In 2006,WillieMays, left, andthe Rev.WilliamGreason,teammates ontheBirminghamBlack Barons in1948, gottogether againat Rickwoodfor a vintagebaseball gametelevised byESPN Classic.

Rickwood, as time wouldprove, wasn’t just any ol’ballpark, but it came to bethe oldest baseball park inAmerica — a distinctiongranted it by the NationalPark Service after Chicago’sold Comiskey Park, whichopened just 48 days beforeRickwood, was demolishedin 1991.

In the century sinceWoodward built his ball-park, Birmingham has torndown the Terminal Stationand the old Tutwiler Hoteland put up a parking lotwhere the Empire Theatreonce stood.

And while Vulcan may beone of Birmingham’s oldest,and certainly its most visi-ble, icons — cast in 1904,the big iron man is six yearsRickwood’s senior — it hasbeen moved around, takenapart and put back togetheragain.

Rickwood has stayed put.A hundred years of Bir-

mingham history can be tra-ced along the old ballpark’sbasepaths — from the city’s

turn-of-the-century days asa booming steel town to theracial unrest of the 1950sand ’60s to the decline ofthe very steel industry uponwhose fortunes Rickwoodwas built.

“ R i c k w o o d , ” a s A . H .“Rick” Woodward III, thegrandson of the ballpark’spatriarch, puts it, “was apart of the fabric of Bir-mingham society.”

Was, and still is.The Birmingham Barons

still come back once a yearto play in the annual Rick-wood Classic, and the ball-park is the home field forBirmingham city schools,Miles College and men’samateur-league teams.

“All of the sounds thatyou associate with modernsports — you know, thepounding disco music orthe pushy scoreboard tellingyou what to do and when toclap — all of that is absentfrom Rickwood,” author andsports historian Allen Barra,who grew up going to Rick-wood, says. “All you hear isthe crack of the bat and thesounds of the players yellingto each other.”

The ghostsof baseball’s past

Babe Ruth and Ty Cobbplayed here. So did DizzyDean and Satchel Paige.And Reggie Jackson andRollie Fingers.

In all, more than 100members of the NationalBaseball Hall of Fame camethrough Rickwood — eitheron barnstorming tours,spring-training stopovers,or on their way up to ordown from the big leagues.

Besides baseball, Rick-wood also hosted everythingfrom Klan rallies to a Kissconcert, from the HarlemGlobetrotters to the RinglingBros. and Barnum & BaileyCircus.

It has starred in movies( “ C o b b , ” “ S o u l o f t h eGame”), been the subject ofa half-dozen or so books(Barra’s “Rickwood Field: ACentury in America’s OldestBallpark” being the latest),and made all sorts of sportsbucket l ists ( includingESPN.com’s “101 Things AllSports Fans Must Experi-ence Before They Die.”)

And since the ballpark isopen most every weekdayfor self-guided tours, visi-tors traveling through Bir-mingham often drop in toroam the grounds where theghosts of baseball’s pastonce played.

Rob Neyer of Portland,Ore., who writes the base-ball blog SweetSpot forESPN.com, did just that on arecent trip to Atlanta for aSociety for American Base-ball Research conventionwith some of his buddies.

The first thing they didwas have a catch.

“It was sort of a tran-scendental experience forme,” Neyer recalls. “I loveold grounds, knowing thatI’m standing somewherewhere baseball players havebeen doing amazing thingsforever.

“That’s one of the things Ilike to do, is find where theyused to play baseball — and,of course, at RickwoodField, where they still playbaseball.”

Baseball inblack and white

Preservationists oftenrefer to Rickwood as a livinghistory museum, and itsright-field bleachers —where, for decades, blackswere forced to sit if theywanted to watch the all-white Birmingham Baronsplay ball — also stand as areminder of Birmingham’ssegregated past.

Long before his infamousreign as the public safetycommissioner who turnedfire hoses and attack dogson civil rights marchers, Eu-gene “Bull” Connor made aname for himself as the ra-dio broadcaster for the Bar-ons, parlaying that popular-ity into a political career.

And in 1948, when theBirmingham Black Baronscould only play in the ball-park on the alternating Sun-

days when the white Baronsweren’t in town, a futureHall-of-Famer named WillieMays made his professionaldebut as a green but gifted16-year-old outfielder forthe Black Barons.

By 1957, near the end ofan era for the old NegroLeagues, baseball was stillbeing played in black andwhite at Rickwood whenLeeds native Joseph Mar-bury played his first gamethere for the visiting India-napolis Clowns.

“Playing at Rickwood wassomething special to me, toa l o t o f g u y s , ” t h e71-year-old Marbury re-members. “I felt the sameway about playing at Rick-wood as I did when I playedat Yankee Stadium in NewYork.

“Segregation was a way oflife in the South at thattime,” Marbury adds. “Wedidn’t dwell on that. We justwent out and played. That’sthe way things were backthen. You just had to makethe most of it and do thebest you could.”

In 1964, Rickwood was al-ready more than a half-cen-tury old when a righthandernamed Paul Seitz steppedonto the mound for the Bir-m i n g h a m B a r o n s a n dpitched in the first inte-grated professional baseballgame in the ballpark’s his-tory.

“I didn’t think it was thatbig of a deal but when I gotout there, there was an elec-tricity,” Seitz recalls. “It wasa full house, or close to a fullhouse, and it was pretty ex-citing.”

Seitz, who grew up in Co-lumbus, Ohio, played threeseasons and part of a fourthin Birmingham before ten-dinitis persuaded him togive up baseball in the sum-mer of ’69.

He decided to make Bir-mingham his home, though,and for almost 40 years now,Seitz has been the proprie-tor of Little Professor BookCenter in Homewood, be-coming part of that “fabricof Birmingham society,” ifyou will.

From Finleyto Clarkson

Beginning in 1967, Ensleynative and colorful big-league owner Charlie Finleybought the Barons and re-named them the A’s, usingsuch up-and-coming pros-pects as Jackson, Fingers,Joe Rudi and Vida Blue tobuild the nucleus for his1970s Oakland A’s dynastythat won three consecutiveWorld Series.

By the end of the Bir-mingham A’s Rickwood run,though, attendance haddwindled to as few as a cou-ple of hundred die-hardfans a game, and the ball-park went dark after the1975 season.

For the next five seasons,Rickwood didn’t have a

team to call its own until1981, when another colorfulcharacter, Art Clarkson, withthe help of several localbusinessmen, bought theMontgomery Rebels, re-named them the Barons andbrought baseball back toBirmingham.

It was a great marriage forthe first few years, but frus-trated with parking prob-lems, security concerns andan aging ballpark in con-stant need of repair, Clark-son turned the lights out atRickwood one last time in1987 and moved into newdigs at Hoover MetropolitanStadium, now known as Re-gions Park, in time to startthe 1988 season.

Although it’s been nearlya quarter-century since theBarons made Rickwoodtheir home, the present-dayBarons have a soft spot forthe house that Rick Wood-ward built.

“That ballpark meant somuch and connects somany different generationson so many different levels,”Barons general managerJonathan Nelson says. “It’sone of the real gems notonly in baseball, but obvi-ously of Birmingham be-cause it meant so much toso many different people.”

For the past 15 years, theBarons have packed theirbats and balls and put onvintage uniforms to turnback time at the annualRickwood Classic. That firstturn-back-the-clock gamein 1996 was a novelty; it hassince become a tradition.

This summer, more than9,500 fans, the second larg-est crowd in the classic’shistory and rivaling thatOpening Day crowd in 1910— poured into Rickwood.

This afternoon’s 100thbirthday gathering will bemore low-key but no lesssignificant — a day for cele-brating, commemorating,dedicating and remem-bering when. It begins at 3o’clock, a half-hour or sowithin the starting time forthat first game a centuryago.

The Alabama TourismDepartment will unveil asecond historic marker atRickwood honoring Open-ing Day 1910, and the U.S.Postal Service will sell com-memorative stamps salutingplayers from the old NegroLeagues (including postalemployee and former BlackBaron Cleophus Brown),along with limited-releaseRickwood pictorial post-marks and cachets.

A troupe from the RedMountain Theatre Companywill perform “Casey at theBat” and “Take Me Out tothe Ball Game” while ball-players from the GreatSouth League will play ashort, three-inning game.

Friends cometo the rescue

That the old ballpark isstill around to celebrate a100th birthday is a tribute tothe Friends of Rickwood, asmall but resourceful groupof baseball purists and his-toric preservationists whocame to Rickwood’s rescuein the early 1990s.

Rolling up their sleevesand pooling their collectiveresources, they not onlysaved Rickwood from ruinbut have turned it into a na-tional treasure.

As trusted stewards of theballpark, the group hasmade, by its estimates,about $2 million worth ofrenovations to Rickwoodover the past two decades —from restoring the roof andthe locker rooms to install-ing a vintage scoreboardand old-timey outfield bill-boards.

“We have a lot of differentpeople with different skillsand contacts,” says GeraldWatkins, a banker who twoyears ago succeeded found-ing member Coke MatthewsIII as the chairman of theFriends of Rickwood board.“We’ve got an electrician.We’ve got some plumbers.We’ve got lawyers. We’vejust got people who willcome out there and dowhatever is necessary forthe good of the ballpark.”

The volunteer group op-erates on a budget of a littlemore than $100,000 a year— $67,500 of which, in re-cent years, has come fromthe City of Birmingham. Therest comes from park rent-als, merchandise sales, do-nations, grants and pro-ceeds from the RickwoodClassic.

(This year, because of se-v e r e b u d g e t c u t s , t h eFriends of Rickwood, likem a n y o t h e r n o n p r o f i tgroups, doesn’t expect toget any financial supportfrom the city, but the citywill continue to provide in-kind services.)

“We are very efficientmanagers of our limited re-s o u r c e s , ” s a y s D a v i dBrewer, executive director ofthe Friends of Rickwood andthe group’s only paid em-ployee. “So we are not in acris is si tuation at thispoint.”

Next generationof Rickwood fans

So, after they blow out thecandles on the birthdaycake today, what’s next forAmerica’s oldest ballpark?

This old house is 100years old, after all, and eventhough Rick Woodwardbuilt it to last, the concretehas begun to crumble andthe steel has started to rust.

According to some esti-mates, it could cost as muchas $1.5 million to stabilizethe grandstand for futuregenerations of fans, butBrewer says his group feelsit can get it done for less.

“I don’t think we arelooking at imminent struc-tural problems,” he says,“but like any 100-year-oldfacility, time is of the es-sence.”

Barra, the baseball histo-rian, says he expects Rick-wood will be around fordecades to come.

“All it takes is for peopleto appreciate its history andfor people there now to passthat on to their kids,” hesays. “They’ll keep it up,they’ll keep renewing it, andyeah, it’ll stick around.

“There’s no reason whythey can’t be having a bi-centennial a hundred yearsfrom now.”

For the family of the ball-park’s founder, Rickwoodhas already touched yet an-other generation.

Last spring, Marie Wood-ward, A.H. “Rick” Wood-ward’s great-granddaughter,got married in a ceremonyat home plate.

The judge wore a replicaU.S. Steel baseball uniform,and after the bride andgroom exchanged vows, thewedding guests played ball.

It was just like 1910 allover again.

E-MAIL: bcarlton@bhamnews.com

NEWS FILE/TAMIKAMOORE

4A j The BirminghamNews Wednesday, August 18, 2010FROM PAGE ONE

A CENTURY OF BASEBALL HISTORYRICKWOOD:From Page 1A

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