The regular-season matchup on June twentieth between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals could have been billed as the primary occasion, however this was one sport the place the individuals within the crowd and the venue had been each extra vital than the motion on the sphere.
The sport, dubbed “MLB at Rickwood Subject: A Tribute to the Negro Leagues,” hosted practically 60 former Negro League gamers in attendance. The occasion was a remembrance of their perseverance by way of the racism that blanketed each side of their lives.
Ferdinand “Chico” Rutledge, former Black Barons pitcher, instructed EBONY “This can be a model new day. We had been barely even allowed to play right here (at Rickwood). We’d get a Sunday, perhaps two a month. It was actually racist. We had been on the street, barely in Birmingham, as a result of the White Barons would play, and once they performed at house we needed to barnstorm… It’s night time and day now. I couldn’t think about a day like this.”
Throughout the FOX broadcast of the occasion, MLB Corridor of Famer Reggie Jackson recalled his expertise as a member of the Black Barons.
“Coming again right here just isn’t simple—the racism after I performed right here, the problem of going by way of completely different locations the place we traveled,” Jackson mentioned. “I’d stroll into eating places, and they might level at me and say, ‘The n—– can’t eat right here.’ I’d go to a resort, they usually say, ‘The n—– can’t keep right here.”
Hundreds of thousands of {dollars} had been spent to replace Rickwood to modern-day skilled requirements, however the very first thing you are feeling as you stroll into the stadium is the historical past. It’s the former house of Birmingham’s skilled baseball groups, the Barons and the Black Barons – with the caveat that the Black Barons had been topic to reserving the stadium when the white group wasn’t utilizing it. Like Rutledge mentioned, the white group had precedence and the stands had been as fiercely segregated because the groups on the sphere. Rickwood hosted its first sport in 1910 and appears about the identical now, aside from a brand new video board within the outfield.
“Historic preservation is so vital,” Birmingham mayor Randall Woodfin instructed EBONY. “Ensuring it nonetheless has the identical really feel whenever you stroll in, as a dwelling establishment. Not solely honoring the preservation, however ensuring it’s nonetheless related for as we speak’s youth and for as we speak’s actions.”
The stadium gates are a portal into the previous, and the MLB at Rickwood Subject was the right fusion of previous and current. The Giants and Cardinals took the sphere in throwback uniforms invoking their Negro League counterparts, the San Francisco Sea Lions and the St. Louis Stars. The pregame ceremony and efficiency, that includes five-time Grammy winner Jon Batiste, launched the previous Negro Leaguers and honored the late Willie Mays, who had handed away earlier that week.
Mays joined the Black Barons in 1948, earlier than finishing his highschool diploma. As a 17-year-old child, his mother and father wouldn’t let him play street video games till he obtained his diploma. After he graduated two years later, the San Francisco Giants signed Mays – the place he instantly gained his first Main League award, Rookie of the Yr.
“We had initially deliberate a second of silence,” the ceremony’s director of choreography Jemel McWilliams instructed EBONY. “However then Michael (Mays’ son) instructed us ‘We’ve obtained to rejoice my dad. He would wish to be celebrated,’ so when the complete stands began chanting ‘Willie, Willie, Willie’, I obtained chills. It’s precisely what his son hoped for.”
For Rutlegde, it was a surreal expertise. “I didn’t assume at the present time would come,” Rutledge instructed EBONY. “All these years later, they’re calling me to be interviewed. Little ol’ me. It’s a model new day.”
