MLB is honoring the Negro Leagues with game at historic Alabama ballpark. What to know

The historic site of Major League Baseball's special regular-season game on June 20 isn't a mythical cornfield dreamed up by a Hollywood screenwriter.

It's an actual field of dreams that has featured flesh-and-blood baseball heroes from Satchel Paige to Willie Mays.

Birmingham, Alabama's Rickwood Field will be a central character when MLB honors the Negro Leagues and the legendary Mays, who died June 18 at age 93, with a nationally televised game that also celebrates the rich history of America's oldest ballpark.

The Negro Leagues were multiple leagues that featured Black players for half of the 20th century because they were banned from playing Major League Baseball until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947.

"We really hope that young people learn about these players in the Negro Leagues that didn’t earn a lot of money but loved the game," April Brown, MLB's senior vice president of social responsibility and community affairs, told Craig Melvin on TODAY on June 18. "They changed the game in many ways. The game that we see on the field today is a product of that."

Here's what to know.

Who is playing at Rickwood Field and how can you watch it?

The National League regular-season contest will feature the San Francisco Giants against the St. Louis Cardinals in a game at 7:15 p.m. ET on June 20 that will be shown nationally on Fox.

The Cardinals will be wearing the uniforms of the St. Louis Stars, a Negro Leagues team, while the Giants will wear San Francisco Sea Lions jerseys in honor of a Negro Leagues team that played in the city in the 1940s.

Who will be honored during the game?

Hall of Famer Willie Mays will be celebrated as the baseball world continues to mourn the loss of an all-time great.

Mays was a native of Westfield, Alabama, near where Rickwood Field is located in Birmingham. He also began his professional career playing in the Negro Leagues in 1948 for the Birmingham Black Barons when he was 17 years old.

The center fielder signed with the Giants in 1950 and went on to become a baseball icon with 24 All-Star selections, 3,293 hits, 660 home runs, a World Series title and two Most Valuable Player awards.

Mays had told the San Francisco Chronicle on June 17 that he would not be attending the game at Rickwood Field in person. He died a day later at 93.

“I’m not able to get to Birmingham this year but will follow the game back here in the Bay Area,” Mays said in a statement. “My heart will be with all of you who are honoring the Negro League ballplayers, who should always be remembered, including all my teammates on the Black Barons. I wanted to thank Major League Baseball, the Giants, the Cardinals and all the fans who’ll be at Rickwood or watching the game. It’ll be a special day, and I hope the kids will enjoy it and be inspired by it.”

A revered part of Mays' legacy will be in the building. The plaque honoring Mays at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, will leave the museum for the first time since his enshrinement in 1979 to be viewed at Rickwood Field.

The plaque will be part of a display in a specially created fan plaza for the game that will include Negro Leagues photos and memorabilia provided by Friends of Rickwood and the Negro Southern League Museum.

Another player being honored is Bill Greason, who was the first Black pitcher in St. Louis Cardinals history. Greason, 99, is a longtime reverend who was a teammate of Mays on the Black Barons before he made history with the Cardinals.

"We hope that young people learn about this history, Birmingham being the center of civil rights, and that there were Negro Leagues players who had dreams to just play this game that they loved and that they were able to do it right here," Brown told Craig Melvin on TODAY.

What is the history of Rickwood Field?

The 114-year-old field in Birmingham is the oldest professional baseball stadium in America, according to its website. In comparison, the oldest MLB ballpark is Boston’s iconic Fenway Park, which opened in 1912.

Financed by millionaire Birmingham industrialist A.H. “Rick” Woodward, the park was christened with a game in 1910 between the Birmingham Barons and the Montgomery Climbers in front of an estimated 10,000 fans, according to MLB.com.

The park would serve as a home to the minor league Barons and the Negro Leagues' Black Barons.

A "who's who" of baseball legends have played at the park over the years. Of the 351 members elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, 181 of them have either played, managed, umpired or led a team at Rickwood Field over the years, according to MLB.com.

“It’s a shrine. It is a baseball cathedral,” Negro Leagues Baseball Museum President Bob Kendrick told NBC St. Louis affiliate KSDK. “So much baseball history has been made at that park, and a lot of it was associated with the Negro Leagues. One team in particular, the Birmingham Black Barons, who shared that stadium with their white counterparts, the Birmingham Barons. And in a deeply segregated Birmingham, a Bull Connor segregated Birmingham, the Black Barons were the toast of the town. They actually outdrew their white counterparts in their own ballpark.”

Notable players who showed off their talents at Rickwood include Mays, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio. MLB stars often played at Rickwood Field before they headed back north from spring training in Florida every year, according to MLB.com.

The field also still sees regular use. Three Birmingham high schools, Miles College and youth baseball tournaments regularly call Rickwood Field home, according to Sports Business Journal.

The field also appeared in the 2013 movie "42," starring the late Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson, according to AL.com.

How did MLB get Rickwood Field ready for this year's game?

The city of Birmingham spent $4.5 million to help renovate the stadium, according to Sports Business Journal.

Those involved in the renovation leveled out the crowned playing field and installed new grass, shortened the backstop area, replaced the dugouts, installed new foul poles and reshaped the park's dimensions, which originally measured a whopping 478 feet to center field, per Sports Business Journal. It's now 400 feet to center field.

The stadium aesthetic will also feature advertisements made to resemble those in Rickwood's mid-20th-century heyday, concession stands with menu boards mimicking those from the 1940s, plus the original ticket booths. Fans can also tour the original clubhouses, and a 1947 tour bus typically used during barnstorming tours by Negro Leagues teams will be on display.

The ticketed-seating capacity for the Giants-Cardinals game will be about 8,300.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com