Jabreil Weir is the head groundskeeper at Rickwood Field. That’s a big job these days. How he found himself in the middle of Major League Baseball’s partnership with Birmingham, Alabama, is a great story.

Weir was working for a local landscaping company back in 2018. He was cutting grass around town and looking for a better job. Through a series of local connections, Weir was hired by the Friends of Rickwood to preserve and maintain the grounds at the oldest ballpark in America. Now Weir is helping MLB prepare Rickwood’s playing surface for an official game between the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants.

“It kinda brings tears to me because it gets tough at times, but seeing this … it’s all worth it,” said Weir, who is 27. “When they told me it was actually happening, I almost cried because I was so excited.”

Rickwood is a time portal into our past and now it’s a front door into Birmingham’s future. The Cardinals are playing the Giants at Rickwood Field on June 20, 2024. It’s not an exhibition. It’s an official regular-season game that will celebrate the history of Black baseball in America. The game is being called “MLB at Rickwood Field: A Tribute to the Negro Leagues.”

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Nationally televised by Fox, the game is going to be a huge win for the game of baseball and for Birmingham. This is the type of event that can alter the trajectory of a city. A positive spotlight is going to be on Birmingham like never before, and when they play that national anthem before the game it’s a guarantee that tears will be flowing.

And all those misty eyes will be celebrating Weir’s hard work.

Weir went to high school at Clay-Chalkville. “Go Cougs,” he said while I was interviewing him last week during MLB’s unveiling of the game’s official name. He didn’t play baseball in high school and he didn’t know a whole lot about baseball fields when he was hired. He just wanted a chance to prove himself. I’d say that Weir is making the most of it.

Weir has known about the MLB game at Rickwood for over a year. How did he keep it a secret? Funny thing about that. Weir said he didn’t even try.

“People didn’t believe me when I was telling them anyway,” Weir said with a laugh.

Rickwood Field is a national treasure. It took pride in Birmingham by the Friends of Rickwood to save it and now look at the possibilities of all that dedication. There are scores of amazing stories about baseball at Rickwood Field, but maybe the most important lesson of all is how that field refused to die. It wasn’t thanks to a federal grant or city decree. It was a handful of guys getting together in a coffee shop one morning over 20 years ago and endeavoring to make a difference.

Friends of Rickwood is the name of the non-profit that resurrected Rickwood from ruin back when no one else had time to care about an old ballpark on 3rd Avenue North. Thousands and thousands of people abandoned Birmingham for decades. Look what happens when people take pride in where they live and do something about it.

The Friends of Rickwood cared and so now its legacy is something far greater than anyone could have imagined.

“Rickwood is where sports became more than entertainment,” Birmingham major Randall Woodfin said. “It was a source of empowerment. And that’s what this game represents next year. Progress, power and my favorite, pride. The city has exemplified those terms.”

If it doesn’t give you chills that Major League Baseball is coming to Rickwood to honor the Negro Leagues, then you might want to evaluate your soul as an American sports fan. Considering the amount of work that’s about to go into Birmingham’s historic ballpark, I’m hoping that a Negro Leagues tribute game can be played at Rickwood every year.

Construction is scheduled to begin on Rickwood Field in the third week of October. Major renovations are in the works to prepare the ballpark for next June. The field needs to be rated for Major League Baseball. For that to happen, everything is getting ripped up so that a modern drainage system can be installed.

The entire playing surface is being shifted five feet to the left and the fences are being extended by 10 feet. The new walls will be outfitted with padding that will feature screen prints of all the classic advertisements that give Rickwood its timeless charm. The old, manual scoreboard will be featured along the new wall and, according to an artist’s rendering of the revamped field, a new addition will be a large videoboard behind right-centerfield.

Rickwood Field seats about 11,000 fans. It’s unclear what the stadium’s new capacity will be after the renovations, but I’m told that between 800-900 seats are being removed to bring the stadium up to code. It’s my hope that more seats are added behind the outfield walls. The Savannah Bananas sell out Rickwood. MLB at Rickwood will be a destination game for people from all over the country.

In addition to physical changes to the grandstand for ADA standards, Rickwood’s classic dugouts are being extended two rows into the seats and stretched down the foul lines. After all these years, Rickwood is getting called up to the Big Show.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this game became Major League Baseball’s annual celebration of Juneteenth and turned Rickwood Field into a national tourist attraction? An idea like that has the potential to transform and rejuvenate the area around Rickwood Field.

And maybe, hopefully, if prayers are answered, MLB’s annual game at Rickwood Field could help reignite interest in baseball in the Black community. I know that Major League Baseball wanted to put a youth training facility at George Ward Park, but maybe that plan makes more sense for the area around Rickwood. A kid can dream.

Rickwood deserves the honor of an annual game, and the spirits of all who played on that field deserve to be celebrated again and again and again.

There are people in Birmingham who have dedicated large chunks of their lives to the preservation of Rickwood Field. God bless the Friends of Rickwood. MLB at Rickwood Field wouldn’t be possible without them because Rickwood would likely be forgotten history. The great ballparks that turned baseball into a national passion are mostly all gone. Wrigley Field in Chicago (debuted in 1914) and Fenway Park in Boston (1912) remain, but Rickwood is older than both of those iconic stages of swat (1910). Here’s a link to be an official member of Friends of Rickwood.

Birmingham residents Bill Cather and Tom Cosby are two of Rickwood Field’s coffee shop heroes. Clarence Watkins is another name that should never be forgotten. It was Cather who sent the name of a young landscaper to Watkins back about five years ago.

Watkins was the executive director of Friends of Rickwood at the time. He’s the person who hired Weir to cut the grass and save the field. They never stopped giving Rickwood a chance, and they’re making Birmingham proud.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama”, a book about togetherness, hope and rum. You can find him on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.