Profile Of A Real Baseball Fan

Skipper Carrillo has a language all his own and is, by many standards, a true baseball fan, reports Correspondent Steve Hartman of CBS Station KCBS-TV in Los Angeles.

"My language is very easy," Carrillo says.

He calls his Laguna Beach home (in which he lives alone) "The Ballpark." Everything in it has a baseball nickname.

"This is Steve Garvey," Carrillo says, pointing to his clothes dryer. "He's the old timer. He's a veteran."

Even the people in Carrillo's life have baseball nicknames.

His late mother is fondly referred to as "Don Drysdale," because she is Carrillo's "favorite all-time player."

"She was kind, loving, and she was gentle," Carrillo says of his mother, who died 14 years ago.

Carrillo was born with a disability. As he explains it, he was born two months too soon. Instead of arriving in September, football season, he was "born in July, and that's baseball
season."

When his mother died, she left Carrillo the house and a trust fund. In that way, she continues to provide for him. The only thing she can't control now is the uniform that she used to let him wear every once in a while. Now, Carrillo wears it every day.

For most of his life, whether there was a game or not, Carrillo has been coming to watch the Anaheim Angels play.

He has volunteered to wash other people's dirty uniforms, cheer on teams he could not join, because he lives his life with a solitary purpose: To get as close to the game of baseball as he possibly can.

The Angels heard about Carrillo and invited him to spend a few moments on the field recently.

He met the coaches, the players, and, as is typical for Carrillo, it was as if he knew them his whole life.

Summing up the experience, Carrillo called it, "the Grand Slam Hall of Fame Day."

Thanks to the Angels, Carrillo got about as close to the game of baseball as you can get without actually batting.

Although his mother might still frown on him wearing the uniform every day, at least during his visit with the Angels, she had to be smiling.

While a skywriting plane traced a heart in the sky, Carrillo pointed to the white lines, and said,

"This is for you, Don."