In blunt terms, Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson spoke Thursday during a live national television appearance about the reality of becoming a young black baseball player under Jim Crow. Between the sepia-toned features voiced by A-list Hollywood stars during Fox’s pregame coverage of the Major League Baseball game at historic Rickwood Field, Jackson wept as he recalled the taunts, racial epithets and the threats of violence he faced as a minor league player in segregated Birmingham. .
“I said I would never want to do it again,” said Jackson, whose comments were uncensored. “I walked into restaurants and they were pointing at me and saying, ‘N—–s can’t eat here.’ I would go to a hotel and they would say, “N… can’t stay here.” We went to Charlie Finley’s country club for a welcome home dinner and they flagged me with the N-word: “he can’t come here.” Finley brought the whole team out. … Finally they let me in and he said, ‘We’re going to go eat hamburgers.’ We will go wherever we want.
The game was planned to celebrate the Negro Leagues and their players, with special tributes to Hall of Famer and former Birmingham Black Barons outfielder Willie Mays, who died Tuesday at the age of 93. But Jackson’s interview was a reminder of what he and so many others were treated not only in Rickwood, but beyond its fences.
Reggie Jackson played in Birmingham when he was in the minor leagues in 1967.
Upon his return to Rickwood Field, he shared his experiences with racism and discrimination.
“Coming back here is not easy.”
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“Coming back here is not easy,” Jackson said. “The racism when I was playing here, the difficulty of going through different places we were traveling to – luckily I had a manager and I had players in the team who helped me through that – but I wouldn’t wish it on person.”
In his second professional season, Jackson was part of the first integrated professional team to play at Rickwood Field when Charlie Finley brought the Kansas City A’s Double-A team to his native Birmingham in 1967. That team, managed by John McNamara , included Jackson, Rollie Fingers, Joe Rudi, Dave Duncan and Tony La Russa.
Jackson played 114 games for Birmingham that year, the same year he made his big-league debut. Jackson performed there just four years after four girls were killed in a bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church. That same year, 1963, the University of Alabama was desegregated. Rickwood, for its entire history before 1967, had been isolated.
At age 20, Jackson found himself in the Deep South for the first time after growing up in Pennsylvania and attending college at Arizona State. The year before, he had played in the A’s minor league system in California and Maine.
Alabama in 1967 was a different place.
“People said to me today, I spoke, and they said: ‘Do you think you are a better person, do you think you won by playing here and conquering?'” Jackson said when Fox’s asked him about his time in Birmingham. Alex Rodriguez.
“Luckily, I had a manager in Johnny McNamara who said if I couldn’t eat at a place, no one would eat. We would have food to travel with. If I couldn’t stay in a hotel, they would drive to a hotel to find a place I could stay. If it hadn’t been for Rollie Fingers, John McNamara, Dave Duncan, Joe and Sharon Rudi, I slept on their couch three, four nights a week for a month and a half. Eventually they were threatened to burn down our apartment complex if I didn’t come out. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. »
After recounting the history, Jackson concluded his speech by thanking some of his teammates from the time, saying he wouldn’t have gotten out of Birmingham without them.
“I never would have made it, I was too physically violent, I was ready to physically fight,” Jackson said. “I would have gotten killed here because I beat someone up and they would see me in an oak tree somewhere.”
Rodriguez said, “We love you, Reggie,” then hugged Jackson, 78,.
Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston played at Rickwood Field because MLB refused to allow them and others, like Cool Papa Bell, Monte Irvin, and many others, to play with white players. Until 1963 – just four years before Jackson played for Birmingham – it was illegal for white and black players to play on the same field anywhere in Alabama.
Until his health deteriorated, Mays hoped to return to the stadium for Thursday’s game between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals. His son, Michael Mays, told the crowd Monday that his father wanted to be there “badly.”
Mays released a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle the same day, noting that he could not travel, but describing the stadium, opened in 1910, as “like a church.”
It was fitting, then, that the ceremonial first pitch was thrown out by the Rev. Bill Greason of nearby Bethel Baptist Church. Greason, 99, was one of several former Negro League players honored at the game. A native of Atlanta who grew up on the same street as Martin Luther King Jr., Greason was Mays’ teammate with the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948, when Mays was just 17 years old. Greason was the first African American to pitch for the Cardinals, making his debut May 31, 1954.
Greason, the oldest living player in the Negro Leagues, was escorted by Cardinals manager and 1985 National League MVP Willie McGee to throw out the first pitch.
The Giants wore the uniforms of the San Francisco Sea Lions, a Negro Leagues team that folded after its only season in 1946. The Cardinals wore the uniforms of the St. Louis Stars of the Negro Leagues.
Giants manager Bob Melvin played at Rickwood Field for three seasons in the early 1980s as a minor leaguer. Melvin, who told the Mays stories to his team before Thursday’s game, said the stadium, even with the renovations and all the temporary support structures, still looked the same inside as it did. remembered 40 years ago.
“It’s one of the iconic games in baseball history. Now we celebrate it with important (Negro Leagues) statistics and a much greater awareness of what happened here in the Negro Leagues and the great players who played here,” Melvin said. “And for us, it’s about Willie and that’s where Willie started. We are the perfect team to be here and play. The message is how many great players, legends of the game, have walked this ground. Now we have a chance to participate in it.
A total of 181 members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum have played at Rickwood Field, including Country Music Hall of Fame member Charley Pride, who played for the Black Barons in 1954.
Cardinals shortstop Masyn Winn, the only black player in either starting lineup, said, “I grew up playing on a team called Negro League Legends. Learning more about these guys and now being able to play on the same field that some of them played on is super special.
“I’m sure my father-in-law will shed a few tears, even me. Honestly, it’s going to be pretty emotional for me.
Although the game featured appearances from baseball legends such as Jackson, Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr. and Derek Jeter, among others, the focus was on Mays, one of the greatest players in history of the game and a son of Birmingham.
“The first big thing on my mind was playing at Rickwood Field,” he said in a statement to the Chronicle earlier this week. ” It was not a dream. It was something I was going to do.
Mays did so in 1948 when he joined the Black Barons of the Negro American League at age 17. He played for the team until he graduated from high school in 1950 and signed with the New York Giants.
Bonds was emotional when asked about Mays, his godfather and former teammate of Bonds’ father, Bobby.
“There’s a lot I could share…there you go,” Bonds said, unsuccessfully holding back tears. “I can’t control it. For me, it’s just too early. It’s too early, because it’s an uncontrollable feeling.
On the Fox set, Jeter shared a text Jackson sent him after Mays passed away on Tuesday.
“He was at least one of the greatest of all time. We all wanted to be Willie,” Jackson wrote and Jeter read. “When we played against him, we found ourselves busy watching Willie. He was pure baseball. My all time favorite. I loved this guy. I wanted to be like Willie.
Staff writers Andrew Baggarly and Katie Woo contributed to this report.
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(Photo: Russell Kilgore Jr. / MLB Photos via Getty Images)