Rickwood Field

The photographs on this page, brought to life.

The Rickwood Classic, the ballpark's annual throwback game, in 2010. Carol M. Highsmith Archive. Library of Congress.

The oldest professional ballpark still standing in the United States. It opened on August 18, 1910 — two years before Fenway Park, four years before Wrigley Field. A Birmingham industrialist named Rick Woodward built it and put a piece of his own name on it. He wanted a real steel-and-concrete park at a time when most minor league teams played in wooden bandboxes that burned down every few years. He asked Connie Mack for advice on the dimensions and got it. The Birmingham Barons played here. So did the Birmingham Black Barons, and that is the part of Rickwood's history that matters most now. Under segregation the two teams shared the same field on alternating weeks — same grass, same dugouts, same fences, different days, and Black fans sat where the law and the club told them to sit. In 1948 a teenager from Westfield, Alabama played center field here for the Black Barons on a roster full of men twice his age. His name was Willie Mays. Satchel Paige pitched here. So did most of the great ones, at some point, coming through on a barnstorming tour or a rehab stint or on the way up. Rickwood is a hundred and some years old and still has a grandstand, still has an outfield wall, still hosts baseball. It is one of the very few places left in America where you can stand in the exact spot where a specific thing happened in 1948, and it looks close enough to right that you can believe it. These photographs are recent and in color, which feels wrong for the subject until you see them — the park is a survivor, not a ruin, and it deserves to be looked at in daylight. Somebody in your family sat in those stands. Birmingham is not that big. If you have the story, put it here. Photographs by Carol M. Highsmith, Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Dedicated to the public domain.