MLB’s East-West Classic returns this season to Rickwood Field, with the tribute to the Negro Leagues All-Star Games held from 1933-1962 set for June 19.
Announced today on what would have been Willie Mays’ 94th birthday, the East-West Classic will feature squads led by 2025 Hall of Fame inductee CC Sabathia (West captain) and All-Star outfielder Chris Young (East captain), along with honorary manager Dusty Baker. The rosters features players with careers spanning over 390 Major League seasons and 35,900 games, combining for 10 World Series titles, an MVP Award, two Cy Young Awards, 68 All-Star appearances, 18 Silver Slugger Awards and 23 Rawlings Gold Glove Awards. Prior to the five-inning contest, members of both teams will participate in a home run derby at noon, featuring defending champion Adam Jones. Last season the event was held at Doubleday Field in Coopertown.
Rickwood Field is the oldest professional ballpark in the United States and former home of the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues, who called Rickwood Field home from 1924 through 1960. As a teenager, Alabama native Mays began his professional career with the Black Barons in 1948. He played with them before beginning his legendary MLB career as a member of the New York Giants in 1951. Rickwood Field was the site of the final Negro League World Series game in October 1948, which saw Mays’ Black Barons falling to the Homestead Grays in five games. Though there are plenty of standing ballparks hosting Negro Leagues games in one form or another, there are precious few that hosted teams on a full-time basis, and Rickwood Field is probably in the best condition, though Jacksonville’s J.P. Small Memorial Stadium was renovated last year and this year.
Rickwood Field opened on August 18, 1910, as the home of the original Birmingham Barons of the first MiLB Southern League. Team owner Rick Woodward wanted an opulent home for his team and budgeted $25,000 for the project; Connie Mack helps him choose a site, lay out the diamond and specify a layout similar to that of Shibe Field, down to the field measurements. Opponents of public funding of ballparks will be happy to know that little has changed in the last 100 years: the final financial tally for the 7,00-seat ballpark was $75,000. (In those days, that was real money.) A contest in the local newspaper yielded the name of Rickwood Field, a mashing of the owner’s name.
Changes were made to Rickwood Field in the 1920s, however, that yielded the ballpark we see today: the roof was extended to new seating in the right-field corner, while the Spanish Mission style front office was added in 1928. It’s the oldest pro ballpark in the United States.
June is shaping up to be a big month at Rickwood Field: besides the East-West Classic, the Birmingham Barons will host this year’s Rickwood Field Game on June 4.
General admission tickets for the event’s first trip to Rickwood Field are available now for $12 at mlb.com/rickwood.
For more on Rickwood Field and its history, check out Mark McCarter’s Never a Bad Game: Fifty-Plus Years of the Southern League, encompassing the ballpark’s entire history as well as other important moments in baseball integration, including the Birmingham A’s and the arrival of Reggie Jackson to what was still a very racially divided city. For more on Negro Leagues All-Star Games, check out Jim Gilliam: The Forgotten Dodger, where a very young Gilliam made his first impacts on the game as an All-Star Game.
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