Reif Blue is just as familiar with Rickwood Field as he is with his own house. The old ballpark was the scene of some of his most memorable moments as a student and then as a burgeoning athlete with major league baseball dreams.
Blue played at Rickwood as a member of the Birmingham Black Barons in the early 1950s.
“It was hard. During my time, my best baseball was speed and the major league wasn’t looking at speed,” Blue said. “They were looking at homeruns, so that kept me back a bit.”
Blue didn’t make it to the major leagues. But seven decades later, he is thrilled to see the MLB bring its 2024 tribute to the Negro Leagues to Birmingham, where he and other Black players began their careers.
The St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants will play on June 20, 2024, in “MLB at Rickwood Field: A Tribute to the Negro Leagues.”
The baseball game is already injecting a new sense of excitement and community pride throughout the neighborhood.
“It’s great for the neighborhood,” said Blue, a longtime resident and president of the Rising-West Princeton Neighborhood Foundation. “You’ve got all of these out of town people to come in here, and they’ll notice the park and they’ll also circle the neighborhood. It’s great for everybody.”
The game will include activities saluting the Negro Leagues and Willie Mays, a Hall of Famer and Alabama native. The baseball legend played for the Birmingham Black Baron at the historic ballpark from 1948 to 1950.
People visiting Rickwood Field need only to look down at their feet to be reminded of where they are.
Small copper baseball plaques stamped in the sidewalk leading to the baseball field are inscribed with the name of the Rising-West Princeton neighborhood. The commemorative plates illustrate the century-old bond between the ballpark and neighborhood in which it sits.
“It means a lot to me,” Blue said. “I finished Parker High School and I would come here and work on the weekends and the evenings. It’s a great thing for Rickwood Field to still be alive. A lot of cities have lost theirs and we are still standing.”
At a recent visit to stadium, Blue brought along a photo of his cousin, former major leaguer Vida Blue Jr. Blue, who played with the Barons in Birmingham before going on to play on three consecutive world championship teams with the Oakland A’s.
Birmingham residents and others are counting down until thousands of people arrive and a national audience is introduced to their city and the ballpark that stands as a beacon of community pride for the Rising-West Princeton Neighborhood.
“It’s phenomenal,” said neighborhood president Costello Adams-Terrell. “Now here’s an opportunity for the nation to see the neighborhood of Rising where Rickwood Field has existed for more than a century. You have several generations that still live in the neighborhood who remember a lot of the old original teams. The people in the community came out and enjoyed what they wouldn’t normally have in this area.”
Built in 1910, Rickwood Field is America’s oldest surviving ballpark. The stadium will also be renovated to accommodate the MLB game.
Activities surrounding the MLB game will also include the return of the Rickwood Classic, a throw-back game featuring the Birmingham Barons and the Montgomery Biscuits. In addition to a day of nostalgia and entertainment, the MLB game also presents an opportunity for longer term impact.
“Many people in the baseball world will be introduced to Birmingham for the first time,” said Darin W. White, executive director of the Center for Sports Analytics and Chair of the Entrepreneurship, Management & Marketing Department at Samford University. “Sports is the front porch that really allws you to be introduced to cities for the first time. It’s how we form our first impressions of a city. That is the big value of an event like this.”
White said the Birmingham area already has a reputation for supporting major sporting events, such as the U.S. Open Cup quarterfinal match at Protective Stadium. A record crowd of 18,418 broke attendance records for the Birmingham Legion soccer team in June.
The MLB game is another major entry to the city’s portfolio. Each successful event helps promote the next opportunity, White said.
“When we bring events to town, we support them,” White said. “That can’t be said of every city. We are a place where these sorts of events should want to come.”
Birmingham Councilwoman Carol Clarke, whose district includes Rising-West Princeton, called the game “catalytic,” with the possibility of injecting a cultural and economic boost to the area and the Third Avenue West corridor.
“This is something to get people excited about a big national event coming to an underutilized asset in your neighborhood,” Clarke said. “There’s so much sports history in the neighborhood. And in some cases, the people have gone, and the structures are still hanging on because nobody wants to report them for demolition because somebody famous in sports history lived there.”
Clarke recalls her own childhood and going to the ballpark with her father. She said the MLB game and the attention it will draw ushers in another generation to Rickwood Field.
“It’s taking an old gem like that and putting it on center stage is just fabulous,” she said. “It’s a huge break for a facility that is a national treasure.”
Gerald Watkins, chairman of the nonprofit Friends of Rickwood Field, said the MLB game will bring unprecedented attention to the ballpark that will deliver long term benefits.
“It’s going to set up Rickwood Field for another 100 years,” Watkins said. “There are going to be millions of eyes on Birmingham. They’re going to see Birmingham in a different light. It’s going to be a commercial for Birmingham that we couldn’t spend enough money to get the kind of game that we’re going to get by having this game.”
