Giants look ahead to 2024 game at Rickwood Field 

SAN FRANCISCO -- Long before Willie Mays was the Say Hey Kid, he was 17 years old, suiting up for the Birmingham Black Barons.

Not everyone realizes that Mays' Hall of Fame career began in the Negro Leagues. Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, termed it an "eye-opening" revelation for many visitors to the museum.

"In many ways, them learning that his career started in the Negro Leagues validates the other talent that was there in the Negro Leagues," Kendrick said. "When you start talking about Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks all coming out of the Negro Leagues, they were good, young players at that time.

"There were guys who played in the Negro Leagues prior to them who were just as good, some may argue even better -- even though it's scary to think that there might have even been a ballplayer better than Willie Mays or Henry Aaron."

Kendrick was alongside Dr. Condoleezza Rice, the former U.S. Secretary of State who is now the director of the Hoover Institution, as speakers on an African American Heritage Night panel hosted by former Giants outfielder and NBC Sports Bay Area analyst Randy Winn before Friday night's 6-2 loss to the Yankees at Oracle Park. The conversation revolved around Black representation in sports and the community, as well as the significance of the upcoming MLB game at historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala.

When the Giants and Cardinals make history by playing the first regular-season AL/NL game at Rickwood Field on June 20, it will be somewhat of a pilgrimage to the ballpark and city that birthed a legend in Mays -- and several others.

• Here's all you need to know about the 2024 MLB game at Rickwood Field

Rickwood Field is the oldest professional ballpark in the United States and was home to the Negro Leagues' Birmingham Black Barons from 1924-60. Rickwood has seen 181 future Hall of Famers pass through since it opened in 1910.

"In a city as polarized in segregation as Birmingham was," Kendrick said, "the Birmingham Black Barons were still the toast of the town."

Rice grew up in Birmingham during the segregation era, and although the Negro Leagues were no longer as prominent by that time, Rice remembers Rickwood Field as a place where Black high schools played sports. Her father, though, was a huge fan of the Negro Leagues, and would talk with her about his favorite player, Buck O'Neil. Coincidentally, Rice's mother was Mays' ninth grade English teacher at Fairfield Industrial High School.

• MLB at Rickwood Field

Today, decades removed from Negro League play, it is much more difficult to keep those memories alive.

Before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier on April 15, 1947, the beginning of integration for MLB, the Negro Leagues produced plenty of superstars, some of whom were eventually able to play in the American and National Leagues, though many others never did.

In order to recognize the achievements of these players, available Negro Leagues statistics are now a part of MLB's official record books, an ongoing effort led by the Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee.

Kendrick described this initiative as "game-changing," although he urged those who are intrigued by the changes in the Major League leaderboards to not stop there.

"You can never reduce the Negro Leagues to just statistics," Kendrick said. "You can't. It is too grandiose. It is too impactful, too powerful and too meaningful. … In some ways, we deemphasize the athletes in lieu of the story, which has escaped us. And it's a powerful, compelling, inspirational story of these courageous athletes who just refused to accept the notion that they were unfit to share in the joys of our national pastime."

By engaging with the past, the hope is to keep fighting for a better future.

Though Rice and her immediate family moved away from Birmingham when she was 12, her connections to the area remain -- and she hopes that the game at Rickwood Field will just be the beginning of an effort to revitalize the city.

With Major League Baseball returning to Birmingham, Rice sees the potential for there to be a lasting impact on the city.

"It can't just be one game," she said. "It has to be a continuous effort. … It produced the great Willie Mays. Hopefully a lot of other great, young people -- not just athletes, but across the board, lawyers and doctors and the like -- can also come out of Birmingham by what this game does and what it leaves behind."