As part of Major League Baseball’s upcoming event at Rickwood Field, AL.com and The Birmingham News will be producing weekly stories that showcase the history of Rickwood Field, and history of baseball in the state of Alabama.

“Rickwood: The legacy of America’s oldest ballpark” takes a deep dive into stories from the Negro Leagues to MLB icons playing at the historic venue, and how things are progressing as “MLB at Rickwood Field” takes place on June 20, 2024, between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals.

Birmingham’s Bill Greason is a living, breathing museum, not just of baseball history, but of so much more.

At 99 years old, Greason is the second-oldest living former Major League Baseball player, and is one of just two remaining players from the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons championship team. He also served as a United States Marine during World War II, and had a front row seat for the civil rights unrest in his adopted hometown during the 1960s.

The longtime — and still active — pastor at Bethel Baptist Church in the West End area of Birmingham, Greason has been a busy man lately. With the MLB at Rickwood Field game between the Cardinals and San Francisco Giants set to take place next week, he’s given numerous interviews about his life and baseball career, including his relationship with a certain famous former teammate, Willie Mays.

“It’s a rarity,” Greason said of the upcoming MLB game at Rickwood. “Nothing like that has happened that I remember, where you had the people who have played out there to still be around. Only two of us who were there are still around.”

Mays was a 17-year-old junior at Fairfield Industrial High School and Greason a 23-year-old war veteran when they teamed up with the 1948 Black Barons, champions of the Negro American League. Birmingham lost the Negro League World Series that year to the Homestead Grays, with Greason pitching a complete game and Mays driving in the winning run in Game 3, the Black Barons’ only victory in the series.

Managed by Winfield Welch and later by Birmingham baseball legend Lorenzo “Piper” Davis, the Black Barons won three Negro American League pennants during their 1940s heyday. They were the “biggest thing in town” for a Black community that didn’t have many opportunities for entertainment during the height of segregation, Greason said.

“Oh, it was great,” said Greason, who earned $500 month with the Black Barons. “We could play. We had the talent. God gifted us to be able to have the talent to play ball. It was a blessing, because segregation was way up there. We didn’t worry about that. Whenever we played the Homestead Grays, Kansas City Monarchs and all of those guys, we had something to offer.

“I wasn’t too bad a pitcher. We just wanted to play to prove that we could play in the majors.”

Mays, of course, went on to be one of baseball’s all-time greats with the New York and San Francisco Giants in a major-league career that spanned from 1951-73. After leaving the Black Barons, Greason mostly pitched in the minor leagues or in Latin America, including for a three-game stint with the Cardinals in 1954.

But the two are inextricably linked, not just because of their time together in Birmingham, but because of their longevity. At 93, Mays is the oldest-living Baseball Hall-of-Famer.

“He was an unusual ball player — talented, gifted,” Greason said. “He had everything that you would need to play professional baseball. And we became good friends. I hear from him every now and then. I hear from his secretary, Rene (Anderson). And we stay in touch. He’s not as — what’s the word? — agile as he used to be. I’ve been blessed to have played with him. And we played together in Puerto Rico also.”

Greason grew up in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr. (four years younger than Greason) lived across the street. He said no one ever taught him how to play baseball, but that his ability to throw was a “gift God gave me.”

At age 18 in 1943, Greason entered the Marine Corps, where he was part of the all-Black 66th Supply Platoon in the Pacific Theater of World War II. His unit was called into action in early 1945 at Iwo Jima, one of the bloodiest battles of the war, with more than 6,000 Americans and more than 17,000 Japanese killed over the course of five weeks.

“I was blessed, because I was able to walk off rather than being brought off,” Greason said. “We had quite a few fellows that are still (buried) there. … It was five miles long, three miles wide, with a dead volcano on the end. You could dig, but that volcano ash would fall right back in there. Two of my best friends were killed there.

“War doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t pick out certain folks to take out. If you were in a position on a battlefield as I was, you’re just thankful to see another day. Don’t worry, because you don’t know which bullet your name is on. … I prayed that God would take care of me.”

After returning home from the war, Greason began playing semi-pro football for the Atlanta All-Stars, where he caught the attention of Atlanta Black Crackers manager Sammie Haynes. Haynes recommended Greason to the Nashville Black Vols, where he played a season before moving on to the Asheville Blues.

Greason pitched that spring against the Black Barons, impressing Davis enough that he eventually acquired the young right-hander and brought him to Birmingham. In addition to winning a championship on the field, Greason also met his future wife, Willie Otis Underwood, one Sunday at 16th Street Baptist Church. The two were married in 1953 and stayed together until her death in 2018.

Possessing a blazing fastball and a devastating “drop” curve, Greason was an All-Star with the Black Barons in 1949 and enjoyed another fine season with the team in 1950 before being recalled to the Marines during the Korean War (he did not serve overseas that time). Greason later pitched in Mexico, Cuba and again in Birmingham before signing with the Double-A Oklahoma City Indians of the Texas League in 1952. He was the first Black player on a previous all-white team in the state of Oklahoma and was later elected to the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame.

Greason’s success in the Texas League — he went 9-1 with a 2.14 ERA in 1952 — caught the attention of the white major leagues. Both the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees bid for him, but Oklahoma City’s manager wouldn’t budge off a $100,000 price tag for Greason’s contract. After an arm injury led to a less-successful season in 1953, his contract was sold for $25,000 to the St. Louis Cardinals, who assigned him to the Triple-A Columbus (Ohio) Redbirds.

The Cardinals were the Southern-most National or American League city at the time and had a reputation for being hostile to African Americans. Outfielder/first baseman Tom Alston became the franchise’s first Black player in April 1954, with Greason called up to the Cardinals a few weeks later.

The environment was not a welcoming one for Greason, who said he could rarely find anyone to even play catch with him.

“At the time, segregation was way up,” Greason said. “And none of the players wanted to be called an ‘n- lover.’ And so most of the time when we’d go to the field, I’d run, sit around, try to keep myself in shape. Didn’t have much association with (other players). I don’t remember hardly any of the Cardinals that came around then.”

(Of Alston, who played in 91 games with the Cardinals over four seasons, Greason said, “We visited, but he was a little bit before me. He suffered as I did.”)

Greason spent about a month total with the big-league Cardinals but got into only three games. He started twice and worked in relief once, allowing six earned runs on eight hits with four walks and two strikeouts in four innings.

The St. Louis manager that season was Eddie Stanky, a former big-league second baseman who was born in Pennsylvania but lived most of his adult life in Alabama. Stanky had a reputation for being especially volatile and was rumored to have been vocally opposed to Jackie Robinson joining the Dodgers when both played in Brooklyn in 1947.

“He had me out pitching batting practice one night,” Greason said. “… I wasn’t getting the ball over the plate. He came out and said, ‘Get the damn ball over the plate!’ I said, ‘What the hell you think I’m trying to do? You think I got a string on this damn ball?’ He was shocked. Being from Alabama, a Black talking like that to a white man? He turned and walked away.

“It wasn’t long after that I was back at Triple-A ball.”

Greason finished the 1954 season at Columbus and spent the 1955-59 seasons in the Cardinals’ minor-league system with the Double-A Houston Buffaloes and the Rochester Red Wings. He won 17 games at Houston in 1955 and posted a 3.43 ERA at Rochester in 1957.

But perhaps the pinnacle of Greason’s baseball career came after the 1954 season, when he played winter ball in Puerto Rico with the Santurce Cangrejeros (Spanish for “Crabbers”). Playing again with fellow former Black Barons Mays and Artie Wilson, as well as big-league stars Roberto Clemente and Sam Jones, Greason helped Santurce to the Puerto Rican League championship and a victory in the Caribbean Series over teams from Cuba, Venezuela and Panama.

Greason retired from professional baseball at age 35 after the 1959 season and returned to Birmingham, where he continued to play with sandlot teams for several more years. He worked at the Pizitz Department Store on 2nd Avenue North for a time, but soon felt called to the ministry.

Greason graduated from Birmingham’s Easonian Baptist Bible College, and later did post-graduate work at Samford University. He was for many years a member of (and sometimes preacher at) 16th Street Baptist Church, though he was not present on the day of the infamous 1963 bombing, having gone to Tuscaloosa that morning to do outreach work.

Greason became pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in 1971 (the church moved to its current location in Berney Points in 1993). More than 50 years later, he remains senior pastor and continues to feel validated in his decision to devote his life to the church.

“My first ministry salary was $20 a week,” Greason said. “I never asked for any money in the church. I give half of my salary; I give half of it back.

I haven’t been naked. I haven’t been hungry. I still have a little sense.”

Greason looks forward to turning 100 on Sept. 3, which would make him one of fewer than 30 former major-leaguers in history to reach that milestone. Art Schallock, a pitcher with the New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles in the early 1950s, turned 100 this past April.

Though one of his brothers also reached his 90s, Greason credits his longevity to “Living with the Lord.”

“He’s the one who lives after you,” Greason said. “He had to have a special reason for me to be alive. I never thought I’d live this long. I’ve been very blessed.”

Creg Stephenson has worked for AL.com since 2010 and has written about sports for a variety of publications since 1994. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at @CregStephenson.