Baseball and Willie Mays will intersect at Rickwood Field again when Miles College hosts its first Willie Mays Open on Feb. 7-9.

Joining Miles in the field for the event are the baseball teams from five other Historically Black Colleges and Universities – Stillman, Claflin, Dillard, Harris-Stowe State and Southern.

The Willie Mays Open will feature three games daily and mark the return of the Golden Bears to their historic home for the first time since the 2023 season.

A press release from Miles said the event had received “the blessing” of Mays’ family, with the Golden Bears, under coach Milton Barney, hoping “to build off of the momentum of last year’s great Major League Baseball event at Rickwood Field.”

The St. Louis Cardinals defeated the San Francisco Giants 6-5 on June 20 at Rickwood Field, after MLB and Birmingham poured millions into preparing the nation’s oldest professional ballpark for the nationally televised National League game.

The MLB contest was the crowning event of a week of activities under the banner “MLB at Rickwood: A Tribute to the Negro Leagues” that highlighted the significance of the black-baseball organizations in baseball’s history

Major League Baseball’s visit to Birmingham took on an even deeper meaning when Mays died two days before the game at age 93.

A Birmingham area native, Mays was one of the reasons that MLB chose Rickwood Field for the Negro League salute. As the home field for the Birmingham Black Barons, one of the flagship teams of Black baseball during the game’s segregated era, Rickwood was the site of Mays’ home games as a teenage professional to begin his Hall of Fame career.

The week also included a Southern League game, and the Double-A league will be back at Rickwood on June 4, when the Birmingham Barons and Rocket City Trash Pandas square off.

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at @AMarkG1.