Obituary: Skipper Carrillo saw to it that many had a ‘home-run day’
Everywhere he went, he did so in uniform.
Arthur Tolbert Carrillo, known affectionately throughout the Laguna Beach community as Skipper Carrillo, was considered by many to be a baseball savant.
From the way he dressed and the stats he could pull out at a moment’s notice to the nicknames he handed out and his standard greeting, Skipper lived for the love of the game.
Skipper died on Nov. 14, undoubtedly passing on to the Hall of Fame. He was 86.
It was his simplest pleasure to tell those he met to “have a home-run day.”
A spreader of good vibes, Skipper would become an integral part of athletics at the high school. He sat in the dugout at baseball games and on the bench at basketball games, and he worked the down marker at football games.
When a statue of Skipper was created by local artist Randy Morgan, Jeff Sears, the late Laguna Beach baseball coach, said the local icon had earned it.
“If there was ever a Mr. Laguna, he would be, because if you ask people about Laguna Beach, Skipper’s name would be in the first sentence probably,” Sears told the Daily Pilot in January 2019.
Skipper was born prematurely, but he outshined his developmental disability to become a Laguna Beach legend as large and as well thought of as the Greeter. In a special segment with CBS, Skipper revealed that he arrived in the world weighing just 3 pounds.
“You were nobody until Skipper gave you a nickname,” said Bret Fleming, who coached the Laguna Beach boys’ basketball team for 27 years before stepping away in 2022.
Those nicknames revealed his love of sports, especially baseball. His father was “The Coach,” his mother “Don Drysdale” — after his favorite player — and even money was referred to as “Willie Mays,” which Fleming told him was “no good here” when he wanted to go to the snack bar at games.
If you’ve ever been to a Laguna Beach High School baseball game, chances are a man in a baseball uniform waved hello with a hearty “Have a home run day!”
“They called him ‘Mr. Uniform,’” said Fleming, who was “Jerry West,” as far as Skipper was concerned. “He took care of all the uniforms at the school. … He would wash them, fold them, all that kind of thing.
“In baseball, he was kind of the bat boy. There was a manual scoreboard out in the outfield. At the end of every inning, he would sprint all the way to the outfield and put up a zero or a one or whatever the score was after that half of the inning, and then sprint back to the dugout.”
Fleming, who goes to St. Catherine of Siena Parish, where Skipper also attended, said the church — located at 1042 Temple Terrace — plans to have a remembrance service on Nov. 30.
Dr. Gary Arthur, a chiropractor, was one of Skipper’s doctors, but one therapeutic activity they engaged in together was musical gigs. Arthur wrote a song after Skipper’s “have a home-run day” greeting, and when the saying came around, it was his part to sing.
“Skipper was always my ace in the hole because this song I wrote for him called ‘Have a Home-Run Day,’ he would come up with me, and I would give him his own microphone, and he would sing the ‘have a home-run day’ part with me,” said Arthur, whose band was called “Love Tribe.”
“When it was the saxophone solo, I would pretend that I was the pitcher, and he was the batter, and he’d be swinging his bat, wiggling his butt around, and then I would throw him an imaginary pitch, and boom, he would hit it out of the park. He’d run a little 5- or 8-foot circle running the bases and then come into home plate, and I would say, ‘Safe!’”
Skipper’s volunteerism also extended to umpiring Little League at Riddle Field.
His house, which he called the “ballpark,” overlooked the field at the high school, which was named after him.
Arthur, nicknamed “Kirk Gibson,” regarded Skipper as “our most beloved citizen in this town.” The statue forged by Morgan stands outside Arthur’s office, and it has seen its share of flowers over the past week, he said.
“He liked to be called ‘the ballplayer,’” Arthur said, adding he learned more from a book titled, “Have a Home Run Day: Stories and Sayings of a Baseball Savant,” written by Skipper’s sister, Alicia Rowe. “More than Skipper, he liked to be called ‘the ballplayer,’ and little did I know that he had been in the Special Olympics in 1961 and was in first place on this 220-yard run. One of the other kids that was competing fell, so Skipper stopped and picked him up, and ended up getting fourth himself.”
Some might say that was poetry in motion, a “grand-slam day,” as three crossed home plate in front of the hometown favorite.
Arthur added that two podcasts were produced with KXFM 104.7, the local radio station, sharing Skipper stories with the community.
As for the last time he saw Skipper, Arthur said he had come over with his son to make sure “the ballplayer” could watch his beloved Dodgers live during the World Series. They hooked up a smart TV in his house and stayed with him until the Dodgers had completed the comeback from a five-run deficit against the Yankees in Game 5, the clinching game of the series.
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