Birmingham has never been better than this

People ask me why I love Birmingham.

It makes me wonder why I should love Birmingham, the third largest city in Alabama, now, a dirty place that has known violence all its life, that has seen too much of it lately. It is a city that has lost its people and its luster, in the eyes of some.

But I love this place. For the moments that come, as they have throughout my life, as they did at Rickwood Field on Thursday night.

I saw games. I saw things that touched me in this city. But not quite like that.

We saw 81,000 people pour into Legion Field for an Olympic game in 1996. It was the sixth largest crowd to see a soccer game on US soil at the time, and Claudio Reyna scored 28 seconds into the game put the United States men’s team on top greatly favored Argentina. Argentina would come back to win, but it was magic. Until the shuttle system designed to transport fans to and from the stadium failed.

I saw Michael Jordan play baseball at the Hoover Met. A moment in time and culture. He hit, but it didn’t matter. It is enough, sometimes, to stand in the presence of greatness.

I saw 42,000 people show up at Legion Field for a high school game. I saw the World Games and Olympic events and an NCAA Regional when an upstart UAB team pulled off a miracle and eliminated Ralph Sampson’s UVA team to reach the Sweet 16. I saw the Alabama and Auburn games and the return of UAB football. I saw PGA and minor league hockey and half a dozen upstart soccer leagues that brought me closer to my dad and my kids and my city. They won more than they lost.

But I’ve never seen a game like Thursday night. Two days after the death of Fairfield’s own Willie Mays, the world watched Birmingham host the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals to honor the Negro Leagues in the oldest ballpark in America.

It was supposed to be the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, because it was the kind of day that didn’t have to end.

There was a time when visitors from California and Missouri spoke of Birmingham as a pleasant surprise, when men and women from Hoover and Trussville and Mountain Brook spoke of being “from Birmingham,” when a place sometimes fragmented by geography, politics and race transformed. willingly to be made whole again.

People of all stripes cheered the Birmingham Black Barons and San Francisco Lions and the legacy of players living and long gone. rev. Bill Greason, 99, a former Negro Leaguer and the first black pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, threw out the first pitch. It jumped on the plate, but it was nice.

And the crowd roared.

Maybe that magic could only happen in a station without fancy boxes, without the flash or glitz or comfort of today’s billion-dollar stadiums. Barry Bonds and Derek Jeter and John Smoltz and Ken Griffey Jr. walked the halls of Rickwood as if they were ordinary people.

And Rickwood is a regular popular spot. Steel and wood and green paint and memory, where lineups are still chalked for nostalgia’s sake and the origins of this city are up in the air. It’s easy in such a place to appreciate the glow of a sun setting in the sky over Fairfield or the moon smiling broadly over downtown Birmingham.

People ask me what is there to love about this city, this place with a dirty and slightly mean face and a history ripe with anger and injustice.

I tell them I don’t understand.

For it is our core that made us, iron dust and smoke and soot and pain. In the crucible of our racial struggle we were, in some ways, melted down and melted down and made into something brand new. It’s not perfect. Not bright. Not for everyone.

But not what I was before.

We are smaller than we once were, less sure of ourselves, perhaps. But we are, in a way, more than we were before.

In such moments we see ourselves. relatives. Logged in. Together. On Thursday, the world saw it too.

Oh. And the shuttles ran on time.

John Archibald won the Pulitzer twice