By Mike London
mlondon@salisburypost.com
“That announcer from the old North State League, I can hear him yet,” North Carolina’s Mr. Baseball Joe Ferebee recalls. “Shives behind the plate; Hawkins on the bases.”
The Shives Ferebee remembers from both his playing days and a coaching career that produced 1,438 victories was the late Johnnie McKenzie Shives.
Salisbury’s Shive was a Cone Mill supervisor by day and an umpiring legend by night.
Shives umpired his last professional game four decades ago and he died in 1997, but memories of his quiet class and firm judgment linger with old-timers.
Earlier this summer, Shives was inducted into the South Atlantic League Hall of Fame, taking his place next to Henry Aaron, Ty Cobb and Bob Gibson.
Vic Shives got a call out of the blue several years ago. On the other end of the line was John Henry Moss, the man synonymous with the South Atlantic League.
“Are you the last surviving son of Johnnie Shives?” Moss asked. When Vic answered affirmatively, Moss declared his intention to get Vic’s father inducted into the South Atlantic Hall.
“I like to drop my teeth when he told me,” Vic said.
A year passed, and then another. Vic, who said his father’s chest protectors and other momentos have disappeared as relatives have passed away, had almost forgotten Moss’ vow.
But then he got another call. This time Moss wanted Vic to know his father would be honored as part of a 2008 SAL Hall of Fame class that would include noted players Vince Coleman and Buddy Bell and executive Bing Devine.
Jack McKeon, who skippered the Florida Marlins to immortality in 2003, was the keynote speaker at ceremonies in Greensboro, and Shives was presented by Moss with a plaque that declared his father “a man respected by managers, players and fans, truly an umpire’s umpire.”
McKeon had a story about Shives. It seems McKeon was catching one night and Shives promised he’d throw him out if he passed gas one more time. McKeon heeded the warning.
Shives wasn’t a former player who turned to umpiring after his glory days. He was working local semi-pro and industrial league games as early as 1932 ó when he was 20 ó for $1.50 a game.
The story handed down for decades is an umpire scout spotted Shives working a local game and informed him he needed to look into doing it as a career.
Shives worked his first pro game in 1943. Then he left the mill and baseball to serve in the navy during World War II.
Shives was a family man, married to the former Beatrice Garwood and raising sons. He worked 48 years at Cone Mill, so umpiring always had to be a part-time passion, even after he left the service.
Fortunately, there were minor league games to work all over the Carolinas, where every decent-sized town had a team.
The first official umpire card that can be verified for Shive was issued on April 27, 1947, by the N.C. State League. He called in that league until it merged with the Western Carolina League to become the Tar Heel League in 1953.
The stocky Shive (5-foot-11, 212 pounds) handled Tar Heel League games two seasons. After that league folded, he toiled in the Carolina League for a decade.
In 1963, Shives was employed by Moss in the Western Carolinas League and called games in that circuit until 1967. The WCL became known as the South Atlantic League in 1980 and still bears that name.
In the minors, Shives worked with future big-league umpires Ken Kaiser, John McSherry and Bill Baker.
He umpired 1964 WCL games pitched by Rock Hill left-hander Steve Carlton, and his favorite memory was calling balls and strikes when a Texas teenager named Nolan Ryan wore the uniform of the Greenville Mets. Ryan terrorized the WCL in 1966, going 17-2 and striking out 272.
Vic Shives was born in 1944 and graduated from Boyden in 1963. His childhood memories of his father are about work ethic.
“He’d come home from first shift at the mill, take a 30-minute nap, and then he’d go call ball,” Vic said. “I used to go with him, to Burlington, to Greensboro, all over. They called him “Blind Tom,” but that’s what they called all umpires then. I remember a night in Wilson we had to get out with a police escort when the crowd got ill at the umpires.”That night was unusual. Very few people ever got ill at Johnnie Shives.
“The stories I heard when I went to the Hall of Fame banquet were about how good he was and how much he was respected,” Vic said.
While he was umpiring in the minors, Shives also worked local high school, college and Legion games.
And while he hung up his mask in the Western Carolinas League once he reached his mid-50s, he continued to work locally for many years.
“Johnnie was one of the good umpires,” Ferebee said. “I never had a problem with him. He wasn’t a showboat, but you could tell how much he loved the game and he got as much kick out of umpiring as the players did out of playing. I don’t know of any umpire that worked as many games or worked them as well. It wasn’t just a job to him. He enjoyed it.”
Tommy Eaton, the fireballing pitcher who owns local Legion records for wins and strikeouts, also has positive recollections.
“I went to Boyden with one of Johnnie’s sons (the late Richard Shives), and Johnnie umpired some of our games,” Eaton said. “He always did the balls and strikes and he was as good as anyone I ever had. Some umpires could tick you off, but he’d talk to you and let you know things. He kept a game moving, and everyone respected him because they knew he was a pro umpire.”
Eaton also remembers that Ferebee, who would occasionally tell umpires that he wished their eyes were as good as their ears, had no run-ins with Shives.
“Oh, Coach might say, ‘C’mon, John, that one was in there,’ but that was about the extent of it,” Eaton said.
Rino Quattrin, an umpire who was Shives’ partner in the WCL, may have said it best in a story that appeared in the Post in 1989.
“Johnnie Shives,” he said, “was almost too good a guy to be an umpire.”
Whitey Meadows, the Mount Ulla and Mooresville legend who played in leagues in which Shives umpired, also remembers him as a class act.
“I remember when my dad died, Johnnie called me at the funeral home to tell me what a good man he was,” Meadows said. “And the thing about Johnnie was you never even knew he was around during a ballgame. That’s the mark of a great umpire.”
An umpire’s umpire.