Back in time, MLB will play a game at Rickwood Field

Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala., believed to be the oldest professional baseball stadium in the United States, has played host to some of baseball’s greatest players during its 113-year run, including Babe Ruth and Willie Mays, the latter of whom grew up a short distance from the park.

Next year, the stadium will shine again when it hosts a Major League Baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals. The match is scheduled for June 20, 2024.

Rickwood Field, older than both Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, opened in 1910 and has been home to several teams over many decades, including Mays’ Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League and the Birmingham Barons, a minor league team .

MLB announced the game Tuesday in its latest effort to showcase regular season games in unique environments. MLB calls them Specialty Games and earlier versions were held in Fort Bragg, NC; in Omaha, at the site of the College World Series; and in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the site of the Little League World Series.

MLB has also staged two Field of Dreams games in Dyersville, Iowa, near the filming location for the 1989 baseball-themed movie “Field of Dreams.” The White Sox played the Yankees in Dyersville in 2021, and last season the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds got a turn in the cornfields. There is no Field of Dreams match scheduled in 2023 due to construction at the venue.

MLB said the date of the Rickwood Field game was intended to coincide with Juneteenth and that the game will feature a variety of activities to celebrate the history of the Negro leagues and Mays, the game’s greatest living player.

Mays, 92, attended high school less than five miles from Rickwood Field. In 1948, despite being only 17 and still in school, he began his professional career with the Black Barons. A year later, he signed with the New York Giants.

In a statement released by MLB, Mays said, “I can’t believe it. I never thought in my life I would see a Major League Baseball game played on the field where I played baseball as a teenager.

His statement concluded, “We can’t forget what brought us here, and that was the Negro leagues for so many of us.”

Rickwood Field, with a seating capacity of nearly 11,000, was built by Birmingham industrialist Harvey Woodward, who was known as Rick, and was modeled after Forbes Field in Pittsburgh and Shibe Park in Philadelphia. When it opened on August 18, 1910, Birmingham businesses were closed in celebration of the grand occasion.

In its early years, the park hosted exhibition games with teams from the American and National Leagues, including the Yankees, but Rickwood was home to the Barons, a Southern League institution that featured stars such as Pie Traynor and Burleigh Grimes. In later years, Bo Jackson played for the Barons at Rickwood, as did Michael Jordan during his stint in baseball in 1994.

Much of the park’s most important history, however, came from the Black Barons, a Negro league team featuring stars such as Mule Suttles and Satchel Paige, who won more games for Birmingham than any other professional team.

In 1948, the Black Barons – with Mays in tow – faced the Homestead Grays in the final Negro World Series. As the Grays won that Series, William Greason, who would become the first black pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, picked up Birmingham’s lone victory. Greason, 98, still lives in Birmingham and pastors Bethel Baptist Church, less than two miles from Rickwood Field.