Negro League Baseball Reunion brings game’s greats, families to Birmingham
Former Negro Leagues baseball player Roosevelt Jackson gets a handshake at the 2016 Negro League Reunion in Birmingham. Jackson died at age 100 in 2018. (Solomon Crenshaw Jr. / Alabama NewsCenter)
Ray “Boo Boy” Knox said he expected to hear little exaggeration during the Negro League Baseball Reunion in Birmingham when his fellow Negro League baseball players talked about their days on the diamond.
“Maybe a few of them do,” the Evanston, Ill., resident said, acknowledging a little embellishment. “But if you played in those days, you had to be a player. You had to be a ballplayer. The biggest of the people who played in those days, they loved to play.”
Decades later, those players love to get together with their former teammates and opponents to talk about old times during the annual reunion in Birmingham. The event is held annually to coincide with the Birmingham Barons’ Rickwood Classic game.
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Seventy-eight players and family members had checked in for the reunion Tuesday. That number is expected to climb to 85 to 90 as the Barons face the Chattanooga Lookouts today at 12:30 p.m.
The reunion attendees began their visit with friendly conversation Tuesday morning at La Quinta Inns and Suites near Wildwood. They followed that with lunch at Lawson State Community College and then a visit to the Negro Southern League Museum.
The reunion evolved from an annual banquet that had been held for the former ballplayers. The organizers – Dr. Layton Revel of Dallas and Birmingham chef Clayton Sherrod – found that the reunion was more economical and proved to be a bigger event.
“Instead of just inviting the ballplayers to a banquet,” Sherrod said, “we invite the families, just like it’s a family reunion.”
Revel said the Negro Leagues are part of the basic foundation of American baseball.
“The gentlemen who attend these reunions played in the Negro Leagues a number of years ago,” he said. “We’ve got one fellow here (Leroy Preston) who’s 96 years old who was a bat boy for the 1932 Chicago American Giants. Their history is very important.”
Revel, whose collection of Negro League artifacts is on permanent loan to the museum next door to Birmingham’s Regions Field, and Sherrod have an ally in this venture in 21-year-old Cam Perron, who attended his first reunion in 2010 when his mother drove him to town.
“The following year I came down by myself,” he recalled. “I was 15 and I roomed with one of the players.”
Perron became part of the Negro League family by his dogged determination to track down ballplayers who had not been part of past gatherings. That search is beneficial to the players as the trio documents that players played at least four years in the Negro Leagues, which makes them eligible for a pension from Major League Baseball.
One recent find was Birmingham native Joe Elliott, who didn’t attend this year’s reunion. Some thought he had died until Sherrod, Revel and Perron learned otherwise.
Sherrod said Elliott was elated when he thought he would get the monthly pension of about $600, which he planned to use to fund his grandson’s education. But he would be happier still.
“Dr. Revel learned that he had played so many years (in the Negro Leagues) that Major League Baseball decided to give him a check for $100,000,” Sherrod said. “They sent it by special courier. We’ve gotten a number of pensions for the guys.”
