With Rickwood Field game, MLB reconnects with a community that has too long been excluded
Brian and Tricia Snow are devout St. Louis Cardinals fans and teachers at Fort Branch Community School in Fort Branch, Indiana.
The two were eager to find their way to historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham to see the Cardinals and San Francisco Giants face off in a tribute to the Negro Leagues and the history of Black baseball in America.
The series has since taken on both tribute and funereal tones in the wake of the death of the legendary Willie Mays. This is now a celebration of a baseball life unlike any other in the history of the game, and though they didn’t live in Alabama for the initial ticket lottery and didn’t want to spend two teachers’ salaries on the secondary market, the Snows found their way in – they applied and were hired to work as ushers.
Baseball’s oldest continually operating stadium casts such a spell over those who love the game that some were willing – enthusiastic, really – to work their way inside.
Thursday’s game will be the main event, but the celebration of the field, its history, and the imprint that baseball has made on Black communities over more than a century will last the week. Tuesday saw a Double-A game between the Birmingham Barons and Montgomery Biscuits, and on Wednesday, the field played home to Barnstorm Birmingham, a celebrity softball game featuring celebrities and stars of the game.
“It’s like an ultimate honor…to continue to pay homage to all the men who came before me, to be able to blaze this path for me to be able to play the game I love,” said Ryan Howard, a native St. Louisian and long-time star first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies.
Howard was the National League’s Most Valuable Player in 2006, edging out future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols, who was also in Birmingham Wednesday to take part in the festivities. Just before joining MLB Network live on air, Pujols was visually taken aback by the presence of Mays’s Hall of Fame plaque, on loan from the museum for the week and looked after by officials from Cooperstown.
Pujols read the plaque in quiet contemplating, soaking in the accomplishments and legacy of the “Say Hey Kid,” whose Tuesday death he said was “unreal.”
“We were actually at the minor league game here, right at the Willie Mays Pavilion when I heard [the news],” said former Cardinals outfielder Dexter Fowler, a softball teammate of Howard’s for the evening on the team dubbed the Say Heys. Their opponents, named after Hank Aaron, were dubbed The Hammers.
“It’s surreal,” Fowler said. “I get the chills every time I think about it, and God rest his soul.”
MLB had been aware for several weeks that Mays, who was 93, was unlikely to be in good enough health to attend the event in person. During a visit on Monday, the day before Mays’s death, he delivered a message to the city of Birmingham to long-time retired manager Dusty Baker, which Baker presented at an event earlier Wednesday.
“I had my first pro hit here at Rickwood as a Baron in 1948, and now this year, 76 years later, it finally got counted in the record book,” Mays’s statement read in part. “Time changes things. Time heals wounds, and that is a good thing.”
The magnanimity of Mays, even on the eve of his death and in the face of a celebration that nonetheless highlights an endlessly painful period in which forcible segregation created uncountable boundaries for uncountable Black players, is both stunning and totally expected by those who knew him.
“I think this is the first step,” Howard said of MLB’s week-long celebration. “Shining the light on the Negro Leagues, Black baseball. I think the next step’s trying to be able to invest in some of these communities and trying to get baseball going in some of these communities.”
Included in those activities is an edict from MLB that the Cardinals and Giants bring prominent Black prospects, such as right-hander Tink Hence, to the game as spectators in an attempt to create those connections between the game’s young stars and the young fans who may be watching.
Rickwood Field is situated in a populated, living, breathing Birmingham neighborhood, and to some degree, the arrival of the traveling circus which accompanies a jewel event such as this is a burden to those who live here. The hope is that the payoff – the broad celebration, the thousands of people drawn in to walk through living museums, the knowledge passed down that could otherwise be lost – creates a new, thriving pipeline which could run directly through this community and others like it.
For the Snows and fans like them, this is a once-in-a-lifetime event that nonetheless is part of a pattern of fandom and engagement. The Cardinals are a way of life to them. MLB’s mission, starting in the Alabama heat, is to expand that way to communities who have been excluded from it for far too long.
The week, by Fowler’s estimation, is a good place to start.
“I thought it was going to be really good,” he said, flashing a bright smile, “and it’s better than I expected. It’s exceeded expectations, and we’re gonna have a fun night tonight.”
This story was originally published June 20, 2024 at 2:50 PM with the headline "With Rickwood Field game, MLB reconnects with a community that has too long been excluded."