Leaves of the past

Mangroves to Major Leagues is a new look at St. Petersburg's past and present, from the dawn of man to the new millennium.

By LENNIE BENNETT

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 12, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- When Mangroves to Major Leagues hits local bookstore shelves Friday, author Rick Baker does not expect a stampede like what accompanied Saturday's release of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

After all, the first printing numbers 3,000 copies -- compared to 3.5-million for Harry Potter. But Baker, 44, is every bit as excited as any one of the thousands of youngsters who lined up to purchase the Potter book. "It's more than I ever intended doing," he said. "I'm thrilled, of course. I also have a sense of relief that it's done."

Almost eight years in the making, the story of St. Petersburg, from pre-history to Jan. 1, has been a labor of love for the lawyer and civic leader.

The format for the 350-page book, which includes a forward by Gov. Jeb Bush, is a timeline in which St. Petersburg events are combined with concurrent national and state history.

"This book doesn't read like a textbook," said Byron Kennedy of Southern Heritage Press, the book's publisher. "It has great photographs, some never printed before, which is very unusual."

Baker said the book's genesis began with his own interest in local history, which the Chicago native has studied since moving here in 1981. He was asked some years ago by Chamber of Commerce officials to speak about the city's past to new business owners.

"The first year, they gave me three minutes," Baker said. "The next year, five minutes. The next year, 10. At some point I was given an hour. I wrote timelines and memorized them. I never intended to write a book. But I started assembling a lot of information so I just decided to do it."

It required a good bit of sleuthing, and he says collecting the 400 or so photographs was as much effort as the research and writing. His bibliography lists about 100 references, including St. Petersburg and the Florida Dream, 1888-1950 by University of South Florida professor Ray Arsenault, considered the definitive history of the city.

"It's a great book," Baker said. "But it ends at 1950. Not much has been written about later eras, especially the Civil Rights movement here. And it's organized differently."

The book is divided into 10 chapters, beginning with prehistory to 1859 and ending with the time period between 1978 to January 2000.

"The most interesting chapter in my opinion is Chapter 9," he said. "I called it "Turbulent Times, 1960 to 1977.' Nationally, there were assassinations, the Vietnam War, Watergate, the racheting up of the Civil Rights movement. All of those things were reflected here, a love-in in Williams Park, the NAACP picket at Morrison's Cafeteria, the anti-war march, a sit-in at a local Kresge's. It was a tough era here. And you see it in the context of what was going on in the rest of the country."

One of the more poignant stories in Baker's book was included after a woman read a newspaper account of his search for information about the city's past.

"A woman named Frances Rose called me," he said. "She is in her 90s. I visited her and she pulled out a file about her brother, a Coast Guardsman named Harold Myers, who had been killed on Sept. 26, 1918, when a German U-boat torpedoed his cutter, the USS Tampa, off the coast of Wales. She's kept papers and photos all these years."

Her photographs are among many he unearthed that either have never been published or have not been seen for many years. Also included are old maps, such as one showing the 1904 trolley lines, and a number of charts that he put together with statistics such as a list of boom-era hotels built (16, from 1918-1928, with a total of more than 2,000 rooms), local bridges and piers, major league teams and the fields on which they played, and railroad lines and depots.

It will no doubt evoke nostalgia among longtime locals, but Baker's greatest hope is that "it makes history relevant to kids."

To that end, Baker's friend, philanthropist John Galbraith, has purchased several hundred copies that he is donating to every school in Pinellas County.

Publisher Byron Kennedy said that several corporations, such as Ceridian Benefits Services, have pre-ordered copies to distribute to employees, bringing advance sales to 2,000.

Baker described St. Petersburg now, which he probably knows as well as anyone, as "one of the most beautiful places in the world, a great combination of everything you'd want."

Long involved in civic affairs and local politics, he is expected to be a candidate for mayor in March 2001 but would not comment on his political aspirations, saying "It's still too early. And I don't want my remarks to sound like a campaign speech. But can St. Petersburg be better? Yes. And that's going to be the subject of discussion in the next several months."

Mangroves to Major League ends on an upbeat note, touting the arrival of a Major League baseball team to St. Petersburg and the explosion of downtown development. The last photograph is of The Pier, that icon of civic hope and controversy, taken by Baker just after sunrise on Jan. 1 from a vantage point at the Renaissance Vinoy Resort.

Will he write a sequel?

"Maybe when I retire," he said. "And I won't be retiring on the royalties from this book."

Where to buy it

Mangroves to Major League by Rick Baker (Southern Heritage Press, $34.95) is expected to be available on Friday at these St. Petersburg locations:

• B Dalton Bookseller, 6901 22nd Ave. N, 344-2651

• Bayboro Books, 121 Seventh Ave. S, 821-5477

• Borders Books and Music, 6901 22nd Ave. N, 381-8890

• Haslam's Book Store, 2025 Central Ave., 822-8616

• Lighthouse Books, 1735 First Ave. N, 822-3278

• St. Petersburg Museum of History, 335 Second Ave. NE, 894-105

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.