The greatest players to play at Rickwood Field included the Say Hey Kid, Hammer, Mr. Cub
Major League Baseball will host a special regular season game in Birmingham, Alabama between the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants on Thursday. The game will be played at Rickwood Field, the oldest baseball park in the US.
Built and opened in 1910, Rickwood Field was the first steel-and-concrete baseball stadium south of the Ohio River and the first built specifically for minor-league baseball. Rickwood hosted the Birmingham Barons and the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues for most of the 20th century. The MLB will use the game to pay tribute to the Negro Leagues and honor those who played in them.
Rickwood Field has been graced by many baseball legends in its storied history. Here are some of the most famous players to have played at Rickwood Field:
Willie Mays
One of the greatest players of all time played his first professional games at Rickwood Field. Willie Mays, a native of Fairfield, Alabama, who passed away on Tuesday, attended high school just around the corner from Rickwood and signed his first contract with the Black Barons at the age of 17. He led the Black Barons to a Negro American League pennant and a Negro World Series appearance in 1948.
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Mays signed with the New York Giants in 1950 and was playing in the majors by 1951. "The Say Hey Kid" was the NL Rookie of the Year and led the Giants to a National League pennant in 1951. In 1954, he was the NL MVP, and the Giants won the World Series. Mays was a 24-time All-Star and 12-time Golden Glove winner. He was a first-ballot Baseball Hall of Famer in 1979.
Satchel Paige
Leroy "Satchel" Paige joined the Black Barons in 1927 and played at Rickwood through 1929. In the 1929 season, Paige threw a Negro League record 176 strikeouts, though the actual number of strikeouts is disputed among various sources.
Paige bounced around the Negro Leagues until 1948 when he signed his first major league contract with the Cleveland Indians. Paige became the oldest debutant in MLB history when he made his debut at 42 years and two days old. Still, he pitched in the major leagues until 1965, earning two All-Star nods and winning a World Series along the way. Paige played until he was 59, making him the oldest player in MLB history by nearly a decade.
Hank Aaron
Another all-time great, Hank Aaron got his start in the Negro American League with the Indianapolis Clowns. He likely only played a game or two at Rickwood with the Clowns, as his Negro League career only lasted 26 games before the Milwaukee Braves purchased his contract. However, the Braves played a spring exhibition series against the Brooklyn Dodgers at Rickwood during Aaron's first spring training in 1954, and he would often visit the field during spring training throughout his career.
Aaron's 755 career home runs stood as an MLB record for 33 years, and he still holds league records with 2,297 RBIs, 1,477 extra-base hits and 6,856 total bases.
Ernie Banks
"Mr. Cub" played for the Kansas City Monarchs during his time in the Negro Leagues and played against the Black Barons at Rickwood. He was a 14-time All-Star and two-time NL MVP with the Chicago Cubs and was the first player in franchise history to have his number retired.
Jackie Robinson
The player who famously broke baseball's color barrier in 1948, Jackie Robinson played two games at Rickwood Field. Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers played a pair of exhibition games against Aaron and the Milwaukee Braves during the spring of 1954. The 2013 film "42" about Robinson's life features scenes shot on-location in Rickwood.
Reggie Jackson
In 1967, the Kansas City Athletics brought their Double-A farm team to Birmingham. Many of the players on that team became key parts of the A's 1972-74 World Series threepeat, including "Mr. October," who was the AL MVP in 1973.
Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb
Despite never playing in the Negro Leagues, "the Great Bambino" and "the Georgia Peach" both played at Rickwood Field. The stadium's location near a railway hub made it convenient for traveling major leaguers to stop and see it on the way back from spring training to their home cities. Stopping to see the stadium often meant they would play an exhibition game there, and Ruth and Cobb were just two of the many legends who did so.
Like Robinson's, Cobb's 1994 biopic, "Cobb," was also shot on-location in Rickwood.