August 18, 1910

With more than 10,000 fans attending, the Birmingham Barons defeated the Montgomery Climbers in the first game at what is now the nation’s oldest operating ballpark. Rickwood Field was built at a cost of $75,000 by local businessman A.H. “Rick” Woodward and modeled after major league parks in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Appropriate for Birmingham’s status at the time as a steel manufacturing center, Rickwood was the first minor league park constructed of steel and concrete. It was home for decades to the Barons as well as the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues and continued to be used by the Barons until they left for suburban Hoover in the 1980s. It remains in use today mainly for amateur games and as a setting for baseball-related movies and advertisements. The Barons, now back downtown playing at Regions Field, return once a year for the Rickwood Classic game.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

View of the pitcher’s mound at Rickwood Field. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

A.H. “Rick” Woodward was the owner of the Birmingham Barons minor league baseball team during the early 20th century and built Rickwood Field, the nation’s oldest operating ballpark. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Birmingham Public Library Archives)

A 1926 photograph of a Dixie Series game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Birmingham Public Library Archives)

View of the Rickwood playing field showing home plate, pitcher’s mound, right field and stands, 1993. (Photograph by Jet Lowe, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

The entrance to Birmingham’s historic Rickwood Field, which was built in 1909. Today, the baseball park hosts municipal and recreational leagues. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Anthony King mows the outfield grass at Rickwood Field in June 2001 in preparation for the Rickwood Classic. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of The Birmingham News, photograph by Bernard Troncale)

Rickwood Field, Birmingham, 2010. (The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.