Jim Oliver was St. Petersburg’s ‘Mr. Baseball’

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For many St. Pete history buffs, early mayor Al Lang is known as “Mr. Baseball” for bringing Major League Baseball spring training to St. Petersburg, beginning with Branch Rickey’s St. Louis Browns in 1914.

But for the city’s Black community, “Mr. Baseball” was Jim Oliver.

James Franklin Oliver Sr. was an amazing shortstop who played with the National, Florida, and local Negro Leagues and clubs from the 1940s to the ‘50s.  Equally noteworthy, he was a role model and mentor to hundreds of Black youth during the era of segregation. In addition to baseball, Jim Oliver played semi-pro football and was an excellent golfer.

Oliver was born near Waycross, Georgia in 1919. He moved to St. Petersburg with his family at the age of 7. He attended Davis Elementary school but did not go on to high school, and began working at about age 13.

Jim Oliver Sr. and his wife, Doris. He was a role model and mentor to hundreds of Black youths during the era of segregation. Photo provided by the author.

Early baseball history

Oliver played professionally in the early to mid ‘40s. He batted right, threw right, was 5’7”, weighed 145 lbs., and usually played shortstop.

In those years, Black baseball and softball for both adults and youth were centered at Campbell Park, just south of today’s Tropicana Field. The only city park open to Blacks before the 1920s was the South Mole, now known as Demens Landing Park, and that was ill-kept. In 1926 Thomas C. Campbell, a downtown hotel owner, leased what is now much of Campbell Park to the city Park Board to establish a recreation center for the African American community.

As historian Jon Wilson wrote, “To say the athletic fields were not always impeccably groomed is an understatement. Collectively, they were often called the ‘Dust Bowl.’ But they belonged to the community and provided years of good times during an era marked by strict and often brutal segregation.” As Oliver’s son, Jim Oliver, Jr. observed, baseball at Campbell Park was the “major entertainment in the Black community of St. Petersburg for many years.”

In was not until a quarter century later that the park was officially established as a part of the city’s park system. After a formal dedication in 1950 the city slowly began enhancing the park with tennis courts, playgrounds, a swimming pool and other amenities. In 1952 the finest baseball stadium on the Florida Suncoast was built for the local Negro Baseball League. The field was odd-shaped with a 300-foot left-field line, an astounding 500-foot straight-away center, tapering off to a 381 foot right. Today the field is much smaller.

At least as early as 1929 a Black baseball team called the Sunshine Babies held practices and played games in the park. In 1930 St. Petersburg’s professional Florida Stars won the state baseball championship for African American teams and conducted a successful barnstorming tour of the North.

Throughout the years, numerous local teams called Campbell Park home. A few were the Florida Monarchs, the Oliver Alouettes, the Black Saints, the Peters Palace Stars (later known as the Pelicans), the St. Petersburg Braves, the St. Petersburg Tigers and a women’s team known as the Florida Blue Stars. In the early days, a list of team owners amounted to a virtual who’s who of prominent community men. These included Elder Jordan, patriarch of one of the Black community’s founding families, along with Manhattan Casino promoter and Jordan Park Public Housing manager George Grogan.

As noted by baseball historian Ken Clawson, the normal path for a Black player in St. Pete to make his way in the professional game was to be discovered by a barnstorming Black team playing a local team. The most common Black team to come through St. Petersburg yearly was the Ethiopian Clowns. In 1930, a newspaper article noted the Stars were playing the Cuban House of David, a traveling organization of bearded players. The Cuban House of David was patterned after the white House of David, sponsored by a religious cult that played trick baseball with Major League teams, including the Yankees when they were in St. Pete for spring training. Today’s Savannah Bananas baseball team follows that tradition.

Sydney S. Pollock was the general manager and primary promoter of the Cuban House of David.  Ten years after the Cuban team played at Campbell Park, Pollock brought the Ethiopian Clowns to St. Pete. They played the Toledo Crawfords of the Negro National League.

Accompanying the team was the Olympic 1936 track star Jessie Owens, who gave track running demonstrations. While in St. Pete Pollock recruited several local players, including Copper Knee Thompson – and James Oliver.

Jim Oliver Sr. Photo provided by the author.

In the 1930s Oliver played with the St. Petersburg Saints. He started playing professionally with the Ethiopian Clowns (later to become the Indianapolis Clowns and the Cincinnati Clowns) in 1943. He stayed with the Clowns through 1946, playing alongside another St. Pete discovery at 2^nd base, Ray Neil. Clawson also thinks Oliver played with the Negro National League Birmingham Black Barons in 1943, although no documentation of this has yet been found. As Clawson notes, there are no real records of Oliver’s play with either team.

The Clowns were independent and did not play in one of the recognized Negro Leagues at the time. Also, Oliver carried the stage name of “Selassie” for their exhibitions, as in Emperor Selassie of Ethiopia. Birmingham, no matter who was playing shortstop that day, listed the same last name on the lineup card for a period of about seven years.

In 1946 Oliver joined the Cleveland Buckeyes as shortstop in the Negro American League. He is officially recorded as playing only one Major League game with the Buckeyes, but again as Clawson notes, Negro League records are incomplete, and newspaper coverage was spotty, so finding accurate records is difficult. His son believes he did play other games.

During his time with the Clown and Florida teams Oliver played with some of the greatest baseball players in American history, including Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell and countless others. Jim Oliver, Jr. recalls a family story that when his Dad was playing for the Buckeyes, he played against Sachel Paige on the Kansas City Monarchs. Paige was so impressed with Oliver’s playing that he urged the Monarchs to recruit him immediately, saying “if Oliver is not on the bus by the time we leave, I am not pitching anymore.”

The Florida State Negro League consisted of six teams between 1947 and 1953. They played a circuit that included teams from St. Petersburg (the Pelicans), Bradenton (the 9 Devils), Daytona Beach (Black Cats), Lakeland (All Stars), Tampa (Rockets) and West Palm Beach (Yankees). Players might earn a few hundred dollars a month during the season. Often players would go into the stands and solicit tips from fans.

For a time Oliver was captain of the Pelicans and played shortstop. In 1950 he was elected by popular vote to serve as manager of the Florida State Negro Baseball League,  representing the West Division. After playing with the Buckeyes, Oliver returned home to St. Pete working as a laborer for the Atlantic Coast Line (ACL) Railroad. In his spare time he continued to play baseball, becoming one of the top players as well as captain for the St. Pete Pelicans of the Florida State Negro Baseball League.

St. Louis Cardinals

In 1955 Oliver joined the local St. Pete Saints, which at the time was a St. Louis Cardinals farm team.

The Cardinals farm team was struggling on the field and recruited Oliver to play shortstop. Oliver was the first Black player to integrate the farm team. (Thomas Edison Alston was recruited as the first Black Cardinals MLB player in 1954, seven years after Branch Rickey and the Brooklyn Dodgers recruited Jackie Robinson). The Saints listed Oliver as 27 years old. He was actually 35.

Oliver was only playing home games so that he could maintain his employment with the railroad; the Cardinals required him to go on the road in order to continue to play.

Oliver knew he was not getting to the majors. The railroad was willing to work with him as long as he got someone to cover his shifts. Co-workers were willing to fill in for him, but he worried that working a strenuous, risky job for a 16-hour shift would endanger them, and he chose to stop playing in 1956.

Oliver then began playing with the St. Petersburg Saints of the Florida State League, and other local teams such as the St. Petersburg Pelicans and the St. Petersburg Braves, a semi-pro team. At some point the Braves were renamed the Oliver Alouettes in his honor.  Jim Oliver, Jr. recalls the name Alouettes was a tribute to Black players who were welcomed to play in Canada at the time.

With the integration of white Major League Baseball, the Negro National Leagues came to an end, first the Negro National League in 1948 and later the American League, first reduced to a minor league in 1951.

Mentor to Youth

Oliver devoted much of his time in St. Pete teaching baseball and other sports and mentoring Black youth. As Seville Brown III wrote, “For decades, stories have been told of how attentive he was to countless girls and boys. He helped hundreds of youth hone their skills in the game of baseball, football and basketball in the city of St. Pete.”

James Oliver Jr. today. Photo provided by the author.

Jim Oliver, Jr. says he still meets people who learned baseball from his dad who say “he saved my life.” By that, they meant “how to respectfully move around in the circles we find ourselves, how to think positively, in short how to be a good person,” Oliver Jr. believes. “Dad was a model for them to develop the attitudes needed for success, and to celebrate what they could be.” His Dad was “very soft-spoken, low-key person who was never boastful.  He had a special way with kids and was a father figure.”

Oliver was recreation director at Campbell Park for five years, and was an organizer of the negro Little League in the ‘50s. He contributed as a manager, coach and an official in football, basketball and baseball.

Little League, like most everything, was segregated at the time, and no regulation games were permitted between Black and white youth. However. on one occasion Oliver arranged for a game with a white Little League team in Gulfport for the first time ever. “Gulfport still had the signs up about negros not being allowed in town after sundown,” explains Oliver’s son. “Dad was not bothered by that. He believed sports would bring a lot of Black and white kids together. The game was successful, something the boys would never forget.”

Nate Oliver (1940-2025).

Among those who were the benefactors of Jim Oliver’s tutelage in baseball were New York Mets and Kansas City Athletics Ed “Gum” Charles, Detroit Tigers and Red Sox’s George Smith, his son Nate Oliver of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Giants and Chicago Cubs; Pittsburg Steelers defensive back Glen Edwards and San Diego Chargers linebacker Melvin Rogers  – all graduates of historic athletic powerhouse Gibbs High School.

James Oliver, Jr. played with the Minor League Tampa Tarpons. Oliver’s children were considered a “baseball franchise” in St. Petersburg: Nathanial Oliver, Bernard Oliver, Jim Oliver, Jr., Larry Oliver, Jesse “Domo” Jerome Oliver, Anthony Oliver, Jeanette Oliver-Wright and Zelda Oliver.

Oliver died in 1971 at the age of 52; the following year, the City named the baseball field at Campbell Park in his honor. In 2006, the Tampa Bay Rays paid for a renovation of Oliver Field. A new roof was installed, as was an 18-foot-high backstop, protective netting for spectators and new sod and irrigation. Sharon Robinson, Jackie Robinson’s daughter, attended the rededication ceremony.

Had Jim Oliver started his baseball career in the post-Robinson era, his athletic talent and friendly manner likely would have carried him far in the world of Major League Baseball, and he would have received the recognition he deserved.

Jim Oliver, Jr. is retired after a 33-year teaching career in St. Petersburg.

Will Michaels is the former director and trustee of the St. Petersburg Museum of History.  He is the author of The Making of St. Petersburg and the Hidden History of St. Petersburg. He may be reached at wmichaels2222@gmail.com.

A version of this story appeared in the Northeast Journal.