Rickwood Field is a pretty cool ballpark, with a pretty cool history.
And you’re going to get fed a lot of it over the next year, with the announcement that an MLB game will be played there by the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals.
That’s understandable. That’s marketing. It’s being hailed by MLB as a Negro Leagues Park, and indeed the Birmingham Black Barons called it home for decades starting in 1920. The reality though, is that it was built a decade before for the Birmingham Barons, and it should not surprise you that a baseball team founded in Birmingham, Alabama in 1885 – and given the name the BARONS – was not a baseball team that was meant for anyone but the most lily-white.
Still, the Black Barons did come about in 1920, and they did play at Rickwood Field, and by the late 40s they had a guy named Willie Mays on their team, and that explains why you’re seeing the San Francisco Giants play there.
I don’t know why the Cardinals are playing there, except that they are a draw everywhere, popular in the south, and Covid removed their chance of playing in the Field of Dreams game, so this is a makeup spot for them.
As such, you’ll probably hear about the Cardinals’ links to the field, most notably a home run that Stan Musial hit there in 1954 that became something of a local legend. Except, the home run didn’t count. Not in any way that anyone ever cared about, at least. It was a Spring Training game against the White Sox. A lot of legends and Hall of Famers have played at Rickwood Field, as it has spent its history in use as a minor league and Spring Training ballpark for over 100 years. Even now, one game a year is still played there by the minor league Barons.
So that’s cool and all, but unless you were playing in those Negro Leagues, not a lot of Hall of Famers have ever played anything there that actually mattered to anyone.
Except, of course, Dizzy Dean.
Back in 1930, the 20-year-old Dean spent his first season in organized ball taking the country by storm, winning 25 games across A-Ball, including 8 after the St. Louis Cardinals acquired his rights and sent him to their Houston team. Dean was called up for the final game of the season before the Cardinals were to go to the World Series.
Now in his MLB debut, and facing the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose lineup hit .306 that year, and featured 2 Hall of Fame players in Paul Waner and Pie Traynor – dare I say Dean could have been a little nervous?
He walked the first batter he faced, got Waner to ground out, walked the next guy, and then gave up a single to Pie Traynor. 2 walks, 1 hit, 1 out, and losing 1-0. That’s how Dizzy Dean started his MLB career.
Oh what the Cardinals fans in attendance – all 22,000 must have been thinking their day was going to be like.
Dean pitched the rest of the 8.2 innings to complete the game. He gave up 1 more walk, and 2 more hits, and the Cardinals won 3-1.
There was already a local roar over Dizzy Dean. Now that the country had seen what Dean could do to a good major league team, ‘roar’ became an understatement.
And Dean, who keep in mind just a few paragraphs ago I accused possibly of being nervous – then went on to say that he would win 30 games in the majors next year.
(Just to further drive home the point, not long after his MLB debut, Dean wrote about the experience and…it is something. It includes things like Dizzy responding to a Pirates hitter mocking him by saying “Lissen (sic) you, I intended to let you hit the ball, but just for that I’ll strike you out.” So if you were thinking that my speculation of Dizzy being nervous might make me an idiot, I’ll side with you.)
He didn’t win 30 games in the bigs the next year. He didn’t make the team out of Spring Training. In fact, in Spring Training there’s a story about Dean threatening to quit the team (and remember the Cardinals owned his rights forever more, so this is quitting any chance of playing in the majors anywhere) because the Cardinals’ $1 per diem didn’t leave him enough money left over to play mini-golf at night.
Without more research, I have no idea if that story is true or not. It just scares me, knowing what I do know about Dean, that true it might be.
Branch Rickey said about him that very year:
“Dean hasn’t a grain of common sense in his head, but put him on a baseball diamond and he is as good in every department of the game as I have ever seen”
Give him credit, Rickey was a fantastic judge of talent. And Rickey was apparently a fantastic judge of common sense.
So it’s no surprise that Dean didn’t spend 1931 winning 30 games in the majors. The Cardinals were stacked, and Dean was young and insane, and instead spent the year winning 26 games in Houston. He struck out 303 batters, which was far and away a record. He turned himself into a household name playing minor league baseball in Houston, Texas. There was definitely a Dean-mania already happening. You know how everyone slobbers over the call up and hype surrounding every single prospect now?
We’re talking about a single-A player in 1931, where the only news you got came from traveling word of mouth, or what your newspaper felt like printing about a minor league pitcher. Dean was a legend. They already called him (and he already called himself) “The Great Dean.”
And he would get a chance to show that off.
At the end of that season, Houston had won the Texas League. They would be facing the winners of the Southern League, the Birmingham Barons, in the ‘Dixie Series.’
Yeah, we’re talking about a minor league World Series here. But in 1931, when the Cardinals were the southernmost team in baseball, and pro-ball teams had a much bigger following, the Dixie Series was everything to a huge swatch of the country.
And Dizzy Dean coming to Birmingham to pitch at Rickwood Field, well, there was a lot of hype.
Dizzy liked upping the hype whenever he could.
Yes, you’ll notice the misspelling of great. And yes, that was a knock on the brain rattling around inside of Dean.
Ladies, and Gentlemen. Boys and Girls, I present to you, Dizzy Dean:
“I, Jerome (Dizzy) Dean, the plough hand who took the ne plus we (sic) out of baseball, will come into the Dixie Series hailed as the Master Big Shot. I, Jerome (Dizzy) Dean not only admits he is a greater hurler than Wild Bill Hallahan but has newspaper clippings to prove he uses the first personal pronoun advisedly. And Wild Bill Hallahan – they still jump where Baronial fans gather at the mention of Hallahan’s name – was the man who drove Mule Shirley into believing he was Lady Godiva.”
Did Dizzy Dean actually mention Lady Godiva, or is this some writer making up his own stuff? Did Dizzy Dean know HALF a French phrase that meant to say he was the best player in baseball, but mess it up in a folksy way? I do not know. He was one crazy mother, but there’s also a lot of evidence of intelligence in him. Considering just how much the Hallahan quotes took off in the media, I imagine what you just read was true.
So, what was he talking about?
Wild Bill Hallahan pitched for the Houston Buffaloes back in 1928 when they faced the Barons in the Dixie World Series. Hallahan proved to be the star of the series.
More importantly, Hallahan was CURRENTLY the ace of the St. Louis Cardinals, who were in first place, and about to have a rematch with the Philadelphia A’s in the World Series, which the Cardinals would win, and which Hallahan would go 2-0 with a ZERO POINT FOUR NINE ERA.
This was the star that Dizzy was not only saying he was better than, but was mocking, and of which Dizzy knew he was soon to be the teammate of for years to come. There were some famous personality conflicts on the Gas House Gang Cardinals of which both were members. Gee, I wonder why.
And so it’s not hard to imagine how Dizzy became a larger-than-life figure in the lead up to the series.
From the Birmingham news:
“Dizzy Dean’s name has already become a household word in Birmingham…The common expression around town is “What do you think Dizzy Dean will do in the Dixie series?” And the Ole Duster’s stock in trade answer is “Pack Rickwood as it never has been packed for a baseball game.
Not suprisingly, Diz was correct. I do not know the capacity in 1931. I know the capacity now is 10,800. I know there were seats for 5,000 when it was built. I know that it was described as “swelled” and “packed in” when games would reach 10,000, and I know that when Dizzy Dean took the mound in game 1 of the Dixie Series, the estimated attendance was 13,000.
Dizzy Dean proceeded to pitch a complete game, 5-hitter, giving up only 1 run on 3 hits in the 8th inning.
He lost 1-0.
The Buffaloes won game 2, and headed back to Houston, almost without Dean.
First, he was robbed. Someone broke into his hotel room and stole $9.10. While he was sleeping. “Pitch hard and sleep hard…that’s me” said Dizzy.
Next, he left his train tickets back in his hotel room, which caused a massive scramble to prove he was Dizzy Dean and did have tickets. Housekeepers scoured his room and ran them over to to the telegraph office to send out a message “Let Dizzy ride. We found his ticket.”
They aren’t doing that for anyone but Dizzy Dean.
Houston won the 3rd game back home – and in front of a crowd of nearly 25,000 Dean pitched a 2-0 shutout to give Houston a 3 games to 1 lead.
Then, the Cardinals came calling. The series looking wrapped up, and the Cardinals winding down their pennant winning season, papers started reporting that Dean was about to join the big club, just as soon as the Dixie Series was over.
But the series didn’t end. Birmingham won the next game – and they won game 6 as well. Bafflingly, at least in today’s terms, Dean – who most assuredly would be the next day’s starter in game 7 – came in to pitch the 8th inning of game 6. With his team down 5. Holy lord, why? WHY???
Dean went on to pitch the 7th game after throwing 2 complete games in the series and coming in to pitch an inning in a blowout game the night before. It will surprise no one that he didn’t have his best stuff.
The game was tied 1-1 after 6 innings, 2-2 after 7 innings, and Dean, fading from the workload (or nerves? Ha ha ha…) gave up the go-ahead run in the 8th. Down 3-2, Dean was once again called to pitch the 9th inning – and lost it completely, giving up 3 more runs. Down 6-2, the Buffaloes would score just 1 in the 9th, which would have been a key run had Dean’s manager had any common sense and pulled him earlier, or not pitched him the night before. But Dean fell to the Barons 6-3.
And I do mean Dean. The headlines didn’t mention the Buffaloes. They were extras. They were background players in this Dizzy Dean parade. Everything revolved around him. Everything was shaped only in Dean’s orbit. “Barons Beat Dizzy Dean to Win Crown” just to give one headline.
The Barons hopped on their train, and back to Birmingham, where thousands of adoring fans greeted them, along with a coffin that read “Here lies the Great Dizzy Dean.”
As for Dizzy, he never went to the Cardinals that year. 2 days later he started his winter pitching for a semi-pro team named the Grocers…because they were grocers. Not MLB players. Grocers. He threw a shutout.
Dean guaranteed victory. Said he would outpitch the current ace of the big league club. That didn’t happen. And he watched his chance of joining the Cardinals slip away, at least for that year.
It must have been humbling, having to eat his words. It must have made him question his bravado. It must have hurt his confidence.
Well, no. Not Dizzy Dean. This was only the beginning.