MLB’s Rickwood Game Celebrates Stadium, City That Meant the World to May originally appeared in NBC Sports Bay Area
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – It’s known simply as The Catch and it’s one of the greatest plays in Major League Baseball history. Willie Mays made a remarkable over-the-shoulder catch at the massive Polo Grounds and was already a league MVP at that time, but years earlier, when he was just a teenager entering professional baseball, he was already preparing for such a moment.
In the HBO documentary “Say Hey, Willie Mays!,” his former teammate, pitcher Bill Greason, recalled how 17-year-old Mays immediately took over as center fielder for the Birmingham Black Barons.
“He would tell our left and right fielder, ‘Don’t come — no way. You go from where you are to the line and everything else I’ll take care of,’” Greason recalled. “He was tremendous.”
For Mays, this is where it all started. Born just minutes away in Westfield, Alabama, Mays began his career at Rickwood Field, the oldest professional stadium in the country and the last to host Negro League games. Two days later May passed awaythe Giants and St. will celebrate your life and career with a special game in Birmingham on Thursday.
The event was originally conceived as a way to honor Mays, the Negro League and a beautiful stadium that allows visitors to step back in time. Tuesday’s news changed the tone a bit, but as the Giants and MLB unveiled a massive mural of Mays in a revitalized area of downtown Birmingham on Wednesday and Rickwood Field hosted a celebrity softball game, it stayed Of course, this game will also have a celebratory aspect. to feel.
This week is now all about celebrating the month of May, something the Giants plan to do even more of with a special day at Oracle Park later this summer. In Wednesday’s meetings, countless stories emerged about Mays’ passion for the game and his generosity with time. It seemed like everyone had a memory or two to share.
“We all want Willie to live forever, but for everyone to come to Birmingham – he always said he wanted to posthumously contribute to Birmingham through his foundation,” Giants Chairman and CEO Larry Baer said at the mural ceremony . “For everyone to be here and see this is magical.”
“That’s what Willie would have wanted.”
Larry Baer describes the emotions surrounding the Giants organization ahead of tomorrow’s Rickwood Field game pic.twitter.com/64yFIxL19M
– SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) June 19, 2024
Mays spent most of his life in the Bay Area, but he never forgot what Birmingham meant to him and never stopped talking about his hometown. When the game was announced last June, Mays said in a statement that “I never thought in my lifetime I would see a Major League Baseball game being played on the same field where I played baseball as a teenager.” It’s been 76 years since Mays made his Rickwood debut, but he remains a crucial part of the story of the greatest player who ever lived.
Mays started playing against older players when he was just 12 years old and was already a professional in high school, even though he couldn’t be admitted. He would get paid under the table and come home and give the money to his aunts, who would give him some back so he could go out with friends or watch a movie.
Mays brought rare energy and athleticism to a roster filled with older players and helped the Black Barons reach the Negro League World Series in 1948. He stood out so much that in a short period of time he almost ended up playing with Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers. As John Shea — who wrote “24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid” — tells it, Robinson was impressed by Mays when he visited Rickwood Field with barnstormers, but a Dodgers scout came to see him and reported that Mays couldn’t hit a curve ball.
Within three years, Mays was a New York giant and on his way to the Hall of Fame. It’s a career that’s virtually unparalleled, but Mays was far from alone when it came to the greats who passed through Rickwood Field. Nearly 200 future Hall of Famers played there, and soon that list will add a name. Former Giants manager Dusty Baker was with the Braves when they played annually at Rickwood Field at the end of spring training in the early 1970s.
“We used to play Barnstom and we always played the Orioles because we were in West Palm and they were in Miami,” Baker said last week. “We would go to New Orleans, and to this day, whenever I see Jim Palmer, he says, ‘Remember when you hit that hanging slider on me in that little ballpark?'”
Birmingham has been home to professional baseball for more than a century, although these days the action is mostly limited to one game a year for the Birmingham Barons, a Double-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. To prepare for this special game, MLB teamed up with Friends of Rickwood and the city of Birmingham to renovate the field.
Some of the infrastructure is new, but most of the stadium still looks like it did when Mays roamed center field. Between the lines, teams will do their best to pay homage to the Mays era and the Negro Leagues. Louis Stars, while the Giants will wear San Francisco Sea Lions uniforms, a tribute to the Negro Leagues team that played in the city in 1946. Their clubhouse at Rickwood Field has the Giants logo on one door and a Sea Lions logo on the other.
Baker visited Mays on Monday to check in before the historic game, and he traveled to Birmingham this week along with Barry Bonds and dozens of members of the organization. The Giants also brought 10 of their African-American minor leaguers, including highly touted Reggie Crawford and Grant McCray, and the group visited Rickwood Field on Wednesday night.
Mays never planned to attend as he could no longer travel. But Rickwood’s memories still seemed fresh in his mind in recent months. In a statement released the day before his passing, he said playing at the stadium was “the first big thing I thought of”.
“It was my start. My first job. You never forget that,” Mays said. “Rickwood Field was where I played my first home game, and playing there was IT – everything I wanted.”
