Will Willie Mays return home for MLB’s Negro League tribute at Rickwood Field?

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Will Willie Mays return home for MLB’s Negro League tribute at Rickwood Field?

Updated: Jun. 04, 2024, 9:14 p.m.|Published: Jun. 04, 2024, 6:21 p.m.

4–5 minutes

New York Giants' Willie Mays, takes a batting practice swing on June 24, 1954, in New York. Major League Baseball said Tuesday, May 28, 2024, that it has incorporated records for more than 2,300 Negro Leagues players following a three-year research project. Mays was credited with 10 hits for the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League, raising his total to 3,293. (AP Photo/John Lent)AP

By

Roy S. Johnson | rjohnson@al.com

Is Willie Mays returning to his hometown for MLB’s Salute to Negro Leagues game at Rickwood Field?

Many are hoping Birmingham native and former San Francisco Giant Willie Mays, widely recognized as baseball’s greatest living player, will return to his hometown next month for “MLB at Rickwood Field: A Tribute to the Negro Leagues”, regular-season game between the Giants and St. Louis Cardinals, at America’s oldest ballpark.

However, the 93-year-old Mays, who grew up in Fairfield, Alabama, not far from Rickwood, playing there as a 17-year-old member of the Birmingham Black Barons, probably won’t make the journey home for the June 20th game between the Giants and St. Louis Cardinals, according to the Giants.

“It is unlikely that Willie Mays will be able to travel to Rickwood,” a team spokesperson shared in an email to AL.com on Tuesday afternoon.

Mays played 23 seasons in Major League Baseball for the New York and San Francisco Giants and New York Mets en route to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Yet he began his professional career in 1948 with the Barons in the Negro American League. This week, 10 hits from that season were added to his career total (3,293) after MLB announced it had completed the integration of statistics from seven Negro Leagues between 1920 and 1948 into the game’s official records.

Mays was born in an unincorporated U.S. Steel town between Fairfield and Pleasant Grove called Westfield. He excelled in baseball and football at Fairfield Industrial High School and played the semi-pro Fairfield Industrial League with his father, William Howard “Cat” Mays Sr.

He shared this in his autobiography, “Sey, Hey”: “My father didn’t have money for me to go to college. And at that particular time, they didn’t have black quarterbacks, and I don’t think I could have made it in basketball because I was only 5-11, so I just picked baseball.”

MLB will still salute Mays at Rickwood. “To this day, Willie remains an inspiration to sports fans and baseball players everywhere,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has said. “We look forward to highlighting Willie’s legacy at the MLB at Rickwood Field Game in his hometown of Birmingham this June 20.”

Last August, while in Birmingham for the game’s branding announcement, MLB network announcer and two-time All-Star Harold Reynolds shared a text message response received from Mays the night before.

“[K]nowing that I was coming to Alabama, and knowing he’s from home, I called him last night and he sent a text message for all of you to tell you what this means to him,” Reynolds told AL.com Greg Garrison. He then pulled out his cell phone to read the response.

“Here’s Willie in his nineties, sending text messages,” Reynolds said. “I hope I can do that. Here’s what Willie had to say:

‘I was very happy to hear the Giants and Cardinals will play a Major League Baseball game at Rickwood Field next season. I have wonderful memories of playing there with the Black Birmingham Barons when I was only a kid, which, if you can believe it, was 75 years ago. I hope that the game will be a chance to remember so many really good ballplayers in the Negro Leagues who played at Rickwood Field but never got a chance to play in the big leagues. Harold, you better do your job.’”

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