Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, hosted its first MLB game Thursday night, and the ballpark brought with it a rich and complicated legacy.
The game between the Giants faced off with the Cardinals just days after the death of legendary San Francisco slugger Willie Mays. Mays started his career in the Negro Leagues with the Birmingham Black Barons, and he is just one of many all-time greats to grace the field at the ballpark over its 114-year history.
Included in that history are cherished memories from the Negro League games, minor leagues and exhibitions. An astonishing 181 Hall of Famers have competed in some form at Rickwood Field despite its lack of MLB history, and that figure could now very well grow when Paul Goldschmidt's career is done.
Rickwood Field is older than both Fenway Park and Wrigley Field. It's seen plenty over the years — but that includes darker chapters of American history.
While Black players found a home at Rickwood Field, it wasn't a safe haven by any means. Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson explained before Thursday's game the racism he experienced while playing at the venue as a minor leaguer.
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Jackson, 78, played for the Birmingham A's, the Double-A affiliate of the then-Kansas City Athletics, in 1967, and he was one of the only Black players on the team.
"Coming back here is not easy," Jackson told Fox's pregame panel, explaining that he experienced intense racism at hotels and restaurants when he played in Birmingham. Some establishments told the A's that Jackson wasn't welcome, and the Hall of Famer even described how some individuals threatened to burn down his teammate's apartment complex just because he was staying there for a portion of each week.
On an otherwise uplifting night that celebrated the history of baseball's Negro Leagues, Jackson was brutally honest about his own experiences.
"I wouldn't wish it on anybody," he said.
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Jackson made sure to single out his allies during those difficult times, pointing to manager John McNamara and teammate Rollie Fingers as among those who consistently stood up for him.
"At the same time, had it not been for my white friends ... I would have never made it. ... I would have gotten killed here, because I would've beaten someone's a—, and you would've saw me in an oak tree somewhere," Jackson said.
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Jackson would reach the major leagues by the end of the 1967 season, a credit to his perseverance. While he struggled through his first 35 games, the next two decades saw Jackson blast 562 of his 563 career home runs and mash his way to the Hall of Fame.
Jackson's experiences in Birmingham clearly stuck with him in the decades that followed, and his comments Thursday shed an important light on what some of the world's biggest baseball talents had to endure to play at historic Rickwood Field.
