When Willie Mays was perfecting his craft on the sandlots around Birmingham as a teenager in the 1940s, there was hardly anything bigger among the Black community than baseball. Overflowing crowds of Black fans packed Rickwood Field, the local ballpark, when the Birmingham Black Barons played, and on Sundays church would let out early so worshipers could watch baseball. “I don’t think they know anything about Black baseball as such,” said Charles Willis, 92, a high school teammate of Mays who played one season for the Black Barons, referring to Black children in Birmingham today. “Because nowadays, Black kids don’t play baseball.”Major League Baseball went to Rickwood this week as a tribute to the history of the Negro leagues, a celebration that will now encompass a memorial service for Mays, who died on Tuesday at 93. But it is also about looking ahead, wrestling with how to attract young African American athletes to play baseball at a time when African American representation in the sport has diminished.

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Persons: Willie Mays, ”, Charles Willis, Mays Organizations: Birmingham Black Barons, Black, ” Major League Baseball, Negro, San Francisco Giants, Louis Cardinals Locations: Birmingham