As originally aired on the Rochester Press Box
In 20221 and 2022, Major League Baseball took a walk down memory lane by playing two games that counted in Dyersville, Iowa. At the Field of Dreams. A nod to the 1989 Kevin Costner film that romanticized the sport like no other. And there’s certainly a place for that. Next year the Giants and Cardinals have been dispatched to play on another field of dreams. A real-world field of dreams. Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama.
A bit about the place first. Rickwood Field is the oldest professional ballpark in the United States. Built in 1910, two years before Fenway Park opened in Boston. It served as the home field for the minor league Birmingham Barons. On alternating weekends for the better part of forty years between 1920 and 1960, Rickwood was also home to the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Baseball Leagues.
The legendary Satchell Page played four seasons with the Black Barons. And in 1948, the last year of the dominant Negro National League, when the New York Black Yankees played their home games in Rochester, Birmingham reached the World Series championship behind the efforts of a 17-year-old Willie Mays, who hadn’t yet graduated from high school. Following along the path blazed by Jackie Robinson, Mays went on to a 22-year Major League Baseball career. He’s considered among the best ever. Mays is 92 now. Rickwood, where he got his start, is 113. Both are still standing and next June will get another day in the sun. It is difficult to imagine a more fitting salute to a man, a ballpark and a too easily forgotten part of the game’s past. Baseball got this one right.
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