Doc Moorefield became St. Pete’s Mr. Baseball for 1920
Part 5
When speaking about the winter league team for the coming season, Moorefield drops a bombshell. He says he recently received a letter on behalf of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.
Jackson wishes to become manager of the St. Pete winter league club and he will bring Lefty Williams to pitch. Of course, Jackson and Williams are indicted a couple of months later over the “Black Sox” scandal. After the indictment, Moorefield claims a friend wrote on Jackson’s behalf asking if he should still report for the winter.
There apparently was some truth to those conversations since the winter league club had to formally announce the release of Jackson and Williams in order to stay in the good graces of professional players and be able to roster other affiliated players.
Later in August, Red Sox scout Edward Holley, while on a scouting mission to see Elliot Bigelow an outfielder for the Saints, says he will recommend to the Red Sox that they come to St. Pete to train.
Things become active on the baseball news front again in November. During the first week an ad is placed by a group opposing a $50,000 bond issue proposed by the city. Part of that bond is to be used for building a publicly owned baseball park. The ad indicates that Moorefield will privately finance a new park at 19th St, and 1st Ave. S. (off the West Central car line). The issue is soundly defeated by the voters.
The Saints will open the winter season hosting Tarpon Springs, with neither Shoeless Joe nor Lefty Williams. Catcher Bubbles Hargrave will manage the Saints. Hargrave had not appeared in the majors since 1915 but will follow this stint with the Saints by appearing in the majors nine of the next 10 seasons. National League batting champ Rogers Hornsby is in the lineup for the Sarasota team that season.
Moorefield begins to run into financial issues in funding the team. Moorefield finally holds a game on a Sunday afternoon ending up with he, Hargrave and the business manager Ed Crosley having a warrant sworn out against them. Florida had a law on the books since 1905 forbidding games where admission is charged on Sunday’s (Blue Laws). The state gave communities the option of waiving that law. Most of the larger communities with ball clubs had already done so. St. Pete had not. Moorefield claims that the business of baseball can’t make it without playing on Sundays. The three plead guilty and are each fined one dollar plus costs. The bigger deterrent came when the judge warned that if it happens again, the consequences will be much more severe. Moorefield announces that the team will disband unless locals come up with support. A Sunday game with paid attendance did not occur in St. Pete until March 1930.
As for “Shoeless Joe” Jackson not ever appearing in St. Pete? Yes, one did appear. Joseph “Shoeless Joe” Jackson appeared with at least three different negro league teams between 1938 and 1945. One of those teams was the St. Petersburg Pelicans of the Florida Negro Baseball League.
Finally, after the Thanksgiving game and behind on the payroll, Moorefield announces he is giving up the team. Moorefield will still allow the Saints to play at the park if they are to continue. The players go to St. Pete mayor Al Lang asking for help, but he refuses. Moorefield does make up the players back pay and offers that once the lease is up, the team can move to a tract of property out West Central Ave. owned by Walter Fuller, a prominent local businessman. Fuller and Lang would have likely been close in the social community and it’s not lost that perhaps Fuller had strung Moorefield along on the ballpark site that never closed. It appears that Fuller owned the tract that Moorefield was negotiating to build another ballfield on.
On December 31, 1920, it is announced that Moorefield Park is no more. Moorefield had sold all the lumber, in part to cover the back pay he owed the players. The wood was all cleared by the end of the year. This marks the end of the Moorefield baseball era in St. Pete. It leaves St. Pete baseball teams with no place to play at that point in time. It appears that the Saints disbanded for the rest of the winter.
Doc Moorefield keeps the game of baseball alive in St. Pete through 1920. For a full year, he provides all comers a place to continue playing the game. He put St. Pete in professional baseball with the Saints entry into the Florida State League. The winter league allowed some major leaguers and some getting close to the majors opportunities to sharpen their skills or just to stay sharp for the spring. Moorefield brought a professional ball team to town for Spring training with great weather and more importantly no rainouts, showing other clubs a prime advantage that St. Pete has to offer. 1921 will offer another year with no professional team here in the spring but 1920 set the stage for a return in 1922 of the Boston Braves with an unprecedented Spring training history in the years to come.
