Rickwood Field: A Century in America's Oldest Ballpark (review)

Book Review Rickwood Field: A Century in America’s Oldest Ballpark. By Allen Barra. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010. xii, 367 pp. $27.95. ISBN 9780 -393-06933-4. Sports venues—be they stadiums, parks, arenas, coliseums, or tracks— do not exist in a vacuum. They are inextricably intertwined with a complex matrix of technological, political, economic, and social currents. Birmingham’s Rickwood Field, inaugurated on August 18, 1910, structurally “represents classic early twentieth-century ballpark design” (p. 213), is “a prime example of second generation” ballparks (p. 214), and is “the first minor league stadium built of concrete and steel” (p. 213). Its principal models were Philadelphia’s Shibe Park (1909) and Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field (1909); Connie Mack even visited to advise on park layout. Its sponsor, Allen Harvey (Rick) Woodward, was a baseball enthusiast who bought the Southern Association Birmingham Barons in 1910 and wanted a site that showcased his dreams for his young team and city: “He was determined to see that his minor league team had a major league home” (p. 24). Birmingham was not incorporated until June 1871; the professional Coal Barons dated from 1885. But, as Woodward’s vision illustrates, Rickwood similarly reflects Birmingham’s emergence as a New South industrial center based on mining and manufacturing: coal, iron, steel. This patron and civic promoter was tied to his family’s Woodward Iron Company, which, like other local firms, fielded both white and black—though segregated—baseball teams to raise worker morale, civic pride, and business. The Tennessee Coal and Iron Company was another major supporter of workers’ baseball . Combined, the two enterprises developed some of the South’s best baseball talent of both races. Baseball and its shining park symbolized and facilitated Birmingham’s pursuit of prosperity and power. Despite baseball’s popularity in Birmingham, its fortunes and those of Rickwood followed national trends: expanding pre-World War I, stagnant during the war, booming in the 1920s, depressed in the 1930s, reviving after 1945. By the mid-1950s the minors were in decline everywhere. Rickwood and baseball also reflected and contributed to the evolving southern racial scene. Initially only whites played at Rickwood, though blacks could watch from a screened outfield section. In 1919 black teams were permitted on the field, with white spectators in the screened section . After some resistance, in 1954 the field and stands were integrated, the alabama review 322 as the Civil Rights movement gained momentum. The gradual integration of the majors beginning in 1947 precipitated the demise of black baseball; the Black Barons folded in 1960. What really made Rickwood famous was on-the-field baseball. Barra— journalist and author of books on baseball (Yogi Berra) and football (“Bear” Bryant)—highlights the great players whose skills were displayed within its confines. The list of future All-Stars and Hall of Famers who played in Rickwood on minor league, barnstorming, or spring training squads is itself testimony to the park’s centrality in southern and national baseball history. The Barons sent the likes of Burleigh Grimes, Rollie Fingers, and Reggie Jackson to the Hall of Fame; the Black Barons, Satchel Paige and Willie Mays. An exciting bonus is the material on Lorenzo (Piper) Davis (1917­­ –1997), a product of the local industrial leagues who starred for the Black Barons and served black and white baseball for some sixty years. He also played for the Harlem Globetrotters and was the first African American signed by the Boston Red Sox (1950). A new main entrance was added, field dimensions were changed, lights installed, and seats remodeled, yet the park’s original form remains along with the ghosts of legends past. Rickwood ceased to be the Barons’ home in 1987; managed since 1992 by the volunteer civic group Friends of Rickwood, it still hosts high school and college baseball games, camps, tournaments, recreational activities, and thousands of visitors annually. This is good popular history, with lots of information, anecdotes, light humor, and period pictures. It is easy and fun to read. Academic historians may lament the lack of more extensive research, documentation, or reference to theory. But its coverage is broad and its interpretations suggestive of larger themes...