NORFOLK, Va. — Rickwood Field, the oldest baseball park in America, has always held center stage for Sam Allen.
"Playing in Birmingham was like playing in the big leagues, like playing in a big league park," the Norfolk native said, reflecting on his days as a Negro League player for the Kansas City Monarchs.
Now, Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, will literally become a big league park.
Major League Baseball's first-ever Negro League tribute game will take place on Thursday evening between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals.
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Allen will be in attendance, but it might be hard to top his first Rickwood experience more than 50 years ago.
"I had never played before that many fans. On a Sunday in Birmingham, they announced the game on the radio and if you hit a home run, you got a suit. Of course, I didn't get a suit that Sunday, but they had over ten, eleven-thousand fans," Allen recalled.
Sundays in particular were special at Rickwood.
"People would come from church, so they would be dressed up. Women would have hats on, men would have hats and suits on, it was like a festival," Allen said, referring to those days as "events".
Thursday will be an event itself and it grew in significance earlier this week with the passing of Willie Mays on Tuesday. Mays played for the Birmingham Barons, the team that called Rickwood home, as a 17-year-old back in 1948.