This is an opinion column.

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Rick Zapp is the son of former Birmingham Black Barons outfielder Jim Zapp.

Rick reached out to me about his father, who played for the 1948 Black Barons with Willie Mays. Jim was one of Mays’ first friends in pro ball. They split time in left field that season. With Major League Baseball’s game at Rickwood Field approaching, Rick wanted me to know about his dad and how much playing for the Black Barons meant to his father’s life. It was an honor to learn so much about the 1948 Black Barons from the child of a player.

“He told me that his time with the Barons was the culmination of his career,” Zapp said of his late father. “They went into cities and they were just well known. People knew that the Barons were in town.”

Looking back, it can be argued that the 1948 Black Barons were one of the most significant teams in the history of Black baseball. Not only did player-manager Piper Davis give Mays his big break that season, but majestic Rickwood Field was the site of the final game of the last Negro League World Series.

The crescendo of Zapp’s career was the overture of Mays’ storied time in pro ball. They only played one season together, but they were friends for a lifetime.

Here’s how you know the Black Barons meant the world to Mays. He remained close with not only members of that 1948 team, but also their children. Take Rick Zapp. A retired chief petty officer in the Navy, Zapp once phoned Mays after returning from deployment overseas and was invited to spring training.

“I had been stationed in Italy and when I got back I had a fix for baseball,” Zapp said. “[Mays] said come on down here. Here’s the address to the house. We’ll take care of you. I hung up the phone and my wife said, ‘You can just pick up the phone and call Willie Mays?’”

Rick Zapp grew up knowing Mays because the 1948 Black Barons kept in touch with each other.

“He was just another one of the guys,” Zapp said. “Another one of the ball players.”

Another story. Rick Zapp grew up in Texas after his father’s career. Whenever the Giants were in Houston, the Zapps would pick Mays up at the team hotel, accompany the Hall of Famer to the game and then drive Mays back to the team hotel. Mays always had two connecting rooms when he was on the road. During one visit, Mays asked young Rick Zapp to go in the other room. Rick later asked his father why he had to leave the conversation.

“He said that they were cursing and Willie didn’t want to us to hear him cursing,” Zapp said. “That was how he was. I’ve known him since I was a kid.”

The Zapp family is still in touch with Mays to this day. The impact that the 1948 Black Barons had on Mays’ career can’t be overstated. It shaped who he was as a ball player and a person.

Mays’ San Francisco Giants are playing the St. Louis Cardinals on June 20 at Rickwood Field in a game being called MLB at Rickwood: A tribute to the Negro Leagues. Simply put, it’s going to be one of the biggest sporting events in the history of Birmingham. Centered around Juneteenth, the game is growing into a marquee event for Major League Baseball.

I’ve enjoyed learning about players like Zapp in the build up to the game. Zapp had a curious career as a ball player. Not only did he share left field with Mays in 1948, but Zapp also played a significant role in integrating the game that has gone under-appreciated.

Jackie Robinson broke the MLB color barrier in 1947. The most respected player on the Brooklyn Dodgers during that era was Pee Wee Reese. It was Reese who refused to sign a team-wide petition among white players objecting to Robison’s inclusion on the team. Reese publicly befriended Robinson and famously said that Robinson deserved to be on the team.

Historical accounts of 1947 note that Reese had never played with a Black player before Robinson. That’s not entirely true. Reese shared a field with Jim Zapp while serving in the Navy during WWII. Both players were stationed in Hawaii in 1943. Zapp played for the integrated Aiea Naval Barracks team and Reese played for the Aiea Hospital team. Zapp’s team won back-to-back armed service titles in 1943 and 1944.

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Aiea Barracks had a white team and a Black team in 1943. Zapp, who was 18 years old, integrated the white team along with another Black player, first-baseman Andy Ashford. Baseball’s color barrier came down during the war and that legacy of integration aided Robinson’s historic season in 1947.

Amazingly, Zapp had never played organized baseball before that first year in the Navy. He had only played stick ball in Nashville as a child. That’s how naturally gifted he was at the game. History always said that Jim Zapp never played in the Majors. That history was wrong. The 1948 Birmingham Black Barons were a major-league team, and Zapp would later receive a pension from Major League Baseball for his time in the Negro Leagues.

Jim Zapp passed away on Sept.30, 2016, at the age of 92. He was a classic slugger at the plate. It was Zapp who hit a clutch ninth-inning home run that helped the Barons win the Negro American League pennant and advance to the final Negro League World Series. Zapp had a wonderful career and he deserves to be remembered for his contributions to the history of Black baseball.

After exchanging emails, Rick Zapp and I spoke over the phone for about an hour. I took away something profound in addition to the memories of historic Negro League baseball players. What hit me like a heavy weight in my chest during our chat was the deep sense of pride that surviving families of Negro League players have for the careers of their fathers. Fans of Rickwood Field carry that pride into the future, and the beautiful game of baseball and all of its grand history endures.

SOUND OFF

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Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of the signature book about Nick Saban’s reign at Alabama, “We Want Bama”.