This is an opinion column.

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Willie Mays played the game of baseball with fearless joy and graceful daring. He imbued those gifts upon American culture and in so doing helped change the country for the better through the power of sports.

Now the eyes of the world turn to where it all started for Mays, Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama.

Mays died on Tuesday, aged 93 years old, just as Major League Baseball was preparing to honor his greatness with a game at Rickwood between Mays’ San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals. The fateful timing is extraordinary if not divine.

Mays’ death, two days before the game, now transforms the event into a national celebration of his courageous brilliance and a memorial to his remarkable life.

They’ve been preparing Rickwood Field for this game since last October. The entire field is brand new. The streets surrounding the park have been shut down all week. Baseball great Barry Bonds, Mays’ godson, was scheduled to be in town on Wednesday for a celebrity softball game along with such luminaries as Derek Jeter, David Ortiz, Alex Rodriguez and Jimmy Rollins. The National Baseball Hall of Fame even shipped in Mays’ plaque from Cooperstown.

Famed Rickwood Field, the oldest ballpark in America, will now be a shrine to the great William Howard Mays, Jr., in the wake of his death.

I have to be completely honest. This is all difficult for me to process, and so much so that I found this column tough to write. The “Say Hey Kid” is gone just when Birmingham and baseball were coming together thanks to Mays’ enduring spirit and his immortal influence upon the game.

I fought back tears searching for the right words to express the power of this moment for the city, for the state, for America and for the game of baseball that Mays was born to play.

On Wednesday at 3 p.m., city leaders and dignitaries from Major League Baseball were scheduled to unveil an enormous, five-story mural of Mays in downtown Birmingham. The artwork now stands as a towering tribute to Mays’ influence and mystique.

Baseball is a game passed down from fathers to sons. Mays was taught the game of baseball by his father, “Cat” Mays, who worked in a steel mill in Fairfield, Alabama. Willie Mays was from Factory Town, U.S.A. Father and son played in Birmingham’s Industrial League together before 17-year-old Willie became a full-time professional with the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948.

Mays emulated Jackson Robinson, who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947. With Mays in the outfield, the Birmingham Black Barons won the Negro American League in 1948 and played in the final Negro League World Series. Mays remained lifelong friends with many of the players on that team, including Rev. Bill Greason, who at 99 years old is scheduled to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before Thursday’s big game at Rickwood.

Mays debuted for the New York Giants as a 20-year-old in 1951 and immediately helped carry the team to the World Series. “Say Hey” Willie Mays could do it all on the baseball field, but his larger-than-life persona was more than even the sum of five-tool talent. He was a showman of the highest order.

Mays proudly brought the flair of the Negro Leagues to Major League Baseball and it changed the world.

Mays would wear his hat a size too small so it would fly off as he rounded the bases or tracked down a ball in the outfield. Mays perfected his famous basket catch while serving for the U.S. Army during the Korean War. When he returned from the war, he became a national sensation just as television screens were filling up American homes. Back in Birmingham, Jim Crow-era Alabama watched on as its native son used the National Pastime to tilt the course of American history towards togetherness.

Mays played the game with pure joy, and that was his greatest gift of all. It was the hands that made it all possible.

What made Mays the greatest baseball player in the history of the game? Above all, I believe it was his hands. They were oversized and freakishly strong. I’m told that even into his 90s, Mays could squeeze someone’s hand and make their knees buckle. Those hands molded American sports for generations.

As fate would have it, I spoke at length with the son of Willie Mays on the eve of his father’s death.

Michael Mays is his father’s son and he loves Birmingham. He was thrilled to be back in the city for Major League Baseball’s tribute to the Negro Leagues. Michael Mays returned to the same phrase again and again during our chat. He kept saying how this week’s events are a “full-circle moment” for his family, Major League Baseball and the city of Birmingham.

His father’s death was unexpected. Mays had a rehab session for a recently replaced hip on Monday, according to his son.

“He’s still a beast,” Michael Mays said to me. That was Monday afternoon. Less than 24 hours later, Willie Mays was gone.

His beautiful spirit remains, and this week it soars over his hometown and out across the world.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team.”