BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — From the second you enter Rickwood Field, it feels as though a sepia filter has taken control of your eyes. A cellphone camera does not sufficiently portray America’s oldest professional baseball park, probably because such technology is far too modish to capture the imperishable wonder.
You must be here. You must stay present. You must see all the antique sights and feel all the time-machine feels. There’s an inconceivable sensory preservation to this place, which turned 113 years old Aug. 18, that needs to be absorbed. Rickwood Field greets you with its inimitable ambiance, a Spanish mission-style facade with red roof tiles, green stucco walls and arched entryways. For the entire visit, you remain immersed in the first half of the 20th century. It is an interactive history lesson, from the faded, sun-struck green and red seats in the stands to the vintage advertisements on the outfield wall to the gigantic steel-frame light towers that lean, 75 feet in the air, atop the grandstand’s roof.
In recent years, the South has become a monument graveyard as America continues to war over its ugly history. Yet here stands a baseball relic, weathered and still majestic, with a past that demands veneration instead of skepticism. It is a monument worthy of admiration because of the honest story it can tell and the diverse community intent on protecting it.
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“Rickwood is not past tense,” Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said. “It is a living history.”
Close your eyes, and you can imagine the flair of Willie Mays as a 17-year-old playing for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues. As the infield dirt crunches beneath your shoes, you can follow in the footsteps of Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Ty Cobb, Cool Papa Bell and Satchel Paige, just a few of the 107 Hall of Famers who played or managed here.
Open your eyes, and soon you will be able to gaze upon the restoration. Major League Baseball will stage a game between the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants on the hallowed Rickwood grounds June 20, 2024. To prepare for the event, Rickwood Field will undergo renovations beginning in October. The project will include upgrading the grass playing surface to modern big league standards, padding and moving the outfield walls, overhauling the dugouts, adding new lights and completing a host of general safety and maintenance items. The city has pledged more than $2.5 million to help with the effort.
MLB is tasked with performing tasteful cosmetic surgery on a ballpark known for its old and minimalist charm. Rickwood isn’t a retro creation. It is a largely untouched original. It necessitates a meticulous makeover. Every little detail is significant in a sanctum that still features a scoreboard pocked with baseball dents and the original outfield fences that measured 478 feet to deep center.
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Baseball cannot look at the assignment as getting the stadium up to par. It’s more like polishing a neglected treasure.
“We’re looking at trying to keep the ballpark and its authentic state as much as possible,” said Murray Cook, MLB’s field and stadium consultant. “We’re keeping the legacy where it is.”
It is a welcome endeavor. For the past 31 years, a group of local residents, civic leaders and passionate fans has scrounged up the resources to keep the stadium in use. The nonprofit organization is called the Friends of Rickwood Field. The grass-roots organization has had to string together incremental donations of $10, $100 and $1,000 to maintain Rickwood as best it can. There is always more money to raise and more time to volunteer.
Rickwood plods along now as a stadium without a true anchor tenant. The Birmingham Black Barons played there until they folded in 1960. The Birmingham Barons, the minor league team for which late owner and businessman Allen Harvey “Rick” Woodward built the ballpark in 1910, left for newer digs in 1987. For the past 35 years, it has been a struggle, but Rickwood keeps busy hosting Miles College home games, high school baseball and an assortment of tournaments and events.
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But when MLB visits, it will seem as if the field has been brought back to life. The Friends of Rickwood will embrace the hype and offer the full story when asked. On their worst days, this dream seemed impossible. On their best days, it remained unlikely. In less than 10 months, it will be as real as the day in 1986 when Bo Jackson, a Bessemer, Ala., native, took the field as a member of the Memphis Chicks.
“Here we are, 113 years later, on the cusp of what is going to be the second-greatest event in the history of the ballpark,” said Gerald Watkins, the chairman of the Friends of Rickwood board. “The first being the birth of the ballpark and the opening.”
Said Costella Adams-Terrell, the president of the neighborhood association where the field stands: “It’s an opportunity to show a part of the fabric of our community. If that piece wasn’t there, the quilt wouldn’t be complete.”
They’re not the only ones with grand expectations. Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo., anticipates a “seminal” event that could jump-start the process of reframing baseball’s integration tale. After Robinson broke the color barrier, the newfound access for African American ballplayers righted a moral wrong but at the cost of destroying a powerful Black-owned league.
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Three years ago, amid the 2020 racial reckoning, MLB decided to add the statistics of the Negro Leagues to its records, a well-intentioned bookkeeping quagmire that ultimately may over-sanitize a segregated history that shouldn’t expunge all the painful, messy nuance.
The Rickwood game is billed as a tribute to the Negro Leagues, with the Giants involved to help celebrate the 92-year-old Mays, the sport’s greatest living superstar. He was a Black Baron before he was a Giant, and beyond that, he was born in nearby Westfield. In many ways, this is his game, and through the journey of Mays, multiple layers of history can be explored with sincerity. It’s a chance for the MLB to honor the Negro Leagues without forcing assimilation.
“When we literally throw this back in time, this is going to be a watershed moment for Negro Leagues history,” Kendrick said.
When the sport unveiled a logo for the game this month, retired outfielder Randy Winn came to Rickwood Field for the announcement. He was in awe. The California native was at home.
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“This game was built on the backs of people that played this game before us,” Winn said. “For me, I didn’t play one out, one pitch here in the Negro Leagues. But that’s my beginning.”
It was the literal beginning for Reif Blue, a Black Baron who played at the stadium from 1948 to 1950. He still lives in the area. He can tell stories of a bustling Black neighborhood that served as a safe haven for visiting players, many of whom were welcomed into nearby homes because they couldn’t stay at hotels.
Baseball is community to Blue, the cousin of late major league pitcher Vida Blue. He considers Rickwood Field a treasure.
“Rickwood is forever a part of my life,” Blue said. “I’m 90 years old. I was at Rickwood right after school back in the day. I was a full-time employee, got to hang out with the players, and then I became a player. For a lot of us, that was the only thing we had hope for — baseball. Whether it was playing or doing other jobs around the park, we felt it was our key to Blacks’ lives being well off. I see nothing but good in Rickwood.”
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Back in the day, barnstorming tours enabled more than Black players and minor leaguers to become familiar with the field. Duke Snider, Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio came through here, too. With his legendary vision, Ted Williams probably would have sworn the old 478-foot fence in center looked more like 479.
In the humble Rising-West Princeton neighborhood, a field blessed by luminaries emerges on Second Avenue West, bracketed by Hong Kong Seafood and Southern Caribbean restaurants. Wander a few blocks away, and a tailor working from home vows to complete alterations in two hours. Two miles away, Alabama football coach Bear Bryant, civil rights pioneer Abraham Woods Jr. and Temptations singer Eddie Kendricks are buried in Elmwood Cemetery. The West End of Birmingham is an assorted and ever-changing area. But Rickwood is well into its second century.
“There’s nothing like it,” said Jabriel Weir, the head groundskeeper at Rickwood. “You can’t beat the nostalgia and the vibe of this place.”
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Evidently that vibe wishes not to be disturbed. Minutes before the logo unveiling, a storm wrecked the party. First came wind strong enough to blow over standing tables and shatter dozens of vases MLB had set up for a fancy reception. Then rain pelted the stadium, exposing every leaky trouble spot.
Everyone in attendance retreated to a crammed section of the concourse safe from the puddles. Rather than a grand announcement, a makeshift presentation commenced, and Plan B was wonderful in its simplicity.
It was as if Rickwood Field had made a statement: Just be real. After 113 years, this authentic old monument can be excused for flaunting its authenticity.
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