There’s no turning back. Not now. No turning back, Birmingham. No turning back to the days of doubt. The days of insecurity. The days of infighting. To the days of petty.

To the days when credit was more important than collaboration, when more folks battled over VIP seats than for those who could not afford seats.

To the days when Birmingham tripped over its own bruised and tired feet.

When its most effective enemy was in the mirror.

No turning back to those days. Not now.

Long before I arrived here a decade ago, there was a strong desire for Birmingham to be a “big league” city. To be home to a top-tier professional sports team—a National Football League team, dreamed most. Hard truth: Birmingham is not an NFL city. Not by the league’s criteria, and not even by demonstration.

Exhibit A: Piddling attendance for the three-peat USFL/UFL Birmingham Stallions. This season’s 10,255-per-game showing was fourth among eight teams, less than a third drawn by the league-leading Battlehawks in St. Louis, which was once an NFL city. And should be again.

No, we got it wrong.

Being a “big-league” city isn’t about being home to a big-league team, it’s about being big league.

It’s a mindset that pursues excellence over ego, collaboration over competition, people over petty, respect over the ridiculous.

Now, Major League Baseball has shown us what all that looks like.

Thursday evening, beneath a summer-perfect Southern sky, was all it could have been. All it should have been. MLB’s Salute to the Negro Leagues at Rickwood Field was a reverent bow to the game’s fractured past, an emotional homage to the men and women who played at the “highest caliber of professional baseball available to them,” as was written outside the ballpark.

It was what Willie would have wanted it to be.

It was seeing Negro Leaguers being escorted onto the field, each by a player from the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants—a sight that almost brought a tear to these aging eyes.

It was the culmination of a week when Birmingham saw what it was, what it is, and certainly what it can be. What it should be.

It was millions spent with local businesses, including A.G. Gaston Construction, which handled the massive renovations Rickwood needed. It was spreading its footprint to the Negro Southern League Museum and making a $500,000 donation from MLB and its players union to the Negro Leagues Family Alliance. It was expanding of benefits to Negro League Players.

It was donating a hydroponic farm to the A.G. Gaston Boys Club, which will provide food for children there and families in the surrounding neighborhood.

It was a night that was the Magic City Classic with everybody (wink) attending.

Now, there’s no turning back.

Five years ago, we were so messy MLB tossed us like a cranky ump. Gave us the thumb. Sent us to the showers. Birmingham was so bush league, MLB took its $10-million Youth Academy and went home.

Yet it gave the city a second chance—one that could have easily been deemed underserved.

But that mindset wouldn’t be big league.

“We’ve used this project as something that was about paying tribute to the Negro Leagues and didn’t carry any baggage from any previous conversations or dealings we had in the market,” Jeremiah Yolkut, MLB’s VP of Global Events told me earlier this week. “That’s similar in life. Regardless of what has taken place in the past, we had an opportunity to move forward with something we felt was really exciting, and nothing was going to stop that.”

Can’t go back. Not now.

Not after MLB—and the city—poured millions into a facility that languished for generations, that sat withering in a once-prosperous west side enclave that teetered along with its historic neighbor. A facility where icons tread yet stood unseen and unknown to too many who live in and around this city.

A facility that is now a stunning wonder, a glorious shrine that now wholly honors the inglorious pages of baseball past, and all who poured themselves into the sport—including the Friends of Rickwood (FOR), who sought for years to preserve this stage.

We can’t go back. Rickwood can’t go back. Indeed, one of the most significant challenges now is maintaining the major-league quality field that MLB installed. Gerald Watkins, who oversees FOR, says the mower needed to do so costs $275,000. Yes, the mower.

Recently, he said, and for the first time, the FOR received funding from Jefferson County: $250,000. “That was a God-send,” he said. (It doesn’t get any more big league that than.)

Rickwood now sits among the myriad gems at the core of the region’s emergence as a viable sports and entertainment draw, as capable of hosting significant events as Protective Stadium, Legacy Arena, Regions Park, Hoover Met, the Lyric, Alabama and now Carver theaters.

Events, for instance, like high-school baseball and softball tournaments with teams representing Birmingham City Schools and over-the-mountain schools. That would be so fitting for a ballpark that drew races together as the world outside kept them separate and unequal.

Like tournaments with teams from HBCUs and PWIs (predominantly white schools for those scratching their heads).

Like reincarnations of the celebrity- and ex-MLB player-studded softball game that nearly filled the 9,000-seat park on Wednesday evening that could support local charities.

Like—and I love this—an Iron Bat series between Auburn and Alabama. At Rickwood. Ads John Cohen and Greg Byrne, y’all make this happen.

And who knows? There might even a revival of the youth academy chat.

Of course, everyone wants MLB back, wants to host another regular season game between major-league teams.

MLB officials were understandably tight-lipped all week about plans for a return to Rickwood. Yulkot said MLB plans events two, sometimes three years ahead, so the likelihood of 2025? He wouldn’t even hint.

That said, no one spends this much on a lawn and only hosts one family barbeque. Or spends this much on renovations and only invites folks over once.

Write it down: MLB will be back. What transpired in Birmingham was too good—for baseball and Birmingham—for it not to come back.

It was big league. Truly.

We can’t go back.

Not now.

Roy S. Johnson is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame, Edward R. Murrow Award winner, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary. My column appears on AL.com, as well as the Lede. Tell him what you think at [email protected], and follow him at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj.