he said, demonstrating by holding his hands a foot apart.
While baseball was an important connection between the two of them, Deron felt that his father rarely applauded his accomplishments. He recalled vividly the time his father wasn’t at a game where he hit a double, home run and stole a base. When his father arrived, he overheard the manager tell his father about his son’s success.
His response? “Is that all?” Deron recalled his father saying.
Older now, Deron acknowledges that he and his dad were both shaped by the times they grew up in. He was born in 1965, his father in 1933, and “we saw the world differently, and sometimes we as men will compete with each other,” he said.
Baseball was his love, he said, sitting in a room in the home he grew up in. There are wall-to-wall mementos of his father’s long career as an umpire. His mother is alive but not in good health.
He mused that “you know, it was like a competition with him. But I didn’t look at it as that, you know, I’m just a kid. I’m just playing the game the way I know how to play it.”
As he grew older, Deron came to better understand his father.
“I know where he came from, what time and what era. So it made me step back and not put the pressure on him like I had been, and give him a break. He only did what he knew how to do. You know, whether he accepted it or not, I understood it. “
Dwayne Hill has played a major role in leading the effort to name the field after his godfather.
“Mr. White has been in my life all my life,” he said. “He was my scoutmaster and my baseball coach. He was my football coach. Mr. White was a great athlete. If you go look at Hoover High School there are some records that still haven’t been broken.
“During those times not everyone who wanted to be on a team got on a team, you had to earn your spot. There was always another kid ready to take your place.”
White was instrumental, Hill said, in making the league a shelter for many young men without fathers, a special place for them and for adults willing to be part of the effort. He added that White was the trainer of all the umpires. Some are still working today.
“He was the gold standard,” said Hill. “Baseball was like a religion to Shelley.”
Trowsdell recalled when White was watching other umpires work a game.
“He had no problem pointing out if they weren’t in the right position,” he said. “And he was just as big on helping the coaches and players and everybody involved to enjoy the game and understood that there were rules.”