The Sunday Story: Roy Wood Jr. on the Road to Rickwood

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🗓️ 16 June 2024

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

What does a comedian know about baseball? And what can America's oldest baseball field tell us about the civil rights movement?

Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama is America's oldest ballpark. It's older than Wrigley Field and Fenway park. But its history is full of contradictions. In its heyday, Rickwood was home to both the Birmingham Barons and the Birmingham Black Barons, one of the most talented teams in the Negro Leagues. The field hosted a women's suffrage event, but the stadium's owner also allowed a KKK rally to take place there.

Comedian Roy Wood Jr. hosts a new podcast called Road to Rickwood from WWNO & WRKF, which takes a closer look at the field's history as a microcosm of the civil rights movement itself. Wood Jr. grew up in Birmingham playing baseball at Rickwood. In the podcast, he speaks to historians, civic leaders, major league baseball executives, former Negro Leaguers, and members of Alabama's first integrated sports team. For himself and those he interviewed, baseball was an oasis. It was also a space where racism shaped the lives of some of the nation's best baseball players.

In today's episode of The Sunday Story, Wood Jr. sits down with host Ayesha Rascoe to talk baseball, Birmingham, and race in America.

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0:00.0	I'm Aisha Roscoe and this is the Sunday story. So I grew up in the South, Durham
0:06.4	North Carolina to be exact, people have heard this probably a million times before.
0:10.8	But in Durham, North Carolina, everybody is obsessed with college basketball. I mean, like, it's serious. You know, families are split up over this and everyone picks a sad and you know in school you can't escape it
0:26.7	everywhere you go people are talking about Duke and UNC
0:32.3	North Carolina to Duke.
0:34.0	But not me.
0:37.0	I'm not a basketball person.
0:39.0	I'm not a sports person.
0:41.0	I don't play, I don't't watch I'm not competitive I find competition very stressful I
0:47.1	prefer like talking and reading and into be in my imagination like fantasy.
0:53.0	But I understand the love and the passion
0:58.0	and I know what it means to have a sport really defined a town.
1:04.0	Comedian Roywood Jr. is also from the South,
1:07.1	from Birmingham, Alabama.
1:09.5	Of course, Birmingham is often thought of
1:12.4	as the hotbed for the civil rights movement, but for
1:15.9	Roy his childhood was all about baseball. And it's no coincidence because Birmingham is home to the oldest ballpark in the country,
1:26.4	Rickwood Field.
1:28.0	It's older than Wrigley Field and Fenway Park.
1:31.6	30% of all Hall of Famers have played on this field at some point in their
1:37.0	career. But Rick Woods is a place with a lot of contradictions. While the ballpark was home to the Birmingham Black Barons, one of the
1:46.3	most talented teams in the Negro leagues, these black players were never allowed in the locker rooms.
	...

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