Rickwood: Door to the Past, Window To The Future

Rickwood Field in Birmingham is the oldest baseball park in the world. Last week, the park turned 100.

The U.S. Postal Service was an integral part of Rickwood's celebration:

Postmarks' Marvin Owens used the Rickwood Centennial logo to design a pictorial postmark for the day; he also designed a Rickwood cachet that featured the park, the pictorial postmark, and images of Postal employee Cleophus Brown today and during his playing days in the Negro League.

The Postal Service had a table at the entrance to the park where the cachet, the Negro League stamps, and other philatelic items were sold.

Nearby sat Cleophus Brown and several other former players.

Postal employees Audrey Betts and Cleophus Brown with Betts' husband (r), who had played baseball with Brown in the 1970's.

Postal employee Donnie Flint asked all of the former Negro League players to sign her book We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, an 88-page hardcover book by Kadir Nelson (the artist who designed the Negro League stamps).

The Woodwards of Woodward Iron were the original owners of the park. Two of their descendents participated in the event as well.

For those of us with the Postal Service, the highlight of the afternoon came at the conclusion of the on-field activities when Retail Specialist Stevie Mason (in the back) presented Cleophus Brown with a framed cachet.

The heavy rains did little to dampen the audience's nostalgic mood. As a representative from the State of Alabama Tourism Office said, "A rainy day at Rickwood is better than a sunny day at any major league park."