America’s Oldest Baseball Stadium: Birmingham, Alabama’s Rickwood Field
In 1909, A.H. Woodward, the twentyish CEO of the Woodward Iron Company, purchased the Southern Association’s Birmingham Coal Barons. Their home grounds was a place named “The Slag Pile.” He shortened the nickname by one word and began planning a new stadium. His models were Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field and Philadelphia’s Shibe Park. The new stadium would have Shibe’s dimensions and Forbes’ big left-center field scoreboard. Like Shibe Park, it would have no stands in right field.
The new steel and concrete, single-decked stadium, named “Rickwood” by combining A.H.’s nickname and surname, opened on August 18, 1910. The playing field measured 325 feet to left field, 393 feet to center field, and 335 feet to right field. It held 10,400 fans.
The first Negro Leagues began play in 1920. Birmingham entered the Negro National League in 1923. The new team followed others’ example by adding “black” to the local white team’s name, in their case “Rick” Woodward’s Barons of the Southern Association.
Negro League seasons varied in length. Customarily, more exhibition games against amateur and semi-pro teams were played than league games. Record keeping was casual. In most League cities, only the black newspapers printed game stories, and those were often short summaries with no box scores. Teams raided other teams’ rosters. Teams, and sometimes entire leagues, went out of business.
The Black Barons played in the Negro National League from 1923 to 1925, and from 1927 to 1931. In 1932, they joined the Negro Southern League. In 1937 and 1938, from 1940 through 1950, and from 1956 through 1960, the Barons played in the Negro American League. They played home games in Rickwood Field when the Southern Association’s Barons were on the road.
In Birmingham, as in many Southern cities, local laws required black and white spectators to occupy separate seating areas at concerts and sporting events. At Rickwood, when the Barons played, black fans could occupy only a small section of seats near the right field foul pole. When the Black Barons played, white fans were restricted to the same seats.
In 1927, future Hall Of Famer Satchel Paige left the Chattanooga Black Lookouts in mid-season for the $276 per month he could earn pitching in Birmingham. The Black Barons, during the three seasons Paige pitched at Rickwood, often loaned him to other teams who had a tough series coming up, or who needed a gate attraction.
Sam Hairston joined the Black Barons in 1948. Two seasons later, he won the Negro National League’s triple crown, hitting .424 with 17 home runs and 71 runs batted in over a 70 game season. In 1951 he became the Chicago White Sox’ first black player. His son Jerry played for the White Sox, and grandson Jerry Jr. with the Baltimore Orioles; making the Hairstons one of baseball’s rare three-generation families.
One of Sam Hairston’s teammates in 1948 was a tall, skinny rookie from nearby Fairfield, one month away from seventeen: Willie Mays. The New York Giants signed Mays in 1951. He started at their top Minneapolis farm club that spring, and made it to New York in time to help the Giants steal the National League pennant from their perennial crosstown rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Black Barons’ shortshop Artie Wilson hit .402 in 1948, and joined Mays on the ’51 Giants. Ted Radcliffe, nicknamed “Double Duty” for pitching the first games of doubleheaders and catching the second, who played in over four thousand Negro League games, was a Black Baron, as was Lyman Bostock, father of the late Twins and Angels outfielder. The man most identified with Negro baseball in Birmingham, however, was outfielder Lorenzo Davis, nicknamed “Piper” after his Alabama home town. He hit .309 over six full seasons from 1942 through 1950, was the team’s playing manager for three of them, and later managed a second incarnation of the Black Barons.
That team joined the Negro American League in 1956. Negro pro ball was fading. The major leagues had been integrated for eight years, and the NAL’s best players were moving on to The Show. Televised major league games cut into attendance in both NAL and minor league towns. The four team Negro American League played more as an exhibition, or barnstorming, league than one with a formal schedule. The Black Barons played their final season in 1960.
Among those last Black Barons was Willie Smith, a pitcher from Anniston, Alabama, whom I remember joining the hometown Detroit Tigers in 1963. He switched to the outfield and played parts of eight more seasons with the Los Angeles Angels, Cleveland Indians, Chicago Cubs, and Cincinnati Reds.
The original Birmingham Barons, who shared Rickwood with their Negro League namesakes, played in the white AA Southern Association – one level below AAA, two below the major leagues – from 1910 until the league closed in 1961. Their parent teams included the Cubs, Reds, Pirates, Philadelphia Athletics, Red Sox, Yankees, and Tigers. The AA South Atlantic League became the Southern League in 1964, and a new Barons franchise represented the Kansas City Athletics. This team was renamed after its parent club from 1967 through 1975, possibly so boss Charlie O. – for “Owner” – Finley, a former Barons’ batboy, could recycle old major league uniforms. Future Athletics who played at Rickwood include Vida Blue, Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers, and Gene Tenace.
Birmingham left the Southern League, but returned in 1981. A third Barons team became the Detroit Tigers’ AA affiliate. In 1986, the Chicago White Sox became the parent club. Rickwood Field was aging. A new stadium was constructed in suburban Hoover, and 1987 was the Barons’ last full season at the site where professional baseball had been played for 77 years.
A group of local preservationists, aware of the stadium’s historic status, formed the Friends Of Rickwood and raised money to maintain the structure and playing surface. While Tiger Stadium has sat abandoned in downtown Detroit, Rickwood Field has hosted high school and college baseball tournaments, and become home to Birmingham’s recreational leagues.
Baseball scenes for the movies “Soul Of The Game” and “Cobb” were also filmed at Rickwood. For “Cobb,” a biography of Tigers and Philadelphia Athletics star Ty Cobb, advertising signs on the outfield walls were used to re-create a 1920s setting particular to the film’s story line. In an Alabama venue, there’s still a sign reminding spectators that a certain brand of beer is available “on draught in Philly.”
For the last nine seasons the Barons have played one game, the Rickwood Classic, at the single decked ball park with the dark green seats, at the corner of Second Avenue and 11th Street North. With the White Sox leaving old Comiskey Park in 1990, Rickwood has become the oldest stadium in the United States where professional baseball is played.
In a Rickwood Classic, teams wear vintage uniforms, and umpires wear white shirts and bow ties. Every ticket is general admission. The game becomes the center of attention. You can enjoy the game without your ears ringing from the multi-media ball park experience. After the last out, fans are allowed on the field to run the bases, play catch, wander the precisely trimmed outfield, and turn Rickwood into a southern Field Of Dreams.
The Barons defeated Memphis 3-2 in the first Rickwood Classic, played on June 12, 1996. Pete Rose Jr. doubled and singled, scoring one run and driving in another with a sacrifice fly. Magglio Ordonez and Frank Menechino reached base four times each. Mike Cameron and Robert Machado went hitless. Greg Norton doubled in the sixth inning and scored the eventual winning run. The retro scorecard’s rosters indicate Sam Hairston, wearing number 14, was a Barons’ coach. Attendance, including this writer, was 10,334.
With Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium, and Wrigley Field, now the oldest major league stadiums, having existed largely before interleague play, and with Rickwood having hosted both black and white leagues, it’s possible that more future Hall Of Famers have played on this field than on any other in the history of American professional baseball.
To get there, take Third Avenue West – US Route 11 – to 12th Street West, and drive two blocks south.
