St. Petersburg spring training not so black and white

To end spring training in the city is to close the door on a past both joyful and shameful.

By John Barry, Times staff writer
Published February 23, 2008

One last time, spring has stirred baseball's spirits, those cleated, clay-coated ghosts of long-gone. Big leaguers have called St. Petersburg home for 94 years, but now comes the end. The Rays will quit Al Lang Field next year for new training quarters in Port Charlotte.

"I'm resentful," says Carole Bowes Waygood. Joe DiMaggio cooked spaghetti for her one spring evening in the 1940s. She watched Marilyn Monroe chew out the Yankee Clipper in a beach cabana. What a golden time it was.

"There are too many ghosts walking on Al Lang Field," she says. "That's one thing they will never stamp out.

"Believe me, the ghosts of baseball past will stay."

- - -

There's another ghost story afloat - more complicated - involving the baseball stars who lived in the black half of town. Players and their wives stayed in private homes because they weren't allowed in white hotels. Dentist Robert Swain and his wife, Rosalie Peck, hosted Cardinal all-star Curt Flood and his wife, Beverly. Swain built an apartment building on 22nd Street S for other players. Elston Howard, the Yankees' first black player, lived in one apartment.

One spring, the black families told the black players not to come back. They could no longer stay in their homes, or in their apartment buildings.

That was pretty much the beginning of the end of a lot of things in St. Petersburg.

The old apartment building on 22nd Street has since passed into the hands of William and Annette Howard, who live in one unit and rent out the others. Their daughter Willette runs a beauty shop there.

"Ghosts?" William Howard says. "You mean, do I hear ghosts walking around?"

He laughs.

"There ain't no ghosts here."

- - -

David "Red" Irby brought his infielder's glove to St. Petersburg in 1956 for a Yankee tryout. He remembers Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto clamping a hand on his shoulder and predicting, "You're going to be the next shortstop for the Yankees."

Red said he needed a wheelbarrow to hold his head on.

He got into a game at Al Lang Field against the Cardinals. Even today, he winces, recollecting his box scores.

"I didn't get the base hits, I'll tell you that."

Rizzuto's hopeful prophecy had proved false. The Yankees didn't want Red. He didn't get invited back to St. Petersburg for 46 years.

His nephew, Lee Irby, invited him to watch spring baseball in 2002. Lee is a professor at Eckerd College. He wrote a novel in 2004 called 7000 Clams, set in St. Petersburg in the Roaring Twenties, when the Yankees pretty much drank up the town. Lee sometimes visits Miller Huggins Field at Crescent Lake and tells Little Leaguers' parents, "Your kids are playing on the same field where Babe Ruth played."

During Uncle Red's visit, they walked out on Miller Huggins Field together. "Waves of memories washed over me," says Red - names and images of teammates from that one magic spring: Whitey Ford, Don Larsen, Yogi Berra, Billy Martin, Elston Howard, Mickey Mantle.

One more thing came back to him: the formula that had eluded him in the spring of '56.

"Take a round bat and a round ball, and hit square."

- - -

Carole Bowes Waygood lived next door to Joe DiMaggio in 1948. She was 12. Her dad, Bill Bowes, had just become city editor of the Evening Independent. They were camping out in a beach cottage near the then-crumbling Don CeSar while their home was being built.

One night, Dad said, "We're going to dinner at Joe's cottage."

Mom said, "Who's Joe?"

Joe DiMaggio was sharing the next-door cottage with Yogi Berra and Phil Rizzuto during spring training.

Waygood remembers going over there and seeing a big pot of DiMaggio's spaghetti sauce waiting on the kitchen table.

She saw DiMaggio on the beach again in 1954. She remembers parading with her girlfriends past a cabana at the old Tides Hotel and Bath Club on Redington Beach. They'd go back and forth, peeping inside.

Marilyn Monroe lay on a beach cot, wrapped in a coat, wearing sunglasses. DiMaggio lay next to her in a swimsuit.

They were fighting like cats.

Their marriage lasted 274 days.

- - -

Rosalie Peck has brought out photographs from those springtimes. The photos show banquets, house parties, black-tie dances, glamorous men and women.

One accidental consequence of segregation had been to concentrate black wealth and talent in a small area, creating an oasis of prosperity. Blacks couldn't buy a nickel hot dog on the white side, but could hear Count Basie at the Manhattan Casino on their side.

"Maids and janitors were all white St. Petersburg knew," says Peck. "They missed the breadth and height of our community. What we had been deprived of was not what we were about. Black baseball players were not what made us."

The wealthiest families catered to the all stars. Dentist Swain hosted the Floods. Dr. Ralph Wimbish hosted Elston Howard and his wife, Arlene.

Swain built the Rose Apartments on 22nd Street and 15th Avenue S for others. Cardinals ace Bob Gibson slept there, as did Cardinal Bill White, who became the first black president of the National League.

Then in 1960, Swain and Wimbish told the black players they'd have to find someplace else to live the next spring.

"We had been enablers of the segregationists," Peck says. "It was demeaning that it was necessary. We took a stand, and the players understood."

Big Leaguers never lived there again. Only regular folks did. The Rose Apartments, named for Rosalie Peck, became just apartments.

So ended segregated spring baseball in St. Petersburg.

Like Red Irby, Peck abides by a formula that seemed elusive during those baseball springtimes. It's a more elegant testament to hitting the ball square. She found it in the Max Ehrmann poem Desiderata:

No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

John Barry can be reached at jbarry@sptimes.com or 727 892-2258.

[Last modified February 21, 2008, 18:05:22]