BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) – Gerald Watkins watched Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and other New York Yankees wade through cornstalks into a field in Iowa in 2021, near the filming site of the 1989 baseball movie “Field of Dreams.”

Watkins considered Rickwood Field, the 114-year-old ballpark in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, and called Major League Baseball with a field.

“Field of Dreams is really cool,” said Watkins, 68, “but now we have a real Field of Dreams here. This is the place where, amongst others, Willie Mays stood on the pitch dreaming of playing in the top league.

Now the major leagues are coming to Birmingham. Rickwood Field, the oldest skilled soccer stadium in the U.S. and former home of baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays and the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues, will host an MLB game Thursday between the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants.

The game to honor Mays and the league’s many other Negro players can be each somber and reminiscent. Mays, an electrifying centerfielder who left a lasting mark on baseball, died Tuesday afternoon, a day after announcing he wouldn’t attend the game in person.

“The entirety of Major League Baseball is in mourning today as we gather on the same field where a career and legacy like no other began,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred – wrote in the statement. “Willie Mays carried his all-around genius from the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League to the historic Giants franchise. From coast to coast in New York and San Francisco, Willie inspired generations of players and fans as the game grew and truly earned its place as our national pastime.”

Rickwood Field – a symbol of hope

Rickwood Field is situated just a few miles west of Birmingham city center – a rustic and unassuming green facility with hints of history etched into its partitions.

It’s a time capsule of opportunity and oppression – a place for social gatherings like women’s suffrage rallies and other political events, hosting a few of the best baseball talent of the twentieth century. Baseball commercials and movies were also shot there, including parts of the Jackie Robinson biopic “42.”

Rickwood Field hosted Alabama’s first integrated sports team, the minor league Birmingham Barons, in 1964 — 17 years after Robinson integrated the major teams. More than 50% of Baseball Hall of Fame members have walked its grounds, from legendary Negro Leaguers such as Mays, Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige to MLB greats Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle.

“Drivers? I didn’t dream of the impossible” – Mays recently he told the San Francisco Chronicle.. “I was taught how to see my goal in my mind and work towards it. I could work on getting to Rickwood Field and the Birmingham Black Barons. I didn’t need to dream about it. To achieve this, I had to work hard. So I did. Rickwood became my training ground.”

Mays became a star there at the age of just 17, helping the Black Barons reach the Negro League World Series in 1948. Major league scouts attended his games, and the Black Barons were so popular locally that ministers sometimes delivered sermons early in the day. Sundays to accommodate their needs. fans willingly go to matches.

“Rickwood is special because it’s where so many baseball careers started and continue,” said Roy Wood Jr., a Birmingham-born comedian and actor. “When you’re there, you can still feel the history. I feel as strongly about Rickwood as someone would feel as an adult visiting their childhood home.”

In the Nineties, Wood played highschool baseball at Rickwood Field. He said at the time that Rickwood was just one other place for him to play the sport he loved. That modified when he learned the story.

“The Place Where Horror Was Allowed to Stop”

The 10,800-seat stadium opened in 1910, when baseball was the premier sport in Alabama. Because there weren’t many major league teams in the South at the time, Alabama baseball fans stuck with minor league teams like the all-white Birmingham Barons that played at Rickwood from 1910–1961, 1964–65, and 1981– 87. Other white stars — such as Hall of Famers Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner — got here to Rickwood for spring shows. Both Alabama and Auburn used Rickwood as home fields for his or her college football teams.

For Blacks, Rickwood and the Negro Leagues were an introduction to Black athletic talent.

“This league creates common heroes, common teams,” said Rob Ruck, a historian who focuses on black and Latino roots in sports, “a national institution around which black Americans rally and that provides them a collective self-esteem for his or her skill in sports “

The field was also a vibrant spot in the fight for racial equality in the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties. Alabama, one in all the epicenters of the Civil Rights Movement, was the site of voting rights marches and boycotts, as well as brutal beatings, civil unrest and deadly bombings.

“This was the place where the horror was allowed to stop for nine rounds,” Wood said. “…Rickwood never solved Black people’s problems, but it was a place where Black people didn’t have to think about them for a few hours.”

Maintaining history

The playing field continues to face many adversities. Built around the same time as Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, Shibe Park in Philadelphia, Comiskey Park in Chicago and Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Rickwood has outlasted all of them, and highschool and college games are still played there.

It is maintained by Watkins and the Friends of Rickwood organization of about 30 volunteers, as well as others such as Jabreil Weir, the head gardener liable for the day-to-day maintenance of the pitch.

“Who would have thought MLB would come to Birmingham, Alabama?” Weir said. “Who ever thought I would be in this situation where I would be a part of this event? These are the moments you dream about.”

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Weir worked with the MLB to prepare the stadium to host a major league game. According to Murray Cook, an MLB field and stadium consultant, the renovations include a recent field with lights, improved dugouts, a recent drainage system and a recent protective netting system to protect fans during games.

There were other events this week, including Tuesday’s double-A game at the ballpark between the Birmingham Barons and the Montgomery Biscuits of the Southern League. The match was paused while the PA announcer broke the news of Mays’ death, and fans reacted by standing, cheering and chanting “Willie! Willie!”

The game is a component of MLB’s ongoing effort to highlight and have a good time the achievements of Black players. The decision comes amid criticism of the league through which the percentage of black players in the major leagues is historically low. MLB’s efforts also included grassroots programs for disadvantaged youth players and the recent inclusion of Negro Leagues statistics in official records.

“It gives us an opportunity to talk about race in the context of sport,” Ruck said, later adding: “We need to have a serious conversation about race and I think this match and the statistics make that possible.”