Maysn Winn hasn’t played a baseball game in the State of Alabama since he was 8 or 9 years old.

He isn’t exactly sure on how old he was. But the game was held in Gulf Shores, and the child from Katy, Texas, was already a baseball prospect playing select ball during an event near the beaches.

“It was a good time,” said Winn, the 22-year-old rookie shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals who is an early candidate for Rookie of the Year. “I loved it. I loved it a lot. It was beautiful. They had really good sno-cones. A fun time.”

Winn’s return has more meaning this time around, underscored as the Cardinals player who recently posed in a St. Louis Stars uniform that his teammates will wear during their home baseball game Thursday against the San Francisco Giants at historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham. The game is marketed as “A Tribute to the Negro Leagues,” and will honor Willie Mays and the Birmingham Black Barons who once played at Rickwood, considered the oldest professional baseball park in the United States.

It’s also the first time ever an in-season Major League Baseball game will be played in the State of Alabama. Major League Baseball recently recognized the Negro Leagues as a “Major League” and incorporated Negro League statistics into MLB’s all-time records.

Winn, who grew up in Katy, Texas, is the only Black baseball player expected to play in the game for the Cardinals. Two other Black prospects — outfielders Jordan Walker and Victor Scott III — are currently playing in Memphis for the Triple A Redbirds.

At the start of the season, the trio — who were playing together in St. Louis — represented a rarity at a time when the number of Black baseball players in MLB are dwindling. The Cardinals were MLB’s lone team to have three everyday Black position players under the age of 25 this season, according to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale. The last time a team had three Black position players 23 or younger in its opening-day lineup was the 2007 Tampa Bay Rays.

Winn, among the three young Cardinals, is experiencing a breakout season, leading team with a .295 batting average as well as leading the team in on-base percentage, triples, and steals. He’s second in the team with 66 hits.

“It will be pretty special for me,” Winn said during a recent interview with AL.com at Busch Stadium in St. Louis about playing in the game at Rickwood Field.

The connection to the game for Winn, the only Black baseball player likely to start for the Cardinals at Rickwood, is through his stepfather, Earl Luckett.

“We call him ‘Lucky,’ and he’s probably the biggest Black baseball fan you’d see,” said Winn about his stepfather, who played college baseball at Huston-Tillotson College in Austin, and who is a longtime coach. “He’s been to the Negro League Museum (in Kansas City) about a hundred times. His favorites are ‘Cool Papa” Bell, Satchel Paige. He loved Ozzie Smith. Some of those guys we bonded over.”

Winn, who made his Major League debut last August, said Luckett got to meet Cardinals great and current coach Willie McGee last year.

McGee, who played for both the Cardinals and Giants during an 18-year career in Major League Baseball, was the 1985 National League MVP and two-time NL batting champion who was elected to the St. Louis Cardinals baseball Hall of Fame in 2014.

“He was all smiles,” Winn said. “He just loved it.”

To have this game, it’s pretty sweet,” Winn added. “I feel like in this organization, specifically, there is a good history with good Black baseball players in the past and some of the guys coming up as well. Just in general, playing on the same field that some of the greats got to play on like Willie Mays and guys like that, it’s going to be really cool and a true honor.”

The ballgame at Rickwood comes at a time when the percentage of American-born Black players in the Major Leagues are at historic lows. The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports shows that only 6.2% of MLB players in 2023 were Black, down from 7.2% on Opening Day in 2022. It was the lowest percentage of Black American players in the game since 1991.

Baseball demographic research through 2016, conducted for the Society for American Baseball Research by researcher Mark Armour, shows the percentage of Black ballplayers in MLB dipping under 8% in 2019. The highest percentage, 18.5%, was recorded in 1975.

The percentage of Latinos playing in MLB steadily increased over the years to leveling off at around 27% since 2004. The percentage of white MLB players has been at or above 63% since the 2010 season, and has never dipped below 60%.