With the passing of Mays this week, Rickwood Field is now a cathedral to celebrate the life of baseball’s greatest player.“One of the reasons that Major League Baseball chose Rickwood Field for its celebration of the Negro Leagues was its association with Mays, who played his first game as a pro there with the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948.”
, the case certainly can be made that he is the greatest all-around player the sport has ever seen. Joe Posnanski, perhaps the most respected and thoughtful baseball history writer working today, thought so, listing Mays — born in 1931 in the Birmingham suburb of Westfield, and elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979 — at“Mays was in high school when he joined the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948, and just 20 years old when he debuted with the New York Giants in 1951.
“Mays played the game with pure joy, and that was his greatest gift of all. It was the hands that made it all possible.