October 2023 ~
It’s a cool, cloudy October morning in Portland, and Shawn Lindsey (Franklin, 1995) is outside basking in it. Right now, there is no place he would rather be than here, in a Portland park, quite literally surveying the fields.
As athletic field supervisor for the City of Portland Parks and Recreation Division, Lindsey is the man in charge of the metropolitan area’s vast array of playing fields. It’s a job that is, well, no walk in the park. Not when Lindsey and his team are tasked with overseeing the city’s 101 baseball/softball fields and the other 162 used for soccer and other sports.
“We have more city-owned playing fields than any other major city in America,” he says with more than a touch of pride.
On this day, Lindsey is checking the condition of one complex, making sure its fields remain playable in a few hours for the fall adult league after the previous day’s rain. Turns out they are, and it makes Lindsey happy knowing those planning to play on them on won’t be stuck inside this evening.
Lindsey has nothing against the indoors other than its location. He’s just been an outdoors guy all his life. On this early autumn day, he has just returned from his annual three-week vacation, which he spends hunting and just “getting away.” So, being where he is today, in a dream job he has held for some two decades, is almost too good to be true.
“I grew up in parks,” he says. “Heck, I never would have been in the PIL Hall of Fame if not for all the parks I’ve been able to play in. My work feels like home because this is what I’ve always done.”
Lindsey grew up in the Ladd’s Addition neighborhood of southeast Portland and can’t remember a time when he wasn’t playing sports. He was particularly enamored of baseball, which he attributes to his dad being an ex-player. But if an activity involved running, jumping, kicking, throwing or catching, he was all in.
“I was just a kid who loved to play with friends,” he remembers. “Every day it was like, OK, what are we doing today? Then I’d ride my bike to Laurelhurst Park or some other park and play basketball or hotbox or whatever.”
Lindsey is quick to credit all the coaches he played for, starting with tee-ball at age 6.
“I was fortunate enough to have lot of great coaches that I respected and liked and who kept me interested in playing. I liked what I was doing so much, I just worked harder to get better at it.”
As he got older, Lindsey started excelling in the sports he was playing, although he may have been the last person to realize it.
“I think I started to understand I was becoming a good athlete when I was in 7th grade, but it wasn’t something I realized myself,” he says. “It was because suddenly people were coming up and saying, ‘You know you’re actually pretty good at this. I wasn’t thinking that at all. I was just playing.”
By the time he got to Franklin, Lindsey was plenty ready for the higher level of competition but, after an ankle injury kept him from playing football his freshman year, his debut had to wait until basketball season. He’d entered high school thinking baseball was his favorite sport. That changed once he started playing for the Franklin basketball team, only to change right back once baseball season came around.
“I really did love basketball more than baseball, but once I started playing baseball I quickly forgot about basketball,” Lindsey says, laughing.
It’s hard to blame him for the hard time he had keeping his favorite sports straight. By the time Lindsey graduated, he had earned three letters each in football, basketball and baseball and, just for good measure, another three in track and field, even though the sport is competed in the same season as baseball.
While Lindsey had competed in track during middle school he never intended to do so at Franklin, and then this happened: “One day in PE class, I wound up racing the fastest guy in the school. He was a senior and I was a freshman, and I beat him.”
Oops.
Next thing Lindsey knows, the Franklin track coach is asking his baseball coach if he’d mind sharing his star centerfielder. Suddenly Lindsey was a two-sport athlete in spring season alone. For someone who loved spots as much as he did, and had a seemingly endless supply of energy, Lindsey took the challenge in stride.
“I’d always been kind of hyperactive; I think every young boy is. So my mom had always supported me playing as many sports as I could. She just needed me to burn myself out. The more tired I was when I got home, the less she had to worry about me,” he says with a laugh.
Getting Lindsey tired out took some doing. During football season, for example, he easily handled playing defensive back, receiver and on the kickoff and return teams. “There were a few games when I never stepped off the field unless we kicked a PAT,” he says. “I didn’t even realize you could run out of energy back then. Now I realize, oh yes, you can.”
Now it takes a decent bit of energy just to list Lindsey’s high school athletic achievements. In addition to his three letters in four sports, as a senior he was named 1st Team All-PIL and Honorable Mention All-State in football, basketball and baseball. As a junior, he was the PIL long jump champion and was third in the event at state.
By then, it was clear if Lindsey had a future in any sport it was baseball, where his skills were impressive enough to get him drafted at the end of his senior year. But rather than sign immediately with a major league team, he opted to hone his skills playing a couple years at Lower Columbia Community College. He also competed there in track, taking second in the 100 meters and third in the triple jump in the 1996 league championships.
Lindsey was again drafted after both years at Lower Columbia, finally signing with the San Francisco Giants in 1998. He completed a year at Arizona State University before entering the minor leagues and playing three years of Single A ball in Salem and Bakersfield.
His dream of advancing through the minors, possibly all the way to the major leagues, was derailed when he was hit in the face by a baseball, suffering an injury that required facial plastic surgery and laser eye surgery to repair. He would learn later that he was scheduled to be called up to Double A ball later on the same day he was injured.
Instead, even after making a complete recovery, he was let go by the Giants organization.
“It’s a tough business,” he says.
After playing a year in Holland and a couple in Canada, Lindsey moved back to Arizona and finished his degree at ASU, before deciding it was time to move back to Portland. In the years since, he has held assistant baseball coaching positions in baseball at Lincoln, Cleveland and, for the last eight years, Central Catholic. He also helped his old Franklin coach, Scott Akers, coach basketball at Wilson.
“One thing that has always inspired me is something a coach told me a long time ago, and that was to give back what was given to me,” Lindsey says.
Today, Lindsey is able to give back both off the job, through coaching, and on it. “Being in charge of these fields is one thing I can do to give back the opportunity I had to go outside and play. This is my chance to make sure young boys and girls have the opportunity to go out and live their dreams like I did. I believe things happen for a reason, and this job is one of those things.”
Lindsey says he rarely thinks about his individual accomplishments in high school, even though there are plenty to choose from. The 270 receiving yards against Marshall. The three interceptions against Benson. The inside-the-park home run at Civic Stadium.
“My best memories are of the people I was around,” he says. “I remember all my teammates. Some of best friendships were created through sports. I always worked hard at sports, but it wasn’t just for myself. It was because I didn’t want to let my teammates down. And I think I’ve worked harder in life for the same reason.”
That also helps explain why Lindsey says he never wondered why he hadn’t been nominated for the PIL Hall of Fame before it happened in 2019.
“I never thought, Why am I not in here?” he says. “It was Scott Aker, who brought it to my attention and let me know he had nominated me. At that point, I got very emotional and started realizing what my accomplishments had been and thinking maybe I did belong. That was a tearful moment when I realized those accomplishments were being recognized.”
All he ever wanted to do was play, Lindsey says. As a kid, as a younger adult, even after leaving pro ball, which explains his willingness to drive from Portland to Seattle and back on a near daily basis for eight years to play for the semi-pro Seattle Studs.
But as a man entering middle age? Well, priorities change.
“I just had a guy tell me he was starting a 40 and over baseball team next year and he needed me to play on it,” Lindsey says. “But I don’t know if I want to give up fishing and hunting to play baseball. I can fish all day, but a baseball game only lasts a couple of hours.”
Do you know Shawn Lindsey? If you’d like to get in touch with him, he can be reached at [email protected]
~ Profile written by Dick Baltus (Wilson, 1973)
