Reggie Jackson reminds us that MLB’s Rickwood Field game isn’t a kumbaya moment

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — By the time the game finally came around, it seemed like baseball was the last thing on anyone’s mind. An intensely emotional week in the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama, concluded with a reasonably average ballgame in terms of actual balls, strikes, hits and runs, but there’s no doubt about it that every player who suited up for this matchup — along with every person who walked through the walls of Rickwood Field — left that park a different person from the one who arrived.

The proverbial food at this baseball repast provided the solemn comfort needed, considering.

The St. Louis Cardinals, playing as the St. Louis Stars of the Negro National League, beat the San Francisco Giants, playing as the San Francisco Sea Lions of the West Coast Negro Baseball League, by a score of 6-5 in a game that nearly saw the Cards drop their third straight in walk-off fashion. That didn’t happen, but the result of the game paled in comparison to the weight of everything that we were forced to reckon with: the death of Giants legend Willie Mays.

“Obviously devastating news. This event that record was really developed with Willie in mind,” MLB chief baseball development officer Tony Reagins said during the game Thursday night. “I think what this event turned into was a celebration of Willie’s life. And I think we’re going to try to honor him in a way that hopefully his family is proud of. And Willie, you know, was 17 years old when he was here. And to have that backdrop, to have current major leaguers playing at Rickwood is exciting, but obviously this is bittersweet not having him here.”

Was this event and week a somewhat spiritual bookend to Mays’ life, in terms of things beginning and ending in Birmingham? Sure, but this was not some kumbaya moment for the most part. Yeah, it’s great to recognize the efforts on the field of players who paved the way for others, but the truth is that for a lot of these guys, the event opened wounds to the most traumatizing experiences of their lives.

“Coming back here is not easy. The racism when I played here, the difficulty of going through different places where we traveled,” Reggie Jackson said live on FOX when asked by Alex Rodriguez about his feelings of returning to Rickwood Field. Jackson played for the Birmingham A’s in 1967, the Kansas City/Oakland Athletics’ AA affiliate. “Fortunately, I had a manager and I had players on the team that helped me get through it, but I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.

“I said, you know, I would never want to do it again. I walked into restaurants and they would point at me and say, ‘the n—-er can’t eat here.’ I would go to a hotel and they say, ‘the n—er can’t stay here.’ We went to [then-Athletics owner and Ensley, Alabama, native] Charlie Finley’s country club for a welcome home dinner. And they pointed me out with the N-word. ‘He can’t come in here.’ Finley marched the whole team out.”

Let’s just stop and remind ourselves of something: The racism is and was the problem. The system of white supremacy that was coded into law, never mind the collective conscious, robbed us of not only the best entertainment we could have possibly had in terms of an integrated game, but also the humanity of the individuals involved.

The truth is that I saw Jackson randomly when he got to town. We were in the same hotel and I was in the lobby having a nightcap when the Hall of Famer rolled in. I would say we’re familiar with each other, but I thought back to the time he called me over at batting practice during the World Series once in Houston to talk about then-Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker, Black man to Black man. It was honestly an honor I’ll never forget.

But this night he seemed a bit flustered, which I just chalked up to travel weariness, a thing many Americans know well. But after his appearance at the Southern Negro League Museum on Thursday, and his moment during Fox Sports’ pregame show, it’s easy to understand that he had basically landed back in the hell that created the persona that many know now.

At the luncheon held Thursday morning to honor the families of former Negro Leagues players, he let it out. A question was asked about one of his best memories from Alabama, and he told a story about the legendary Alabama football coach Bear Bryant, who told him in an apparent moment of congeniality, that the Crimson Tide needed more N-words like him at running back to compete with the best. Think about that. That was a good​ memory, apparently.

The story of that football team’s “journey” to integration has its own complicated history, but basically, Bryant, the man with the houndstooth hat, had to take a couple of vicious beatdowns from teams with Black players before they realized that you can’t win the SEC with 22 Forrest Gumps running around your field.

“Fortunately, I had a manager Johnny McNamara that said if I couldn’t eat in the place nobody would eat. We’d get food to travel,” Jackson said. “Had it not been for Rollie Fingers, Johnny McNamara, Dave Duncan, Joe and Sharon Rudi … I slept on their couch, three, four nights a week for about a month and a half. Finally, they were threatened that they would burn our apartment complex down unless I got out. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

“The year I came here. Bull Connor was the sheriff the year before and they took minor league baseball outta here, because in 1963, the Klan murdered four Black girls […] at a church here and never got indicted. … Life magazine did a story on them [the Klan] like they were being honored. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

Jackson did not play in the Negro Leagues. But he played in Alabama. And one last time, he knocked it out of the park.

There is simply no way to disconnect the visceral feeling of racism in the American South as a Black person walking around every day. Does it mean that people in hoods are burning crosses on our porches these days? No, but it’s not like this is ancient history. A Hall of Famer on live television dropping hard R’s and referring to lynching in the broadcast? Welcome to Birmingham.

“Had it not been for my white friends, had it not been for a white manager and Rudy, Fingers and Duncan and Lee Meyers? I would have never made it,” Jackson said. “I was too physically violent. I was ready to physically fight someone. I’d have gotten killed here because I would have beat someone’s a–. And you’d have saw me in an oak tree somewhere.” Jackson finished with the kind of laugh that only Black men of a certain age and a certain experience and a certain bravery can emit out loud.

On the night, things were lovely on the surface. Mays’ son Michael made it back to the park to open the proceedings, the bands played on, etc. The game went fine, and the throwback to 1950s-style black-and-white footage was very cool from a visual standpoint, reminding us of the first American sports highlight, Mays with the catch in center field. But that didn’t happen in Alabama. Not by many miles. It was in New York, which Michael Mays calls home.

“Stand to your feet,” he said to the crowd with his authoritative Harlem accent. “Let him hear you, he’s listening.”

He was referring to the spirit of his father up above, a touching moment for a man who’s had a week of mental toll the likes of which no one else can imagine.

There are more players and people than I care to admit who attended these functions and put on a smiling face because the recognition gave them a sense of gratification they deserved. But it doesn’t change the lives they lived, the stories they heard as children or the abuse they endured both physically and psychologically.

MLB learned a lesson this week that I’m not sure anyone was prepared for. The game was never going to fix anything and still hasn’t. There were only two Black players on the field last night. And if you want to have a conversation about the reality of the world in and around the game both then and now?

On a sweltering June night, Mr. October reminded us: Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.