Cardinals, Giants to play regular-season game at Birmingham's historic Rickwood Field in 2024
Willie Mays, who made his professional debut there, will be honored during the festivities
Rickwood Field, the oldest professional ballpark in the country, will host the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals for a regular-season game on June 20, 2024, MLB announced Tuesday.
As the former home of the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues, the field holds a rich history. It's where Giants legend and Hall of Famer Willie Mays, a Birmingham native, first became a star as a member of the Black Barons.
Mays will be honored as part of the 2024 proceedings. The contest and festivities are scheduled to take place the day after Juneteenth, a commemoration of the emancipation of enslaved Black people in the U.S.
Fox will provide exclusive national coverage of the contest, which will be a home game for the Cardinals and air at 7 p.m. ET. Both teams will wear period uniforms to celebrate their Negro League ties.
“I can’t believe it. I never thought I’d see in my lifetime a Major League Baseball game being played on the very field where I played baseball as a teenager," Mays, 92, said in the release. "It has been 75 years since I played for the Birmingham Black Barons at Rickwood Field, and to learn that my Giants and the Cardinals will play a game there and honor the legacy of the Negro Leagues and all those who came before them is really emotional for me. We can’t forget what got us here, and that was the Negro Leagues for so many of us."
The game is not a "Field of Dreams" game, but it will certainly have that feel. The 2021 and 2022 games played in the Iowa cornfields were massive hits, taking place where the scenes from the movie were filmed.
Rickwood Field has also appeared in movies, including "42," the 2013 Jackie Robinson biopic starring the late Chadwick Boseman. The ballpark also appears in "Soul of the Game" (1996) and "Cobb" (1994).
Serving as home field for Miles College, a historically Black college and university in Fairfield, Alabama, it is one of just two Negro League ballparks still in existence. Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, New Jersey, is the other.
