The Father of Southern Miss Baseball
1918-2011
Celestian Joseph “Pete” Taylor will be always
remembered as “the Father of
Southern Miss baseball” and for
the many contributions he made
to The University of Southern
Mississippi and the school’s
athletic program, and its thousands of student-athletes that he
touched during his sixty years as
a part of the Golden Eagle athletic family.
If ever a man wore several different hats at
Southern Miss, that man was Pete Taylor,
who spent time as an athlete on the school’s
football team for coach Reed Green, served
as a assistant coach on the staff of Coach
Thad “Pie” Vann, worked as the school’s
head track and field coach, helped to develop the school’s nationally known baseball
program as its long-time head coach and
helped to guide the school’s overall athletic
program through some of its most exciting
times as assistant athletic director.
Taylor began his association with Southern
Miss as a talented two-way end on Green’s
1941 football team that recorded a 9-0-1
record. That team was one of the most
explosive in school history scoring 70
points in the season opener that year against
Georgia State. Defensively, that team
recorded four shutouts.
He left Southern Miss following the 1941
season to enter the military and fight in World
War II. In early 1942, he enlisted in the
United States Army Air Force. He was trained
as a control tower operator and served in
Europe from 1942 to 1946. During the war,
he was awarded the Bronze Star and a presidential citation with cluster.
Taylor returned to Southern Miss after the
war and played football again for Green in
1946 helping to lead the team to a 7-3 record.
Taylor also saw action on the baseball and
basketball teams and, in his final year as a
student at what was then Mississippi Southern
College, he was named Mr. MSC.
Taylor was an end who proved time and
time again that he could catch the football,
but at the same time he was a talented
blocker who was vital in making the team’s
running attack work. On defense, he was
able to use his speed and quickness to cause
all kinds of problems to the other team.
During the summer of 1947 he
played minor league baseball in
the Evangeline League. When
his baseball dreams were ended
by a broken jaw, he began a
career as an assistant football
coach at Holy Cross High
School in New Orleans. In 1949
he became assistant football
coach at St. Louis University
He then returned to Southern Miss in 1955
as end coach for Vann and remained in that
position until 1965. During that time the school
had some of its greatest football teams includ-
ing the 1958 and 1962 teams that won the UPI
College Division National Championship.
Taylor also spent a few years coaching the
Southern Miss track team until that program
was dropped and took over as head baseball
coach when Coach Clyde “Heifer” Stuart left
following the 1958 football season.
He coached the Southern Miss baseball
team from 1959 until 1983 and during that
time produced a record 320-349-2. The
school’s beautiful baseball facility which
opened in 1984 is appropriately named Pete
Taylor Park.
“Coach Taylor was a good man. I feel for-
tunate to have played under him and to have
coached at the field that bears his name. His
greatest enjoyment in Southern Miss baseball
was the new facility, and that he was able
to coach in it in 1983,” remembered former
baseball coach Corky Palmer, who played for
Taylor from 1974-1977. “He always said to
me, `Can you believe we used to play on the
football practice field?’ The fact that he was
able to coach there always made him happy.
That field being built and the new addition
that was a real joy to him.”
He became the school’s first ever assistant
athletic director in December of 1965 and
was involved in many of the projects that
helped move the school in among the elite
colleges and universities. Taylor was actively
involved in the renovation of what is now
known as Roberts Stadium and the school’s
entrance into the Metro Conference in July of
1982. He retired from the athletic department
following the 1983 baseball season.
