Giants-Cardinals get ready to square off tomorrow night
MLB festivities at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, enter their second day on Wednesday. Yesterday featured a minor league showdown as the Montgomery Biscuits defeated the home team Birmingham Barons, 6-5. While tomorrow will feature a regular-season MLB game between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals, tonight brings America’s oldest ballpark a collaborative Juneteenth celebration. MLB and UNINTERRUPTED have built Barnstorm Birmingham, whose showpiece will be a celebrity softball game featuring honorary captains Barry Bonds and Derek Jeter. The night will be capped off with a performance by hip-hop sensation Metro Boomin.
Fans can get into Rickwood with a $24 ticket, one of many tributes to Willie Mays, who died yesterday. The honoring of Mays’ life will be a consistent theme throughout the entire event. It’s fitting considering the Birmingham Black Barons called Rickwood Field home and signed Mays, who was 16 years old at the time, in 1948.
The stadium itself has been turned into a testimonial to the impact and legacy of the Negro Leagues. A fan plaza features historical images, and the gates of Rickwood Field are designed to capture the Negro League era, with the goal of presenting the ballpark as it was all those years ago.
