MLB Giants and Cardinals to play Negro League tribute game

Major League Baseball will pay tribute to legend Willie Mays and the Negro Leagues with a 2024 regular-season game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, commissioner Rob Manfred said Tuesday.

The San Francisco Giants, Mays’s former MLB club, will face the St. Louis Cardinals next June 20 at the historic stadium, America’s oldest professional ballpark dating to 1910.

Mays, the oldest living member of the Baseball Hall of Fame at age 92, launched his career in 1948 with the Birmingham Black Barons, who played at Rickwood Field.

The stadium is still used once a year by the minor-league Birmingham Barons, the team that NBA legend Michael Jordan played for in 1994 when he took a break from basketball.

“We are proud to bring Major League Baseball to historic Rickwood Field in 2024,” Manfred said. “This opportunity to pay tribute to the Negro Leagues as the Giants and Cardinals play a regular season game at this iconic location is a great honor. The legacy of the Negro Leagues and its greatest living player, Willie Mays, is one of excellence and perseverance.”

The event will be scheduled around Juneteenth holiday activities, celebrating the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans.

Mays, who grew up in greater Birmingham and was signed by the then-New York Giants in 1950 after graduating from high school, was shocked to learn of the event.

“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 said.

“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.”

Black players were kept out of MLB until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947 for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The final Negro League World Series game was played at Rickwood Field in October 1948 with the Homestead Grays defeating teen star Mays and the Black Barons.