This is an opinion column.

Connected. Bob Costas is connected to baseball, he often says. Connected like a solid hit up the middle. Connected as much as any fan of any age. Connected to its rhythm. Connected to its peaks and flaws.

Yet most of all, the broadcaster who’ likely called more games in more sports than any peer, is connected to baseball’s history—to its peaks and flaws.

It’s been too many years, too many decades, for Costas to exactly recall when he visited Rickwood Field in west Birmingham. America’s oldest ballpark wasn’t in very good shape back then. Abandoned by the Barons in 1987, it was long past its peak, past its glory seasons as the Negro League Black Barons’ home. As a host to the game’s biggest stars.

Its very biggest—Negro and white.

Rickwood was in danger of falling to its flaws on the day Costas strode through. Yet he saw past them, saw past its condition, and inhaled its past.

I reached out to Costas a couple of days after Major League Baseball confirmed it will bring the St. Louis Cardinals—Costas’ “home” team, and the team of my youth—and San Francisco Giants (another fave; can’t a kid root for more than one?) to Rickwood next June for a regular-season game honoring the Negro Leagues and Willie Mays.

The “Say Hey” kid was just a kid when he patrolled the centerfield grass for the Black Barons at Rickwood, a deep, deep shot from where the then-teenager was born and raised in Fairfield, Alabama. Before he became one of the greatest to ever play the game. Before now as he, at 92, stands as baseball’s greatest living player.

“I had a sense of baseball history, a sense of Negro League history,” Costas recalled. “I had read Only the Ball was White. This was before Ken Burns’ [Baseball miniseries] and before the Negro League Museum [in Kansas City, Mo.) was built, but I had a sense of it. And I knew [Ernie] Banks and [Hank] Aaron and Mays played in the Negro Leagues and at Rickwood. So, I had a sense that this was an important part of baseball history, but that a lot of that history was legend and myth as much as documented fact.”

(Before you get caught up on “myth”, thinking “false”, digest the main definition of the word: “A traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people, or explaining some natural or social phenomenon….”)

MLB quickly made it clear this not a relocated “Field of Dreams” game (that’s all yours Iowa), but an homage to the men—to the Black men too long barred from the game. To the Black men who truly dreamed.

RELATED: Rickwood is true field of dreams, so what should MLB Cardinals-Giants game be called?

“I think it’s a great idea,” Costas said. “The Field of Dreams game in Iowa is terrific, and they could return there. But you don’t want that every year because then there’s a certain sameness to it, it loses its special meaning—whereas Rickwood is just perfect. It’s historic.”

“And I know [Fox] will produce this thing with all kinds of flashbacks to Satchel Paige and Hank and Willie and everybody, including Babe Ruth, anybody who ever played there,” he said. “Even in the modern era, baseball fans more so than other sports respond to the history of it. In this case, that history is less well known to a larger audience than, like, the history of Yankee Stadium.”

Which is gone, by the way. ’The House That Ruth Built’ was rubbled in 2010. Rickwood, girded and sturdied since Costas’ visit, still stands.

He believes the existence of the very place where so many baseball legends—put a pin in that world, which I used during our conversation—played will be a “revelation to most casual fans.”

“You mentioned the word legend,” Costas said. “That’s a word I think is tossed around too liberally. Every player in any sport who is great Is not automatically legendary. Legend attaches itself more accurately to Satchel Paige than it does to Shohei Othani because we see everything Shohei Othani does, which is, in one sense, a blessing. But if you’re talking about romance and myth and legend that’s what Rickwood field houses.”

The legend of the place will undoubtedly be revealed to millions. Nearly six million television viewers (5.87 million viewers on FOX, 5.90M including Fox Deportes) watched the inaugural Field of Dreams game between the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox in 2021, by far the most viewers for an MLB regular season game since 2005. The average rating that night exceeded all but one of the prior season’s postseason games prior to the World Series.

Kevin Costner came out, Costas recalled. “I’m hoping Willie can make the trip next year. Obviously, baseball would take care of him in any way that’s necessary to make it comfortable for him to be there. But that would be a tremendous touch.”

I asked Costas, who interviewed Mays and told me he’s “definitely” coming to Birmingham for the game, how he’d dub it. For a bit, the man of unbound eloquence, in words, phrases, and descriptions, was stumped as if stunted by a wicked curve when expecting a fastball.

“Still mulling…”, he texted at one juncture.

Then finally: “I think it should be something connected to the Negro Leagues,” he texted. “But if it’s the Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell etc. Game, it slights those not named. The only exception would be the Buck O’Neil Game because Buck is an overall symbol of the league, and was a modern-day ambassador for it. No one would infer baseball was elevating Buck above better players. They would see him as a keeper of the game.”

“I like it,” I responded. “Here’s my thinking…”

I shared that many of the ideas shared by readers in response to my call out for suggestions centered, no surprise, on Mays. The Willie Mays Game. The Say Hey Classic.

All good. All honorable. “Mays is certainly due his flowers,” I told Costas. Though singling him out, in my view “didn’t give due to his peers, many of whom toiled in the Negro Leagues a lot longer before being given an opportunity to play in the majors. If at all.”

So call it, I wrote, “The Rickwood Legends Game.”

“I like,” Costas returned. “Simple and encompasses everything. Of course, Willie has to be there.”

Which would be—just perfect.

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