Rickwood Field, baseball stadium in Birmingham, Alabama, United States
Rickwood Field is a baseball stadium in Birmingham and ranks among the oldest of its kind in the United States. The venue features traditional masonry grandstands, a natural grass playing surface, and retains its classic character from earlier decades.
Rick Woodward, owner of the Birmingham Barons, built Rickwood Field in 1910 as a concrete-and-steel showplace modeled on Shibe Park and Forbes Field. It was the first concrete-and-steel stadium in Minor League Baseball. The Barons played there until 1988, and the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro leagues also used it as their home park. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.
The Birmingham chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research is named after Rickwood Field. The Barons still play one regular-season game here each year, and the park operates as a working museum where visitors can see the 1964 seats bought from New York's Polo Grounds.
Rickwood Field stands in Birmingham's West End neighbourhood, on land Woodward bought from the Alabama Central Railroad. The Barons play one regular-season game there each year, so visits otherwise depend on the restoration work and scheduled tours of the working museum. The park is open-air, with concrete and steel stands along the basepaths.
The cupola behind home plate, with its tile roof, housed the announcer and the press from 1910. In 1964, general manager Glynn West bought 1,000 wooden seats from New York's Polo Grounds and installed them here, so some of the park's seats came from a demolished major-league stadium.
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