Shelton name intertwined in baseball -- and film -- history

It was a scene so bizarre it could have been in a movie.

Opening scene: Bluefield, W.Va.

Interior. Hotel lobby. Day.

We meet Ron Shelton, a jet-lagged, bleary-eyed kid from California, 22 years old, just off a red-eye from Los Angeles. It’s the first day of his professional baseball career and he’s hanging out in the hotel lobby as the rest of the team gathers.

Cut to one of the players, a lanky 19-year-old midwestern type. He sees the new player, walks over to Shelton and sticks out his hand.

“Hi, I’m Ron Shelton,” the man standing up says.

A befuddled look comes across the face of the seated young man.

This must be some kind of baseball joke, like a hot foot or some other locker room humor.

“No you’re not. I’m Ron Shelton!”

This, however, was not a joke. Nor was it a scene out of a movie. It was the Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man meme long before any of us knew what that was. It turns out that the 1967 Bluefield Orioles of the Rookie-level Appalachian League had -- in addition to future Major League stars Don Baylor and Bobby Grich -- not one, but two Ron Sheltons. And that was exactly how they met one another.

Ron Shelton, the shortstop from Santa Barbara, would go on to become quite famous, though not as a baseball player. His five-year Minor League career (lifetime .251 batting average, .645 OPS) helped inspire him to write and direct the iconic baseball film “Bull Durham,” which hit theaters 35 years ago this month. It helped establish a career that also includes the movies “White Men Can’t Jump,” “Cobb” and “Tin Cup.”

His true calling came only after realizing that no matter how much he loved playing baseball, a career in the Minors wasn’t what he wanted out of life.

“I didn’t want to become Crash Davis,” said Shelton, referring to the journeyman catcher at the center of the film that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay in 1989. “It was a great life, but it was a tough life. You never have a home.”

So off to Hollywood he went, armed with stories that eventually weaved their way into one of the most quoted sports movies of all time.

What happened to the other Ron Shelton? His Minor League pitching career was over after just two seasons in Bluefield, and he returned to his home state of Illinois to become a teacher (later principal) and baseball coach at Warren Township High School in the northern Chicago suburb of Gurnee. The biggest star to come out of his program in 25 years as head coach? His son Derek, now manager of the Pirates.

***

Derek Shelton knew the connection long before “Bull Durham” came out in 1988. Even for people who knew both Rons, it was hard to keep them straight sometimes.

The family became lifelong Orioles fans, and when calling former teammates for tickets to big league games in nearby Chicago or Milwaukee in the 1980s, the response was generally, “Which Ron Shelton is this, the teacher or the movie guy?”

Later, when Derek was a Major League hitting coach, the confusion only got worse. Conversations at the batting cage with his father’s former teammates would include, “Which one is your dad, again?”

“I’m not the famous one,” was Ron’s standard response. His life turned out more like Moonlight Graham, from that other iconic baseball movie starring Kevin Costner, “Field of Dreams.” In that film, Graham leaves behind his ball-playing dreams and becomes a hometown family doctor, the kind of person who impacts generations going forward.

This Ron Shelton knew his future was more on the sidelines than on the playing field.

“I grew up always wanting to coach,” Ron said. “That was first and foremost in my mind."

An early mentor imparted this wisdom: When you’re a coach, you’re a teacher first.

“I ended up in the right place,” said Shelton, who was 4-6 with a 4.23 ERA in 25 games for Bluefield from 1966-67. “If I would have continued to play I would have lingered in the Minor Leagues for who knows how long and never been able to do what I truly was meant to do.”

Ron counts coaching each of his sons, Derek and Craig, as “the best eight years of my life.” And some of the lessons have been passed on.

One of Ron’s favorite teachings to his players was, “God gave you two hands for a reason.” When Derek began coaching he said it enough times that one of his players -- future eight-time All-Star and two-time Gold Glove Award winner Robinson Canó -- later gifted Derek with an autographed jersey bearing that inscription. Canó even greeted Derek’s father with the phrase when they met on MLB’s All-Star tour in Taiwan in 2011.

“It makes me proud to think that things I said way back then are still there,” Ron said. “His mother and I are so impressed with the way [Derek] interacts with people. When we go to the ballpark I talk to a lot of people, and the message is always how he treats people, no matter who you are. And that’s one of the things that was important to me as a principal, that I treated everybody the same way no matter what position you’re in. And Derek does that. He’s a good person.”

That level of caring was noticeable to some of the biggest stars in the game.

Derek -- who played two Minor League seasons with the Yankees before being derailed by an elbow injury -- coached and managed in the Yankees' farm system from 1997-2002. One early spring morning he was throwing batting practice to Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Tino Martinez. As they walked off the field, a still 20-something Shelton asked a very direct question to Martinez.

“Do you think I can coach in the big leagues?”

“Yes,” Martinez replied without hesitation. “Because you care about players. And players care about guys who care about them.”

“And that goes back to the very same lessons that Dad had,” Derek says now. “Treat people the right way and ultimately something good will happen.”

Over the next two decades, Derek’s coaching stops included Cleveland, Tampa Bay, Toronto and Minnesota. All of which finally led to the phone call in 2019 when Derek got to tell Ron he was going to be a Major League manager.

“It was definitely one of the coolest moments in my life,” Derek said with a smile.

***

The two Ron Sheltons ended up being teammates for only 11 games in 1967. The shortstop -- who briefly went by his middle name, Wayne, to avoid confusion -- was quickly shuffled to Stockton in the California League.

When they reconnected and reminisced a few years ago, Derek’s ascension with the Pirates was welcome news to the man who created Crash Davis.

“Because of Derek I was following their great start [this year],” Shelton the filmmaker said. “I just always root for those old franchises to be good again. Pittsburgh, I’ve always had great affection for.”

Derek, the one-time Minor League catcher who spent plenty of time at the Durham affiliate when he worked for the Rays, also has great appreciation for the unique connection between his father Ron and the one they call “the famous one.”

“When I was with the Rays, I went to Durham and went to the old ballpark and just sat in the stands,” Derek said. “It’s a little piece of my growing up, even though Dad didn’t play in Durham or write the movie.”

At the end of “Bull Durham,” we are led to believe that Davis is about to begin the next part of his journey, the part that gets him to the Major Leagues as a manager. Watch it now, and part of it does feel like it could be the story of Ron Shelton’s son.

No, not that Ron Shelton. The other one.