Rickwood Classic is ‘old-time baseball’ for young and old alike in Alabama
More than 7,000 fans watch the Birmingham Barons play the Chattanooga Lookouts in the 2016 Rickwood Classic at Birmingham's Rickwood Field. (Brittany Faush-Johnson/Alabama NewsCenter)
The Bear Creek Bears won the 10-under Marion County baseball championship, and team parents wanted to give them something special. They surprised the 19-2 team with a trip to a Birmingham Barons baseball game.
But not just any game. They didn’t go to the still-new Regions Field on Birmingham’s Southside. They arrived two-and-a-half hours before Wednesday’s first pitch so they didn’t miss a minute of the 21st annual Rickwood Classic at Rickwood Field.
And that was just fine with them. “We like old-time baseball,” team member Jon Brady said.
The Bears were part of the announced crowd of 7,192 that saw the Barons fall 7-4 to the Chattanooga Lookouts. But the home team’s loss took nothing away from the experience of taking in the national pastime the way it was seen decades ago.
Rickwood Classic takes fans back to the ballgames of yesteryear from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.
The Barons used uniforms that were replicas of those worn by the 1967 Birmingham A’s featuring the iconic A’s script on the left side of the jersey, which was white with green sleeves and green numbers on the front right and back of the uniform.
The team wore special green caps with the white old-English “B.”
Ushers wore khaki slacks and white shirts with bowties inside while Deborah Wilson called for patrons to “get your program here” outside.
Highlands School seventh-graders Andy Schwebel and Joseph Katz helped Barons staffer Rodrick Smith hawk the latest edition of the Rickwood Times, a special newspaper that sold for just a dime.
The end of the game brought a special treat for fans who stuck around. Patrons descended to the field to walk on the outfield grass, run around the bases and imagine they were some of the greats who have entered Rickwood’s gates.
The nation’s oldest ballpark was dressed in her finest and the field was immaculately cut. Special guest Rollie Fingers, a former member of the Birmingham A’s, complimented his old stomping grounds.
“It looks 10 times better than it did when I played here,” he said. “The grass is a lot nicer. I think the field kind of sits a little higher too.”
Fingers played at Rickwood in 1967 and ’68 and was the opening-day pitcher in 1967. He doesn’t remember that game fondly.
“This is where I got hit in the face with a line drive in about the third or fourth inning,” he recalled. “I wish I wasn’t here that day.”
Seventy-two-year-old Johnny Smith was at Rickwood that day. He was back with his son and some friends for the Classic.
“We came back today, 49 years later, to see Rollie Fingers and to see the game today,” Smith’s son Tim said.
Fans stood in a long line to get autographs from and pictures with the Hall of Fame pitcher. No one was more eager to see Fingers than Mount Olive’s Jason Taylor.
“The very first old baseball card I had was Rollie Fingers,” he said. “Anything before the ‘80s, it was Rollie Fingers. I’ve always related myself to him because of that.”
At least two others at Rickwood Wednesday were sporting Fingers’ signature handlebar mustache – Montgomery’s Mike Robinson and Charles Dennis, who traveled down from Chicago for the Classic.
Dennis wore a full beard through the winter in the Windy City and shaved it down to the mustache last week. He nearly shaved that off to avoid the appearance he had grown it to be like Fingers.
“I thought, ‘I’ve been growing it all winter. Why not just go for it?’” he said.
Fingers wasn’t the only person who formerly wore a Birmingham uniform making a return to Rickwood on Wednesday. So, too, did Jeffery Lee, who said he was the first black bat boy for the Barons as a 12-year-old in 1967.
Lee lived in Detroit for 19 years. Now he’s back in Birmingham, a neighbor of the old ballpark in the Riley neighborhood. He attended the Classic with his 5-year-old grandson, Javone.
Related stories: Read about the 2016 Negro League Baseball Reunion and the latest inductee into the Birmingham Barons Hall of Fame.
