The City of Birmingham and Major League Baseball spent millions of dollars to restore and improve Rickwood Field, America’s oldest professional ballpark, and Thursday’s MLB at Rickwood Field Tribute to the Negro Leagues may have been the stadium’s greatest moment.

The ballpark where Willie Mays, Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb and baseball’s other greatest players of all time once played was alive again with the presence of the greatest living players – Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols, Ken Griffey Jr., Reggie Jackson and Derek Jeter were just a few of the all-time greats walking on the field and in the stands at Rickwood Field on Thursday night.

Demons of past hardship from racial segregation and hatred were acknowledged and exorcised.

“It was hard coming back here,” Reggie Jackson noted in a pre-game show in which he frankly told of his encounters with racism when he played for the Birmingham A’s at Rickwood in the 1960′s and traveling to cities in the South where he was denied service at hotels and restaurants. A’s owner Charlie Finley, manager John McNamara and teammates including Joe Rudi often led team walkouts of places that refused to serve the team’s star Black player.

Mays was honored in legendary fashion, two days after his death. The Negro Leagues got long overdue recognition. Negro League players were honored, including the Rev. Bill Greason, 99, who fought as a Marine in Iwo Jima during World War II, played with Mays on the Birmingham Black Barons and had a short stint as the first Black player with the St. Louis Cardinals before his distinguished career as a pastor in Birmingham.

Grammy Award-winning singer Jon Batiste wowed the crowd with a tour de force period musical piece that featured him singing, playing guitar, piano, saxophone and Melodica while surrounded by dancers doing the Lindy Hop around home plate. Batiste introduced the Negro League players, led by Greason, escorted by Cardinals coach and former All-Star Willie McGee.

“I’m just so happy to see the players from the Negro Leagues get honored the way they have today,” said Masyn Winn, the rookie starting shortstop for St. Louis. “I’m sad it took this long, but I’m so happy for them. It’s incredible.”

The Cardinals beat the Giants 6-5 in a real Major League game in the historic stadium that counted in the standings. The umpiring crew was the first all-Black crew in Major League history.

“Major League Baseball has done this well,” said former Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz, who was a commentator on the national Fox broadcast.

Winn and other current players met and talked with former Negro Leagues players. “I grew up learning about the Black history in baseball,” Winn said. “To be here today, to be playing on this field is an honor, and to be around those guys, just have a conversation with them, is incredible.”

The game had an aura of cultural significance that rose above baseball, as has happened often in the history of America’s pastime, as when Lou Gehrig said at Yankee Stadium, “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth,” and when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

“Today feels like it’s a little bit bigger than baseball; it feels like a lot of the country is watching this,” said Winn, one of two Black players, along with Victor Scott II, who played for the Cardinals in Thursday’s game. “Everybody’s hurt by Willie’s loss.”

The Negro Leagues tribute happened on the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, with the beams of a beautiful sunset beaming through the repaired historic wooden louvres, and a full moon rising over the left field scoreboard as the game progressed.

Now people want to know: What can Birmingham do next? What can Rickwood do for an encore?

“It’s too early to say what all is next, but I do know there’s lots of conversations about what the future holds for Rickwood,” City of Birmingham spokesman Rick Journey said.

It will be hard to top that, but Rickwood is now ready. The city will pursue all avenues to make it happen again, Journey said.

“I won’t jump ahead of it, but I know the mayor indicated last night he would love to see MLB come back and they will talk to MLB and do everything (to get more games),” Journey said. “Friends of Rickwood are aggressively promoting it and we are aggressively promoting Rickwood.”

At the very least, the Barons and Biscuits game at Rickwood Field on Tuesday may mark the permanent return of that annual event, which had been a featured Rickwood game every year until the field fell into disrepair and below Major League Baseball standards when MLB took over management of the minor leagues. Rickwood Field hosted the Rickwood Classic as an annual event from 1988 through 2019.

“Rickwood was the star of the show,” Journey said. “I think the whole country realized last night this crown jewel that Birmingham, Alabama offers to baseball fans and non-baseball fans alike around the country.”