FORT MYERS, Fla. -- A security guard at Hammond Stadium, southern home of Minnesota's Twins, passed by the spot where I'd been standing, along a wall just outside the visiting clubhouse, paused a moment, then turned my way.
"Are you with the Pirates?"
"I'm not," I replied, of course. "I'm a reporter."
"Oh, good," he came right back. "You seen Shelty? He still around?"
Shelty.
I've been blessed to get to know Derek Shelton over these past couple years and change. And for all the time I've spent around him, inside and outside the sports sphere, I've yet to hear anyone outside his immediate family -- wife Alison and children Jackson, Bella and Gianna -- call the man anything but Shelty.