“MLB at Rickwood: A Tribute to the Negro Leagues” put Birmingham and its classic ballpark in the national spotlight through the FOX national telecast.

And plenty of people saw the National League game between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals and the associated activities and reports. FOX Sports reported “MLB at Rickwood” had an average viewership of 2,346,000.

FOX’s most-watched Major League Thursday night regular-season game since Sept. 22, 2022, scored a viewership that was 41 percent higher than last year’s average for Thursday night regular-season games and 25 percent higher than last year’s average for all MLB regular-season games televised by the network.

Peak viewership reached 2.559 million, FOX reported, and in St. Louis, 29 percent of the households that watched TV on Thursday night saw at least part of the game.

The Cardinals defeated the Giants 6-5 in Thursday night’s game, with former Enterprise High School and South Alabama standout Brendan Donovan contributing three hits, including a home run, and three RBIs for St. Louis.

Built in 1910, Rickwood Field is the oldest professional baseball stadium in the United States, opening two years before Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field in Chicago.

The game was the first National or American League regular-season game played in Alabama and concluded a week of activities that highlighted the significance of the Negro Leagues in baseball’s history.

The teams wore throwback uniforms of Negro Leagues clubs, with the Giants dressed as the San Francisco Sea Lions and the Cardinals garbed as the St. Louis Stars.

Major League Baseball’s visit to Birmingham took on an even deeper meaning after former Giants Hall of Famer Willie Mays died on Tuesday at age 93. After Mays’ death, Rob Manfred, the commissioner of baseball, said the Rickwood Field game would serve as a “national remembrance” of the Say-Hey Kid.

An area native, Mays was one of the reasons that MLB chose Rickwood Field for the Negro League saltue. 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.

The day before the game, a giant mural of Mays was unveiled in Birmingham. On Thursday night, the ample space between the plate and the backstop was emblazoned with a giant 24, Mays’ uniform number, and each player’s uniform featured an orange-and-black patch of “Mays 24.”

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