Willie Mays will not be able to attend Thursday night’s National League game between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals. But MLB at Rickwood Field: A Tribute to the Negro Leagues will have an even rarer visitor.
For the first time since Mays’ enshrinement in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, the plaque honoring the Alabama native will leave the Cooperstown, New York, museum, Major League Baseball announced on Monday.
The Mays Hall of Fame plaque will be displayed at Rickwood Field before Barnstorm Birmingham on Wednesday and the Giants-Cardinals game on Thursday. During the National League game, the plaque will be on view at various times through the end of the seventh inning, and it also will be on display at the Friends of Rickwood Museum.
The plaque is among the attractions associated with the Rickwood Field Fan Plaza, which will be available to those with tickets for the Montgomery Biscuits-Birmingham Barons game on Tuesday, Barnstorm Birmingham on Wednesday or the Giants-Cardinals game on Thursday.
Information, photographs and memorabilia about the Negro Leagues and their players will be on display, with many of the artifacts on loan from Friends of Rickwood and the Negro Southern League Museum. Fans entering the Rickwood gates will step into the era of the Negro Leagues with vintage advertising and original ticket booths, souvenir stands and concession stands. The concession stands will feature menu boards reflecting the look of Rickwood Field in the 1940s.
The original home and visitors clubhouses will be open for tours, and a 1947 tour bus, like barnstorming Negro Leagues teams would have used, will be on display.
The Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory will have its mobile museum at Rickwood Field, giving fans the opportunity to hold the bat models preferred by Mays, Hank Aaron and other baseball stars and watch bat-making demonstrations.
Fans will enter the Rickwood Field Fan Plaza through a main gate that brings them directly into the experience.
Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.
