While Rickwood Field isn’t on the Major League Baseball schedule for the 2025 season, the Southern League will be back for a game at the nation’s oldest professional ballpark next year.

The Birmingham Barons and Rocket City Trash Pandas will square off on June 4 at Rickwood Field, the Southern League teams announced on Thursday.

In the 2024 season, the Barons played the Montgomery Biscuits at the Birmingham ballpark on June 18, two days before the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals squared off at Rickwood in a National League game.

The MLB contest was the crowning event of a week of activities under the banner “MLB at Rickwood: A Tribute to the Negro Leagues” that highlighted the significance of the black-baseball organizations in baseball’s history

After the Cardinals defeated the Giants 6-5 behind three hits (including a home run and a double) and three runs by former Enterprise High School and South Alabama standout Brendan Donovan, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said the big leagues would return to Rickwood, but he didn’t know when.

“We’re going to be back in Birmingham at some point,” Manfred said. “The timing is still up in the air. We haven’t really made a decision on that. …

“It’s a question of getting 162 games into 186 days. It’s a scheduling thing. But we managed to do it in London, and the player reaction to what’s going on here will make us take a good hard look at that going forward.”

For last year’s minor-league meeting at Rickwood, the Barons and Biscuits wore throwback uniforms in the styles of the Birmingham Black Barons and the Montgomery Grey Sox, former rivals in the Negro Southern League. The big-league teams had a similar theme, with the Cardinals wearing the uniforms of the St. Louis and the Giants attired as the San Francisco Sea Lions.

The minor-league game at Rickwood Field in 2025 again will feature specialty jerseys that salute the Negro Leagues.

The Birmingham Barons defeated the Montgomery Climbers 3-2 in a Southern Association game in the first contest at Rickwood Field on Aug. 18, 1910. The Barons remained tenants through the 1961 season.

The Black Barons played home games at Rickwood from their first season as members of the Negro Southern League in 1920 through the franchise’s demise in 1960.

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.