Rickwood Field and the Black Barons

Rickwood Field opened on August eighteenth, nineteen ten, and more than ten thousand people came to watch the Birmingham Barons defeat the Montgomery Climbers by a score of three to two. The concrete-and-steel stadium was the first of its kind in minor league baseball, and it still stands. It is the oldest professional baseball park in the United States.

The park was built by Rick Woodward, the industrialist who owned the Barons. He named it after himself, combining his nickname with the first part of his surname. The design borrowed heavily from Forbes Field in Pittsburgh and Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Birmingham, still a young city and deeply conscious of its standing, wanted a ballpark that signaled it belonged in the same conversation as older American cities.

For decades, two teams called Rickwood home. The white Barons played their games here under the rules of organized baseball. The Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues played here too, in the same park, though never on the same days as the Barons. The Black Barons were among the most successful franchises in the Negro Leagues and brought some of the most gifted players in American baseball through the gates of this park.

Leroy Paige, known as Satchel, pitched here before he became famous. Willie Mays grew up watching the Black Barons at Rickwood and joined the team as a teenager in nineteen forty-eight, and the Giants signed him in nineteen fifty. Lorenzo Davis, called Piper, played and managed for the Black Barons in the nineteen forties and was a respected mentor to young players.

The Barons moved their home games to a stadium in Hoover in the late nineteen eighties. Rickwood Field has been maintained ever since as a working museum, and baseball is still played here.