Reggie Jackson reminds us that an MLB game at Rickwood Field is not a kumbaya moment

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — When the game finally got here, it gave the look of baseball was the final thing on anyone’s mind. An intensely competitive week within the county seat of Jefferson County, Alabama, ended with a fairly average match when it comes to balls, hits, hits and runs, but there is little doubt that every player who was qualified for this matchup – together with every one who got here through through the partitions of Rickwood Field – a different person left this park than the one who arrived.

The proverbial food at the baseball feast provided the celebratory comfort they needed, considering.

Team St. Louis Cardinals, playing as St. Louis Stars of the Negro National League defeated the San Francisco Giants, playing because the San Francisco Sea Lions of the West Coast Negro Baseball League, by a rating of 6-5 in a game that nearly resulted within the Cards losing their third straight goal. That didn’t occur, however the end result of the game paled compared to the gravity of all the things we needed to reckon with: the death of Giants legend Willie Mays.

“Obviously devastating news. “This record-breaking event was truly designed with Willie in mind,” MLB director of baseball development Tony Reagins said during Thursday’s game. “I feel this event changed into a celebration of Willie’s life. I feel we’ll attempt to honor him in a way that hopefully his family can be pleased with. And Willie, , was 17 when he was here. To have that background, to have current top league players playing at Rickwood is exciting, but after all it’s bittersweet not having him here.

Was this event and week somewhat of a spiritual ending to Mays’ life, when it comes to things starting and ending in Birmingham? Sure, but for essentially the most part it wasn’t a kumbaya moment. Yes, it’s great to acknowledge the efforts of players who paved the best way for others, but the reality is that for a lot of them, this event opened the injuries of essentially the most traumatic experiences of their lives.

“Coming back here is not easy. The racism after I played here, the issue of traveling through different places we traveled,” Reggie Jackson said live to tell the tale FOX when asked by Alex Rodriguez about his feelings about returning to Rickwood Field. Jackson played for the Birmingham A’s in 1967, the AA affiliate of the Kansas City/Oakland Athletics. “Luckily I had a manager and players within the team who helped me through it, but I would not wish it on anyone.

“I said, , I never need to do that again. I’d walk into a restaurant and so they’d point at me and say, “That nigga can’t eat here.” I’d go to the hotel and so they’d say, “That nigga can’t stay here.” We went to Charlie Finley’s (then owner of Athletics and Ensley in Alabama) country club for a home-cooked welcome dinner. And they pointed at me with the N word. – He cannot come here. Finley led all the team.

Let’s stop and remind ourselves of something: racism is and has been a problem. The white supremacist system built into the law, not to say the collective consciousness, has robbed us not only of the very best entertainment we could have inside an integrated game, but additionally of the humanity of the individuals involved.

The truth is that I saw Jackson by accident when he got here to town. We were at the identical hotel and I used to be having a drink within the lobby when the Hall of Famer rolled in. I’d say we all know one another, but I assumed back to the time he called me at batting practice during a World Series game once in Houston to discuss then-Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker, black man to black man. Honestly, it was an honor I’ll always remember.

But that night he seemed a bit nervous, which I simply chalked as much as travel fatigue, as many Americans know well. But after his appearance Thursday at the Southern Negro League Museum and his moment during his Fox Sports pregame show, it is easy to know that he mainly ended up back in hell, which created the personality many know now.

He made this confession at a luncheon held Thursday morning honoring the families of former Negro League players. He was asked a query about one among his best Alabama memories and told a story about legendary Alabama football coach Bear Bryant, who, in an apparent moment of sympathy, told him that the Crimson Tide needed more N-words like him in running back competing with the very best. Think about it. Apparently it was a memory.

The story of this football team’s “journey” to integration has its own complicated history, but mainly Bryant, the houndstoothed man, needed to take several brutal beatings from teams with all-black players before he realized you could not win the SEC with 22 Forrest Gumps running around in your pitch.

“Luckily I had a manager, Johnny McNamara, who said if I couldn’t eat where no one would eat. We would get food for the journey,” Jackson said. “If it weren’t for Rollie Fingers, Johnny McNamara, Dave Duncan, Joe and Sharon Rudy… I slept on their couch three or 4 nights a week for about a month and a half. Finally, they threatened to burn down our apartment constructing if I didn’t get out. I would not wish this on anyone.

“The year I came here. The year before, Bull Connor had been sheriff and they had banned minor league baseball from here because the Klan had murdered four black girls in a local church in 1963 and was never charged. …the magazine wrote about them (the Klan) as if they were being honored. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”

Jackson did not play within the Negro Leagues. But he played at Alabama. And he knocked it out of the park for the last time.

You simply cannot separate the visceral sense of racism within the American South when a black person walks there daily. Does this mean that people in hoods at the moment are burning crosses on our porches? No, but it surely’s not prefer it’s ancient history. A Hall of Famer on live TV throwing out a hard “R” and referencing a lynching on the printed? Welcome to Birmingham.

“If it weren’t for my white friends, or the white manager, Rudy, Fingers, Duncan and Lee Meyers? I’d never do that,” Jackson said. “I used to be too physically aggressive. I used to be able to physically fight someone. I can be killed here because I’d beat someone… And you’d see me somewhere within the oak tree. Jackson concluded with the form of laughter that only black men of a certain age, with a certain experience and a certain courage can unleash.

At night all the things looked wonderful on the surface. Mays’ son Michael returned to the park to open proceedings, the teams continued playing, etc. The game went well, and the throwback to Nineteen Fifties-style black and white footage was very cool from a visual standpoint, reminding us of the primary American sports attraction , Mays with a catch to center field. But that didn’t occur in Alabama. Not by many miles. It was in New York that Michael Mays calls home.

“Get back on your feet,” he told the group in his authoritative Harlem accent. “Let him hear you, he listens.”

He was referring to the ghost of his father upstairs, a touching moment for a man who had endured a week of mental toll that nobody else could imagine.

There are more players and other people than I care to confess who attended these ceremonies and smiled because the popularity gave them the sensation of satisfaction they deserved. However, it does not change their lives, the stories they heard as children, or the violence they experienced each physically and mentally.

MLB learned a lesson this week that I’m not sure anyone was prepared for. This game was never intended to repair anything and it still doesn’t. There were only two black players on the sector last night. What if you wish to talk concerning the reality of the world in and across the game each then and now?

On a hot June night, Mr. October reminded us: watch out what you want for. Maybe you may just get it.