He’s the Soul of Sports In Laguna : Recreation: Skipper Carrillo, called a community treasure, works hard so others can play ball.

Mothers don’t love their children more than Laguna Beach residents love Skipper Carrillo, says Norm Borucki, Carrillo’s friend for 30 years.

He is only half-joking.

Carrillo, 52, is as integral to Laguna as the baseball field that bears his name. For three decades, he has been third-base umpire, batboy, scorekeeper and cheering squad for high school and Little League games. He has tidied locker rooms, washed uniforms and prepped the fields. And stored it all in his memory.

That’s especially remarkable for someone who suffered brain damage at birth.

Through his indefatigable contributions on sports fields, friends say, Carrillo has become the city’s most recognized resident.

“I really believe he could be elected mayor if he wanted to be,” says Borucki, an official with the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. and former Laguna Beach High School varsity baseball coach. “You walk down the street with him, and everybody knows Skipper. He’s high-fiving people and people are tooting the horn.”

In Laguna, people often have a Skipper Carrillo story.

Like the time six years ago during the all-star playoffs against Mission Viejo North, a contest that Laguna had been expected to lose by a lopsided margin. Carrillo moved to the dugout and went to work.

“He had them all fired up,” former head coach Tom Klingenmeier says. The Laguna players, not known for their playoff prowess, moved ahead.

“This came as a surprise to Laguna Beach people,” he says. “I mean, whoa, we’re up. What do you do now? We were not supposed to beat this team at all.”

It also jolted Mission Viejo fans, who asked that Carrillo be ejected from the dugout, where, according to the rules, there could be just 14 uniforms. It was the “first time in his life he ever had to leave the dugout,” Klingenmeier says.

If it was a tough call for Laguna, it did not do Mission Viejo fans much good either.

“The players were so upset somebody would do that to Skipper, they said, ‘Let’s win this for Skipper,’ ” Klingenmeier says. “So we murdered the Mission Viejo team.”

Carrillo, who often insists that a “home run day” springs from behind each sunset, has reversed the fate of many ballgames, friends say. Over the years, he has also regularly stunned residents with his recall of baseball history. Klingenmeier’s son J.T. says, “He just seems to know everything.”

Like Carrillo’s recollection of the first minor league baseball game he attended with his father in 1951. It was at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles. The Hollywood Stars jumped out in front of the L.A. Angels, 5-0, and held the lead until the ninth inning, when the Angels tied the game.

“With two outs, (the batter) knocked a home run over the left-field wall to beat the Angels, 6-5,” Carrillo says. “And that was only the first game of the twin bill.”

The second game started at 8 p.m., he said. The Angels lost that one, 7-2.

No point in looking up the scores to see whether Carrillo knows his stuff, says Klingenmeier, now the high school’s junior varsity coach. Klingenmeier already has.

“It’s all in the Major League Baseball Encyclopedia,” he says. “He’s accurate. Very accurate.”

For local athletes, having Carrillo around town for the last four decades has been like having their sports memories stored in a computer.

While baseball is his first love, Carrillo also supports football and basketball players. Ron Lutz, a former basketball player who is now the city’s recreation supervisor, says Carrillo can remember details of Lutz’s games.

“I can say, ‘Hey, Skip, how far had we fallen behind in the second quarter in the 1962 game in Oxnard against Santa Clara High School?’ and he can probably tell me,” Lutz says.

But Carrillo’s value to Laguna Beach is that “he’s doing things that need to be done to make a sports program go,” he says.

During football season, he marks the downs. During baseball season, Carrillo’s sprints to right field to flip the numbers on the old manual scoreboard, then back to the dugout, are part of the event, residents say.

After the game, Carrillo packs the large numbers in a sturdy suitcase, snaps it shut and carries it home.

“I don’t want anyone to take my job,” he says. Residents say no one ever will.

When Coca-Cola wanted to install an automated scoreboard, “the whole town got mad,” says Diane Crain, a friend of Carrillo’s. “Everybody protested against it, because that’s Skipper’s job.”

After being told of Carrillo’s contribution by local residents and baseball officials, Little League national headquarters decided to give “special recognition” to Carrillo during its world series this year. On Aug. 20, Carrillo will fly to Williamsport, Pa., where he will be honored before thousands of spectators before a championship game for “unparalleled dedication and exemplary leadership.”

The last time a volunteer was so honored was several years ago, Little League spokesman Steve Keener says.

After he was given an award for volunteer service several years ago, the Orange County Department of Education produced a film about Carrillo that aired on KOCE public TV. The film focused on his life and volunteer work.

Carrillo’s life has been a come-from-behind victory of sorts. Born two months early and with a shortage of oxygen, Carrillo says that his physical difficulties have included problems with his hearing, sight and coordination.

Until he was 15, he attended boarding schools for “special people that need special training,” he says.

The devotion of his parents buoyed his confidence, he says. Determined that his son would not be intimidated by “adult talk,” Carrillo’s father, a semipro baseball coach, taught Carrillo to build a vocabulary of baseball terms.

His home still is “Wrigley Field,” his bedroom “the dugout.” Friends are quickly renamed after famous ballplayers. They consider it an honor.

Carrillo’s father died in 1966--the same year, Carrillo quickly adds, that the Dodgers lost the World Series to Baltimore and that Willie Davis made three errors in one game.

When Carrillo’s mother died six years ago, she left her Laguna Beach house, which overlooks the high school’s football and baseball fields, and a trust fund to her son. Carrillo and a cousin now share the hillside home.

When he’s not on the field, Carrillo cleans and shops for his 80-year-old neighbor as a favor. He attends Mass almost daily.

“I know it’s impossible to believe you have somebody who is just totally good,” says Gene Crain, former president of the Laguna Beach Little League, “but Skipper is, because he doesn’t know how to be any other way.”

Carrillo has goals. He wants to own a home uniform and road jersey for every team in the Major Leagues, and he wants to be batboy for the Dodgers for one complete game. His friends are rooting for him. Carrillo deserves to win, they say.

“He has no secrets, he has no bad habits,” Crain says. “What you see is what it is, and what it is is just good.”

“I just do the best I can,” Carrillo says. “Let’s put it that way.”