When the great Willie Mays was a teenager in high school, Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala., was a second home. It’s where he teamed with established Negro Leaguers on the legendary Birmingham Black Barons, who played in the final Negro Leagues World Series in 1948.
Mays never forgot Rickwood. The intimate ballpark always remained in his heart — including in his final days before he died June 18, 2024, two days before Major League Baseball honored him at Rickwood as part of a tribute to the Negro Leagues.
The June 20 big-league game at Rickwood, featuring the Giants and Cardinals, along with the events throughout the week, was one of MLB’s grandest accomplishments in years, and nobody wanted it to be a one-off – not the players, including Logan Webb and Heliot Ramos, or the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president, Bob Kendrick, or the Birmingham mayor, Randall Woodfin, or the Friends of Rickwood, who oversee America’s oldest ballpark.
Nor the baseball commissioner. At the time, Rob Manfred told me, “We’re going to be back in Birmingham at some point.”
Well, it’s happening. Not an official MLB game for now. But an event that will further honor Rickwood and the Negro Leagues. And, of course, Mays.
MLB will announce Tuesday — fittingly, on what would have been the Say Hey Kid’s 94th birthday — that the second East-West Classic will be played at Rickwood on June 19, which is Juneteenth. It’s an old-timers’ game involving former big-leaguers, outfitted in Negro Leagues uniforms, an homage to the old Negro Leagues All-Star Games, played from 1933 to 1962.
“It’s very cool to be part of this,” said former Giants center fielder Denard Span, 41, who’ll play in the June 19 event. “I watched the Rickwood game last year and thought it was done so nicely, and obviously, Willie Mays means a lot to me. Just a sweet man. He means so much to baseball and the Giants’ organization.”
In 2016 and 2017, Span played Mays’ position in Mays’ town. In Span’s first training camp, Mays invited him to his Arizona home for dinner. A special treat considering Mays was the favorite player of Span’s dad and many of Span’s friends’ dads.
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“Willie was just welcoming me into the Giants’ organization, and he treated me like I was family,” Span said. “We had a good time, lots of laughs and storytelling. It was a treat to go to work in San Francisco, because most home games, he had his room in the clubhouse, and I could go in, spend a little time with him, ask for advice and shoot the breeze.”
Former pitcher Jake Peavy, who won a 2014 World Series ring with the Giants and is from Mobile, Ala., participated in last year’s Rickwood activities and will play in the June 19 game.
“This is just a beautiful thing,” Peavy, 43, said in a phone interview. “I don’t know if I’ve been part of anything in baseball that was as special as what happened at Rickwood Field last year. It warmed my heart. It warmed everybody’s heart. So much progress was made last year, including incorporating Negro League stats and making sure they were part of our told history.
“It’s critical we keep the momentum going with the East-West Classic. It’s very cool that MLB is continuing to make sure that the legacy of what happened last year is going to be something that’s sustainable, that we can rally round and talk about for years to come.”
Last year, the inaugural East-West Classic was played at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, adjacent to the Hall of Fame, and Ryan Howard’s three-run homer gave the East a 5-4 win. Howard will suit up again this year and be accompanied by CC Sabathia, who’ll be inducted into the Hall on July 27, Gary Sheffield, Curtis Granderson, Andruw Jones, Prince Fielder, Nick Swisher, Chris Young, Adam Jones, Matt Kemp, Dexter Fowler, Jason Kendall, and many others.
Brothers Jerry Hairston Jr. and Scott Hairston, whose grandfather, Sam, played in the Negro Leagues and appeared in an East-West All-Star Game, will also play. The first East-West All-Star Game was played Sept. 10, 1933, two months after MLB’s first All-Star Game, both at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.
Former Giants manager, Dusty Baker, has accepted an assignment to manage one of the teams for the game.
A home run contest will precede the June 19 game. Jones won it last year. It’s a cheap ticket, just $12 at mlb.com/rickwood. Behind-the-scenes stories from the day will be highlighted June 29 on MLB Network.
Furthermore, MLB is following up on another promise from June, which was to renovate Willie Mays Park in nearby Fairfield, Mays’ hometown. As part of Tuesday’s announcement, the league will detail its plans to unveil a refurbished baseball and softball field at Willie Mays Park on June 19, great news for locals after the facility had fallen into disrepair for many years.
Mays had a hand in the field being refurbished back in 2009. This time, initial funds were raised from the 2024 MLB Winter Meetings Charity Auction, which is a component of a platform called MLB Together that mobilizes players, teams, and partners to invest in communities and provide kids access to baseball.
The new field will be used by Fairfield’s Miles College, the A.G. Gaston Boys and Girls Club, MLB’s RBI program, and other youth groups. Peavy has been a proponent of the renovation.
“I’m a very small part of what’s happening there, but I am a supporter doing all I can to make sure it’s all happening,” Peavy said. “If we can dress up the park and give these kids some kind of outlet, the hope is that it could push through the whole community and raise the tide all around there.”
Peavy had a nice bond with Mays as a fellow Alabamian — Mobile also produced Satchel Paige, Henry Aaron, Willie McCovey, Billy Williams, Ozzie Smith, and Cleon Jones. In fact, Peavy’s grandfather, Edward Lolley, was Mays’ age and got to know him well, engaging in conversations about their experiences in segregated Alabama. Lolley grew up in Empire, Ala., then a mining town, like Fairfield.
“They had so much in common, from two towns apart,” Peavy said. “Certainly there was white privilege, though my grandfather grew up lower class, but to hear them speak about the times was very heavy, the blunt truth of segregation and racism that was so present at that time. To watch them so many years later, I just thought it was so serendipitous to me.
“I didn’t know Willie on the field, but his legacy off the field, the way he treated people, kids who walked up to him, everybody, is remarkable, a very giving man. The very first time they met, Willie gave my grandpa his jacket. One of the honors of my life was to meet Willie Mays and Willie McCovey.”
Rickwood Field opened in 1910, before Fenway Park or Wrigley Field. Until the 1960s, Blacks and whites couldn’t legally play together on the same field, and the Black Barons would use the facility when the Barons (a white minor-league team) were out of town, and vice versa. Mays was a Black Baron in 1948, 1949, and 1950 (his sophomore, junior, and senior years at Fairfield Industrial High School) before the New York Giants signed him.
He was the team’s 17-year-old center fielder when Birmingham lost to the Homestead Grays in the 1948 Negro Leagues World Series, the last one played as interest in the Negro Leagues was waning, with Black players beginning to join the MLB ranks.
Mays had vivid memories of Rickwood, including the huge manual scoreboard on the left-field wall, the train passing by beyond the right-field wall, and the fans filling the ballpark, especially when they arrived in their Sunday best after coming from church.
Peavy already has experience pitching at Rickwood, working an inning for the Savannah Bananas, the touring exhibition tricksters, in 2022.
“It was a personal quest to get the chance to step in the same space as Satchel Paige, who’s from my hometown, and Willie Mays and so many others,” Peavy said. “Then to go back last year and watch Major League Baseball pay tribute to all these ballplayers, it was super cool. I don’t know of any other place I’d rather be than with our baseball family celebrating our own at Rickwood this year.”