Jodie Carlton White, Alexandria’s “Mr. Baseball,” got called up to the “majors” the other day, at age 84. His departure comes less than a week after the Alexandria City Council announced it will soon consider putting the shriveled Bringhurst Field out of its misery.
White was practically born at Bringhurst Field, the fabled baseball ballpark that his father, Fred, helped build in 1933, and he helped redesign four times. He treated it as if it was his baby. It was the home field for various iterations of the Alexandria Aces minor league ball team for most of the 20th century and the early part of this century, not to mention countless youth league and high school and occasional college baseball games over the same span.
Even after he retired in 2007 as the longtime director of parks and recreation for Alexandria, White continued for several years to nurture and maintain the grounds at the ballpark. He was tireless and ever cheerful when it came to the ballpark or anything or anyone related to baseball. It was in his DNA. He was born in the same neighborhood and his mom told him he drank his first Coca-Cola from a bottle “with a nipple on it” while he sat on the second row.
His uncle, Les Mueller, pitched professionally for the Detroit Tigers in the 1940s, and his wife, Doris, used to tell him of Bringhurst, “This is your house, and your home is down the street.” He said his dad had a homestead across the street and pitched batting practice for the Evangeline League Aces. His mom ran the concession stand.
Jodie once boasted that he saw Luscious “Luke” Easter, a strapping 6-foot-4, 240-pounder former Negro League star who was then with the Cleveland Indians, hit a monster home run during an exhibition game at Bringhurst Field in the 1950s. He claimed it sailed over the 7-Up Bottling Company, which sat across Masonic Drive beyond the right field fence.
Jodie and Doris White were married for almost 62 years until Doris died in 2020. They had five children, including son Chad who died of a brain aneurism in 2019, and 16 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Jodie was like a father to many young ballplayers over the years, not the least of whom is former major league star and Louisiana Sports Hall of Famer Juan Pierre. He coached him in T-Ball and later in Dixie Boys Baseball (ages 13 and 14).
“He was very good for our city, especially the kids,” said 70-year-old Alfred Rachal, the foreman for the Pineville Recreation Department and recent inductee into the Louisiana USSSA Hall of Fame for his softball officiating career. “Some kids were discouraged, and he had a way of putting them at ease. He was pure. He represented the spirit of himself. He was straightforward with you. He could do everything well, and he did it loudly. He never met a stranger. No sir. He’d talk to a stop sign.”
Rachal recalled White often set up youngsters for a punch line by asking, “How do you feel?” And when they’d usually answer that they felt good, he’d correct them, saying, “No, you feel with your hands.”
Stan Cliburn managed the Aces for five years when they played in the Texas-Louisiana League, and he’s on target to achieve a long-held goal of 2,0000 career victories in 35 years as a minor league manager in this, his sixth season with the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs.
Cliburn recalled Monday when he first took the Aces job, Jack Lazorko, then the player personnel director for the league, told him of Jodie White. “He said he was the No. 1 Aces fan and very respected in the community, and he said, ‘If you become friends with him, he’ll do anything in the world for you,’ and that’s who he was.
“Whatever we got done there (including back-to-back Texas-Louisiana League championships in 1997 and ‘98),” Cliburn continued, “he was at the top of the pole. He made it happen.”
Warren Morris, and Alexandria native who went on to LSU and big-league baseball fame, remembers from his time in the big leagues that White cashed in on his many connections in baseball.
“It seems every time we’d play in Houston or Dallas,” he said, “I’d look around and Jodie White was on the field during batting practice. That shows how he found a way to be in the middle of everything. To his credit, he lived a full life.”
White’s daughter, Cyndi, said Jodie broke his back in a fall in November and endured various health problems since. She said he had been receiving hospice care since the end of December. She knew his time was short when he didn’t give his usual answer to “how do you feel?”
Funeral plans include a Monday evening visitation at Hixson Brothers Funeral Home in Alexandria and a Tuesday 11 a.m. service at Calvary Baptist. For details check hixsonbrothers.com.