Dudley Little League family remembers longtime icon Bobby Locke as ‘life of the party’

For the past two months, the scoreboard at Dudley Little League’s Scott Brown Field – when there isn’t a game going on – has been left with a loosely-coded message in the numbers 8-0-8 illuminated on the panels labeled “Guest,” “Inning” and “Home” across its somewhat faded red display. 

The eights, if read as letters rather than numbers, spell out “B-O-B” as a memorial to Bobby Locke, that scoreboard’s longtime operator and one of the league’s dozens of dedicated volunteers, who passed away unexpectedly in late April.

“It’s still up there, because I don’t think anybody will turn it off,” his younger brother Jason, Dudley Little League’s president and founder, said on a recent episode of Courier Herald podcast Slightly Off the Record. “I’m like, I’m not turning it off, so it’s been up for a month now or so.”

It’s one of the league’s many tributes to a beloved member of its founding family whose loss has left hundreds across the small town and its larger baseball and softball community with heavy hearts this summer. 

Another is being worn by Dudley’s all-star players on their sleeves. The uniform jersey of each team carries the letters BOB facing the right-hand side, in memory of a man who was a vital piece of the fabric of the organization. 

During the pose for every team picture this summer, the teams have taken an extra shot with everyone turned to the side to display the emblems proudly. 

“I’m making them turn to let me see that,” said Janice Ballard, another of his siblings who is DLL’s resident photographer. “Some of the kids don’t know, so I’m just telling them, he’s mine. Show out for Bobby today.” 

Like each member of the Locke family that resides in or near Dudley, he had his niche on the grounds of the city’s old high school that have been transformed into a bustling youth sports complex over the last 15 years. 

His wheelhouse was the small hut behind home plate of the main diamond where, years back, he cut his teeth as a ballplayer and developed some defensive skills that would become the stuff of legends. 

There he would run the scoreboard and play the music, while older brother Ronnie sat across to the left handling the public address announcing and scorekeeping with pen and paper. 

Both, in the years since about 2013 or 14 when the box was built there to give the two a more permanent home, have been just as irreplaceable a fixture as their fellow family members in roles from running the concession stand to groundskeeping. 

“He never did seek the limelight,” said brother-in-law Doug Floyd. “He was just here, just somebody you could depend on. He was here every single night.” 

Many knew Bobby by name, while to others he was simply the man in the booth.  Though he operated mostly behind the scenes, most visible in his custom of picking up trash and mingling with folks along the route to and from the concession stand and restrooms between games, his absence this summer has been noticeable, and especially last week as Dudley hosted the District 5 baseball tournament for the 10-12s. 

Always keeping score… 

A few balls, strikes and the occasional run from night to night might get missed in the course of conversation, but if there was something Bobby made a point of staying on top of, it was distinguishing between hits and errors using the designated indicator on the scoreboard. 

“He wouldn’t do it in the 9-10 year old games, but 11 and 12, if somebody made an error, he was gonna make sure everybody knew it,” Doug said. “I think one person hollered at him one night, he didn’t acknowledge it. They just kept on keeping on. But it was funny to me.” 

Those points of scorekeeping tend to be a sore subject for moms and dads who can often find reason to quibble, though the comments and sideways glances one might get in that position at some other levels of the sport have never really been a thing around Scott Brown Field, where most spectators aren’t looking that closely at the scoreboard. 

“I always thought it was funny that he was making such a big deal of charging errors and hits, because in my opinion, nobody was watching it,” Ronnie said. “It was a big thing to him. He would always say, I’m not doing it in the 9-10 year olds, but those 11-12 year olds, they should’ve made that play. That was just him, you know. I don’t think anybody ever hardly even noticed it, because it was too quick.” 

The job of manning the scoreboard console belonged to several other volunteers before he took it over around the same time the booth, originally an open-air shed, was put up about two or three seasons after the league’s founding in 2011. 

From just about that point on, Ronnie and Bobby could be found inside the shelter, which was closed in to become a climate-controlled building not long after, pretty much every night that there were regular-season or tournament games going on. And rarely in the time did the latter ever yield his post in the right corner to a fill-in for any reason other than to step over to an adjacent field and watch his granddaughter play softball the last handful of seasons. 

There’s not a lot of room to move around inside the structure, which is perched about four or five feet up from ground level to provide a slightly elevated vantage of the field from its large front windows, and cooled by an A/C unit that, if you spend long enough in front of it, can make you forget that it’s 96 and insufferably humid just on the other side of some thin sheet metal. 

A narrow counter extends wall-to-wall in the front, affording just enough space to fit the four rolling office chairs that are pulled up side-by-side. The two bookends always belonged to the respective brothers, with spots in between available for various others including a required pitch-counter for district and state-level events. 

There’s a nearly identical scorekeeping compartment that overlooks the softball field up the hill, though it lacks much of the individuality that comes in the form of many unique touches Ronnie and Bobby added through the years to make this space their own. 

“We did all the work in here ourselves,” Ronnie said. 

Other than the essential baseball equipment – umpiring helmets and chest protectors hung from pegs, boxes of baseballs and caps on shelves alongside some containers of implements like ball-strike counters and plate brushes – on the back wall, the rest of its contents and decor has some personal value. 

Above Ronnie’s place on the left is a shelf decorated with several bobblehead dolls, one of Chipper Jones that’s a little worse for the wear, and some other trinkets, just below some artwork paying homage to Sandlot hero Ham Porter with his well-known line, “You’re Killing Me Smalls!” 

On Bobby’s side are mostly practical items like the grabber he’d take outside to collect litter, hung from a high peg and holding a roll of paper towels in a convenient spot right within reach. 

His pair of reading glasses still rests on the windowsill, and the red-cushioned armrest he used to perch his right elbow stashed just beneath the desk. 

Scattered here and there are some jars of individually wrapped caramel candies, and a few trays of frequently-used condiments – ketchups, mustards and the like – to save anyone who forgot to grab one a trip back to the concession stand beyond center field. 

Above the front windows, on either side of a metal cutout spelling “Baseball” are hung two of the coolest artifcats: A pair old school navy blue ballcaps embroidered with “Dudley Phillies,” the name of their rec baseball team, in the front and each brother’s name on the sides. 

They were brought back from an overseas trip to Thailand by their father, who traveled extensively in the U.S. Air Force, when both were still kids, and now remain as heirlooms of a bygone era for both as they reminisced on earlier experiences in baseball.  

The players out on the field only think they’re having the best time of anyone in the ballpark. In reality, it was this duo – and anyone else on hand to be part of the conversation – that was enjoying themselves the most on any given night as they went back and forth about everything from the game at hand to how much the Braves’ hitting has regressed since the start of June. 

While the playful banter has continued, it definitely hasn’t been the same since the last set of games Bobby worked the night of April 21. 

“It’s still a shock to me,” Doug said. “We left out of here that Tuesday night, and you would’ve never thought, hey that was the last time I’m gonna see him… I stopped here the day after he died. It was tough coming in this room.” 

His chair behind the score console, for this past week’s tournament, was filled by nephew Chance Floyd, who joined a crew of folks including Doug, Jake Savant and Ian Smith in holding court, with Ronnie out of town attending a concert, during Friday night’s Dudley opener against Warner Robins American.

The longtime local teacher, principal and coach was back in the saddle Saturday, and reflecting on the close connection and playful camaraderie they shared as much here as anywhere they spent time together. 

Both had their running gags and inside jokes, and would refer to each other as “Will.” 

“We had our own language, I guess,” Ronnie said. “We just said stuff where nobody knew what we were talking about. But I guess when you’re together 64 years, you can do that, right? 

“That was the hardest thing for me. He never knew life without me, and I basically didn’t know life without him, but all of the sudden that’s gone. We were best friends, worst enemies. You know how brothers can be.” 

As nicknames go, Bobby had one for just about every family member that he preferred to their real one. For example, Doug was “brother-in-law,” and sister Julie, “JuJu,” with NFL wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster as a partial inspiration. His many nephews were often greeted as “Buddy (insert first name).” 

These were all part of his one-of-a-kind sense of humor, which went side-by-side with the straight-shooting manner of someone who had no hesitation in saying exactly what was on his mind. 

“He was always laughing,” Julie said. “He’s kind of a grumpy person, but in a fun and loving way… He was just fun, the life of the party.” 

“He was just a personality that controlled the air in the room,” Ronnie said. “If you walked into mama’s and he was sitting in that chair and didn’t speak, you just went on about your business. You knew there just wasn’t going to be a conversation. He just wasn’t in the mood for it. But you could tell, he was fixing to be the funniest person you ever met. I guess it’s hard to be funny all the time, so he had to take a break.” 

But when he was cutting up, which was a pretty good bit of the time, Bobby had a certain comedic ability to tickle you with just about anything he said.

“He could tell a bad joke, and you would laugh,” Ronnie added. “If you told the same joke, nobody would laugh. And he told it, and it was somehow funny, every time.” 

Much like Skip Caray, he also had a talent for making a blowout entertaining. 

“It could be the boringest game out here; he would liven it up a little bit,” Doug said. “He’d talk about anything.” 

The wise cracks went back and forth between members of the group all throughout any night in the booth, whether it was commentary on the action or anything else they took notice of around the ballpark, like a coach Bobby spotted wearing flip-flops on the field, and proceeded to roast intensely for several minutes on end. 

“We rag on people and rag on each other,” Doug said. 

Back in the days Jason was moonlighting as an umpire, critiques of his sometimes expansive strike zone would also get the family’s youngest in on plenty of their brotherly ribbing. 

“Anytime somebody called an outside strike, it was a Jason strike,” Ronnie recalled. 

A frequent subject, when the game got lost in what they were talking about, was whether the last pitch was a ball or a strike, leading Jason to quip that the scoreboard memorial should actually read 809, because something on the scoreboard was always slightly off. 

Bobby was also never afraid to stir the pot a bit. 

At one of the first postseason tournaments Dudley ever hosted in the distant past, a small discussion arose with a district organizer over whether the song selection “Welcome to the Jungle” was age-appropriate for a Little League baseball tournament. 

In the years to come, the tune would purposely find its way back onto the playlist of in-game music. Saturday afternoon, Chance cued it up between innings of Dudley’s matchup against Jones County in his honor. 

Though there’s officially no cheering in the press box, Bobby always let on that he was rooting for the home team to be ahead by the sixth and final inning. 

“That way, the game would be shorter and you could go home early,” Doug said.

But make no mistake, there was nowhere else either brother would rather be than watching baseball and being a part of what made this place the center of life in Dudley most every night. 

“We really did enjoy being here,” Ronnie said.

An outfielder you didn’t run on…

From as far back as anyone in Dudley will likely remember, there’s been a Locke playing baseball somewhere in town, whether it’s on these fields dating to three quarters of a century ago or the back- and front yards where the family and its eight children (Janice, Ronnie, Bobby, Emily, Sheila, Angie, Julie and Jason) were first introduced to the game. 

So it’s only fitting that it’s come to have the same significance in the lives of a whole new generation of their family, and likewise the neighbors and friends for which involvement in Dudley Little League has fostered a similar love. 

“My family has been around the ballfield all my life, and that’s always the way it’s been,” Jason said. “We used to play back in my younger days. We had a bunch of men’s softball tournaments, all around the county, and all those people, now you see those people around our Little League park with grandkids that are playing.” 

It’s quite possible Bobby was the most gifted player of the bunch. 

For he and Ronnie, who were not far apart in age, baseball was the go-to activity whether they had a field and actual equipment, or were forced to make do with a stick and some pieces of gravel, one of which wound up putting a spider-web crack in the window of the family station wagon as the two enacted their own matchup between the Braves and Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine – with special attention to accuracy when it came to the handedness of each pitcher and hitter – one afternoon in the yard. 

Bobby went on to star as an outfielder for some early West Laurens High School teams, and featured one of the great cannons baseball fans around these parts will ever see in an arm that could humble anyone who dared test its range and accuracy. 

“If the ball was hit to him, there were many a baserunner that quickly found out they better not try running home,” Janice wrote in a social media remembrance. “He could nail a throw to home plate from the outfield.” 

That talent was seen as early as some rec ball days when Ronnie recalled taking the field despite having his recently broken throwing arm immobilized in a cast, with the instructions to catch the ball and hand it off to Bobby to throw. “He could bring it,” Ronnie said. “I could too, but he was a little wiry joker. You weren’t expecting it.” 

His throws had a way of reaching the target on a spring-loaded hop that claimed many a victim. 

Friend and teammate Rodney Manley remembers vividly one that nabbed the winning run at Jones County in 1980, as Bobby backed up a wayward throw that had escaped into foul territory on a play at third. 

The game-saving peg to the plate, which he described as “the best high school throw I’ve ever seen,” would lead to a rare victory over the Grayhounds’ powerhouse, which dominated the region for most of that era, and would ultimately get the last word in the teams’ two-game series for first place with a payback win later in the season. 

Ronnie wasn’t there to witness the play, but has heard the tale of it many times. 

“I can believe it,” he said. “But the best thing about that was, to me, he was where he was supposed to be, and a lot of people wouldn’t have been.” 

Jason, at 14 years younger, can’t remember much from those high school years, but played next to him in the outfield as an adult. 

“He had quite an arm,” Jason said. “I’ve heard a lot about his high school playing days. I’m sure I went a little bit. I vaguely remember him and my brother Ronnie playing in high school, but I got to play church softball with him a lot. We had some great times. I played right center field and he played left center field, so I had an opportunity to play right next to him at times. It was really cool to get to see that and experience that, and get to play with him and Ronnie as well.”

Billy LeRoy, another longtime friend, recalls a particular play from a church league softball game later on, when an opposing player – clearly with no idea what he was up against – attempted to leg out an extra base on a sure double to the fence. 

Bobby’s teammates, foreshadowing another highlight throw as the runner rounded second, started quacking to indicate the poor runner was about to be a dead duck at third. 

Sure enough, the ball was right on target to get him. 

Many of the same cohorts are convinced that he would intentionally take his time getting to the ball, and sometimes even go to the lengths of mishandling it for show, in hopes of baiting those runners into a similar fate. 

“Now, some of them LeRoy boys will try to claim Bobby dropped balls on purpose,” Ronnie said. “I’m not sure it was on purpose, I think he just booted it.” 

A baseball family… 

Dudley Little League has always been a family affair for the Lockes, whose ginormous clan has a huge presence across Laurens County, and particularly in Dudley, in or near which a majority of its members still live. 

Jason, who has been the city’s mayor for more than two decades, spearheaded the ambitious venture of launching the league back in 2011. But the project – arising from an idea hatched around the dinner table of family matriarch “Granny Nell” Locke – was a group effort from the very beginning as the thought grew from a dream to a mission they all agreed to pursue together. 

Everyone was instrumental in some way to getting the league off the ground. Now, most of their kids who were among its first players have taken up their own roles as coaches and volunteers around the complex in adulthood. 

In 15 seasons, it’s grown from a little over a hundred who turned out for a baseball-exclusive inaugural season to more than 600 boys and girls who are now involved from March through midsummer. 

“It’s unbelievable, really, just to think of where it came from, sitting on the couch at Granny Nell’s house and watching the Little League World Series with Jason,” said Julie, who helps head up the concession stand. “For several years, he was like, I just want to do that. Why aren’t we doing this? And then, that one year, it was like, alright, we’re doing it next year. Little did we know what we were getting into.” 

“And it changed our lives forever,” said Jason’s wife Amanda Locke, also a mainstay in the centerfield kitchen known for homemade items like its cinnamon pretzels. 

The attention and love put into not only the food, but the care and construction of the park, have made its few acres as charming and inviting a place as any of their homes, with a welcome mat just as large. 

“We had a couple last night that came out here and they were from Vine-Ingle, and she was like, ‘It’s so homey out here, we love it,'” Amanda said. “I was like, ‘Well, we take great pride in that. We want it to be like that, we want it to be homey.” 

“It’s just a feel,” Julie added. “You can’t describe it, you just feel it.” 

Each season, these game nights have become their own cherished family get-togethers, complete with the eating, fellowship and joking that make all of them special. 

“It’s the fact that we were all together out here,” Janice said. “I could almost always look up there and see Bobby.” 

Though he was largely a creature of habit in his routines at home and around the field – just as in the career driving big rigs he retired from years ago – Bobby was a bit unpredictable when it came to his nightly concession order, which would be something different nearly every time. 

“He would always be like, what do I want to do today?” Julie said. “He changed it up, and he would be specific about saying I think I’m going to do this today, so it wasn’t like one thing… He was a thinker. He thought through his things that he was going to do, and there was a reason why he changed it up today. He had a method to everything he did.” 

Getting back to baseball… 

A few months since Bobby’s sudden passing, the new routine of life without him is one that members of his blood family, and baseball family, are still adjusting to as they make sense of an empty chair in the score booth, and at the dinner table. 

“He’s not just missed here, he’s missed everywhere,” Doug said. 

But the great times spent with him in both settings through the years are ones they’ve been able to look back on fondly as this season has played out. 

“We take for granted relationships with people until they’re gone, then we realize, man, what we had,” Jason said. “I’m thankful for the time that we’ve had.”

He added that the many expressions of sympathy, from uniform emblems to words of care, have meant the world. 

“It’s a humbling experience again just to see the outpouring from our Little League family.” 

Long after this summer’s all-stars call it a year, and that scoreboard in left center field eventually has to be shut off, Bobby’s legacy will still live on in the hearts of current and future DLL alumni whose playing experience he was a part of, and… of course… the amusing conversations that’ll continue going strong inside the score booth. 

That’s a good thing, because there are still too many more memories to relive than any 20-minute chat between baseball games can really do justice. And the next one is about to get started. 

“I could tell you stories all night about Will,” Ronnie said, “but we couldn’t have a ballgame.”