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Umpire “Scooby” Tindle remembered By Raymond Jordan This summer, for the first time in nearly two decades, the Cameron little league baseball and softball teams will take the field without an old friend behind the plate. On Oct. 26, long-time little league umpire and Cameronite Elbert “Scooby” Tindle, Jr. died of a heart attack at his home in Cameron. He was 35 years old. He leaves behind 9-year old daughter Jaime Nicole Tindle, mother Irene Tindle, brothers Billy Joe Tindle, Bobby Joe Tindle, Tony Stinnett, Lawrence Bubba Lowe, and sisters Tulullah Myres, Bridgette Jefferson and Felita Tindle. “He was always all about the kids,” Douglas Krumnow, Cameron Baseball Association president, said. “He’s probably umpired every kid that’s played baseball in Cameron for the last several years. All the kids knew Scooby.” From the time he was a little boy, Scooby wanted to umpire games, his mother Irene Tindle remembered. “He went to a ball game when he was about 9-years old and asked the umpire if he could be an umpire too and she chuckled and said sure,” said Irene Tindle. “And when he finished (C.H. Yoe High School) in 1990 when he was 16, she hired him.” “He was an umpire ever since,” sister Bridgette Jefferson added. He was not only an umpire for the Cameron leagues, but also for high school University Interscholastic League softball contests. In a 2004 article in The Herald, Tindle said one of his biggest achievements while umpiring was that he got to call games at the regional UIL level of competition. He also umpired at the state tournament for 12 and under girls’ fast pitch in Denton. Scooby tried the coaching side of the game too in 2004 when he became the coach for his daughter’s T-ball team. “When he was coaching, it didn’t matter what the score was or who won,” friend Laurie Laywell said. “He tried to find the positive in everything. It was just overwhelming, how many lives he touched. He will be truly and dearly missed.” Janet Hundle whose daughter Kassidy, 7, was coached by Scooby, said he would always take time out to encourage his players. “After every game, we always had a team meeting and he always had something positive to say. He was just one of a kind.” James Brashear, a classmate of Scooby’s at Yoe High said his friend was one of a kind. “You really can’t put into words what kind of person he was,” Brashear said. “(Scooby) was just a fun person. He made everybody laugh.” Around the same time Scooby began umpiring when he was a teenager, he also became a DJ after he won a “Battle of the DJs” at a party at his mother’s house. Virgie Hardeman noticed him and hired him to work at her club, “Jazzy’s.” Scooby soon began to work pro-bono at Cameron junior high dances, and for the last few years, was the DJ at father-daughter dances in Temple. But, Scooby was also involved in the community off the field. He had been a member of Lights Baptist Church in Cameron since 1975, and was the youth Director and the Sunday School Superintendent. “He loved kids,” Irene Tindle said. “All kids were his babies. That’s what he called them.” In 2005, Scooby became an ordained Deacon and served at Light Baptist Church. “He loved Christ,” Irene Tindle said. Elbert Tindle, Jr. was buried Oct. 30 during a ceremony at the First Baptist Church in Cameron. Several of the players he coached and parents of children whose lives he touched chose to come forward and say a few words during the service. Brashear said the void that his friend’s death left in those who knew him is something that will be felt for a long time. “I don’t think it’s really set in yet,” Brashear said. “Once baseball rolls around and he’s not there, it’ll really set in.”
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