Charlotte’s Lib Shildt, mother of Cardinals manager Mike, was his biggest fan, critic
Lib Shildt allowed her son Mike to tag along when she came to work as team secretary of the Charlotte O’s minor league baseball team in the 1970s and 1980s.
Mike Shildt channeled his love of the game into a career as a player, a high school and college coach, a professional scout and eventually manager of the St. Louis Cardinals.
Along the way, his mom remained his biggest fan — and critic.
Elizabeth “Lib” Shildt died late last week in Charlotte after a lengthy battle with a pulmonary illness. She was 85.
The St. Louis Cardinals, whom Mike Shildt managed into the National League Championship Series this year, announced Lib Shildt’s death Monday.
Lib Shildt was born in the Eastern Shore area of Maryland. She and her husband Merle were big Baltimore Orioles’ fans when they moved to Charlotte sometime in the mid 1960s. A few years after giving birth to Mike, Lib Shildt thought it was natural that she apply for a job with the Charlotte O’s, Baltimore’s Double-A farm team.
She was hired by team owner Frances Crockett as administrative assistant in what she later described as a “three-person office staff,” commuting from her home in the Starmount community of South Charlotte.
She allowed her son to come with her to work, and before long, young Mike Shildt was working for the O’s — cleaning players’ shoes, shagging flies. He even helped operate the scoreboard at Crockett Park, the O’s home field on Magnolia Avenue, off South Boulevard.
“He was this little rug rat, running around at first,” Lib Shildt told the Observer’s David Scott in 2018. “He was just one of the clubhouse boys, doing various amounts of things. Then they let him shag balls with the players. Those years clinched his love for baseball.”
Lib Shildt saw her son play at Olympic High and UNC Asheville, then coach at West Charlotte High and with the Charlotte 49ers, before becoming a scout. In 2006, a year after Merle Shildt’s death, Mike became a minor league manager.
He eventually climbed up the managerial ladder and was named skipper of the Cardinals in August 2018.
Lib Shildt remained a baseball fan, sometimes offering advice to her son during the Cardinals’ run to the NLCS, where they lost to the Washington Nationals.
She also made appearances with the Charlotte Knights, a Triple-A descendant of the old Charlotte O’s. Lib Shildt was honored in 2017 with the Buster Sloan Award, named in honor of the O’s late groundskeeper at Crockett Park; and in 2018 during the Knights’ Women in Baseball Night.
Funeral services are planned for 1 p.m. Nov. 18 at Starmount Presbyterian Church in Charlotte. A reception will follow at Braswell’s Pub, on Montford Road.
In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to St. Jude Children’s Hospital, or to Baseball for Life, an organization started by her son. Baseball for Life is designed to help youths learn baseball and life skills.