If you’re unfamiliar with Rickwood Field, you’re not alone. At 114, it’s the oldest professional ballpark in America—predating both Fenway Park and Wrigley Field—and yet it has stayed under the radar as a landmark even though Rickwood has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1992 and is open to the public for free, five days a week. Michael Fountain—a longtime Emmy-winning news and sports television producer—for example, was unfamiliar with Rickwood until recently, when a friend reached out and suggested looking into it as a film project.
“I enjoy a playoff game in October, but am not a baseball geek by any means, so I knew nothing about the ballpark,” says Fountain, who headed up a small crew that made “Rickwood: The Soul of Birmingham,” a documentary streaming on the Hearst-backed Very Local app. “Driving up, Rickwood isn’t all that appealing on the outside, but once you go through the old turnstiles, past the original ticket booth, walk into the stadium, sit in those stands and look at the field where these giants played, you feel, sense and see American history all around you. … I’ve been working in sports for a long time and never had an experience like that before.”
Veteran sportswriter Allen Barra best captured the park’s story in his 2010 stadium biography Rickwood Field: A Century in America’s Oldest Ballpark. In it, Barra chronicles how the park witnessed decades of the sport’s history, playing host to all-white champions of the Southern League like the Birmingham Barons, touring squads of major league titans, as well as the Black Barons, whose story ties in so closely with the city’s role in the push for civil rights.
Barra, who in 1967 saw then-minor leaguer Reggie Jackson hit a home run over the deep right-field bleachers as a member of the Birmingham A’s, considers his book a continuation of successful preservation efforts that began in earnest in 1992, the year the Friends of Rickwood nonprofit was formed to rehab the aging joint after years of neglect.
“There isn’t a clear single reason as to why Rickwood Field isn’t widely known given its historical significance,” says Barra. “I’m certain more Hall of Famers played on that diamond than any other stadium in the country. The Rickwood slogan should be, ‘They Built It, So Come!’”