Birmingham’s Rickwood Subject – the oldest skilled baseball stadium in America, standing since 1910, and the previous house of the Negro American League’s Birmingham Black Barons – hosted Minor League Baseball and Main League Baseball video games this week, and on the way in which to the hallowed floor, MLB Pipeline took a highway journey via Florida and Alabama in quest of extra tales that inform the historical past of Black baseball within the South. Half I of that journey, protecting stops in Daytona Seaside and Jacksonville, is obtainable to learn right here.
MOBILE
“No person ever talks about that!”
We’ve pushed 5 hours west of Jacksonville, crossed the border into Alabama, crashed the evening at one other LaQuinta Inn in Daphne and headed to the Ruby Slipper for Monday breakfast in Cellular, the place we’re met by 13-year Main Leaguer and 1969 World Collection champion Cleon Jones and his spouse Angela who nonetheless stay of their hometown metropolis by the Gulf.
We’re not speaking in regards to the Miracle Mets on this particular case – however that comes up a lot between bites of eggs, grits and French toast – however fairly, Cellular’s direct affect on the 1969 Nationwide League as a complete.
Three Cellular natives earned beginning spots in that 12 months’s NL All-Star lineup at RFK Stadium in Washington – Hank Aaron batted third and began in proper discipline, Willie McCovey batted cleanup and began at first base and Jones (in his solely Midsummer Basic look) batted seventh and began in left. Zoom ahead a number of months, and 4 gamers from the realm completed among the many prime seven in NL MVP voting – McCovey in first, Aaron in third, Tommie Agee in sixth and Jones in seventh.
A lot was made on the time in regards to the partnership of Agee and Jones – two former baseball, basketball, soccer and monitor teammates at Cellular County Coaching Faculty – within the New York outfield (as seen beneath), and that kicked into one other gear when the pair shared a roster with fellow Mobilian Amos Otis. Jones, Agee and Otis shared the outfield grass as a trio 4 instances for the Mets in ’69.
Jones notes that Aaron, whose brother Tommie additionally noticed time within the bigs and whose childhood house was not too long ago relocated to its unique neighborhood in Toulminville, used to say “there was one thing within the water” round Cellular that led to the NL dominance on this interval. However the origin may also have one thing to do with one other Cellular native, Satchel Paige.
Each metropolis wants native legend, however they don’t come way more legendary than the fireballing right-hander. Jones recalled listening to tales of Paige telling his infielders to sit down down whereas he mowed down opposing hitters, and realizing a few of that occurred proper across the nook in his neighborhood in Plateau was a giant inspiration.
“Satchel was all the time the discuss of the city,” he mentioned. “They’d all the time discuss what Satch did – what he did at this park, what he did at that park, what he did right here.”
These legends grew to become actual for Jones and different Black ballplayers when Jackie Robinson signed with the Dodgers and debuted within the Nationwide League in 1947. Jones, who was solely 5 years outdated on the time, remembers gathering across the radio together with his grandparents to tune into as many Brooklyn video games as they might.
“We’d sit round that like we had been watching TV,” Jones mentioned. “We’d hear Dizzy Dean or somebody like that say, ‘That one was excessive and tight.’ My great-grandmother would say to the radio, ‘Look out, Jackie, they’re throwing at you.’”
In the midst of the twentieth century, having legends stay on via neighborhood tales or over the airwaves made baseball an aspirational sport for Mobilians like Jones, and the relative low value of the sport allowed for a suggestions loop. The upper the curiosity, the higher the gamers, the upper the curiosity, and so forth. That helped Jones put aside his soccer days at Alabama A&M when the Mets got here to signal him as a ballplayer of their first 12 months of existence in 1962.
Jones didn’t personal his first private glove till he was 13 – and he stored that very same mitt till making the Majors at 21 – as a result of he borrowed from pals, together with ones who had been right-handed whereas he was a left-handed thrower. He even realized to hit righty at a neighborhood park with a view to keep away from pulling balls into water past proper discipline as a lefty.
These had been low-cost, community-driven methods to get native children concerned in baseball. The consequence: 5 Cellular natives at present sit within the Corridor of Fame – Aaron, McCovey, Paige, Ozzie Smith and Billy Williams.
Jones is closely concerned in a downtown Cellular challenge referred to as Heroes Plaza aimed to honor these Cooperstown greats again house. Floor was damaged on the positioning final November, and nine-foot-tall statues of all 5 are standing by to be in put in place when work is full. The opening ceremony is scheduled for subsequent 12 months, and Jones is useful that Cellular, which has seen declining baseball curiosity because the mid-Nineteen Eighties, might result in a neighborhood resurgence within the nationwide pastime.
“It’s not all the time been about us, however the pleasure we should always have as Mobilians,” Jones mentioned. “Most Mobilians usually are not acquainted with all of the issues we’ve talked about. However once I go across the nation, I’m requested the identical query on a regular basis. Why had been there so many nice Cellular ballplayers? It wasn’t something in regards to the water. It was in regards to the skill to play and compete with so many nice athletes.”
MONTGOMERY
It takes about 2 hours, half-hour to drive north from Cellular to Montgomery, Alabama’s state capital and the house of Double-A Montgomery. The membership’s house ballpark Riverwalk Stadium sits close to the banks of the Alabama River and fewer than half a mile from the Rosa Parks bus cease, highlighting that American historical past is rarely far-off from baseball.
The Biscuits had been the guests in Tuesday’s MiLB at Rickwood recreation, ultimately profitable 6-5 over host Birmingham, and donned Grey Sox uniforms to mark the event in celebration of a neighborhood group that moved between the Negro Southern League, industrial leagues and different native circuits within the Twenties and ‘30s. The membership performed at Southside Park, which now sits on the modern-day campus of HBCU Alabama State.
A Birmingham-Montgomery matchup shouldn’t have come as a shock to anybody who is aware of Rickwood historical past. The Birmingham Barons and Montgomery Climbers performed in Rickwood’s first recreation on Aug. 18, 1910 in entrance of an estimated crowd of 10,000. Greater than a century later, Birmingham and Montgomery – carrying old-school Barons and Climbers outfits – competed within the Rickwood Basic on Could 29, 2019 within the final affiliated recreation within the historic park earlier than this week.
The trendy Biscuits entrance workplace was already planning to proceed to faucet into the realm’s historical past with Negro League nights in 2024, when phrase got here down in June final 12 months that they’d be on the schedule for the Minor Leagues’ return to Rickwood. Transferring the Grey Sox id that was already in movement to the Birmingham ballpark solely made sense. However the Biscuits have prolonged the Grey Sox look via the week with jersey giveaways (with a extra trendy really feel) on Friday and Sunday as they proceed to faucet into and recreate the extra constructive attributes of Montgomery baseball historical past.
“Digging into a few of the newspaper articles we discovered, clearly this was Montgomery throughout segregation, however there have been some quotes the place followers mentioned going to a baseball recreation was like going to neighbor’s home or going to a pal’s home,” mentioned Biscuits common supervisor Michael Murphy. “It was a spot the place they might let unfastened and be themselves. The baseball park was the place anyone felt actually snug, and that was actually highly effective to learn.”
That neighborhood really feel and native pleasure ought to sound acquainted to anybody who’s ever been to a Minor League park, and bringing the Grey Sox power and look to Riverwalk Stadium (and presumably past) isn’t one thing that may cease in Montgomery in 2024.
“It’s not like we’re going to put on this as soon as after which public sale it off,” Murphy mentioned. “We’re holding these uniforms for so long as we will.”