Art Black's Baseball

These three books, companions to one another, celebrate Rickwood Field, the primary ball park of Birmingham professional baseball teams from 1910 to 1987. Each book is a building block in a trilogy on the history of the legendary ball park. Each book stands alone, complete within itself, but together they form a structure larger than its parts: a trilogy. 

The three books tell the story of people, places, and events of the early twentieth century and make you feel a part of history, not an observer of it. The books explore world events, American history, and the game of baseball when it was — and perhaps still is — this country’s most culturally relevant sport.

    Ball players within these pages are those we with gray hair heard about as kids, or watched at Rickwood Field, or watched on Saturday afternoon’s Game of the Week on black and white television: Dizzy Dean, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, Pie Traynor, Burleigh Grimes, Willie Mays, Satchel Paige, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Reggie Jackson, and more.

    The books celebrate America’s oldest ball park, Rickwood Field, and pay homage to the ball players who played there, on their way to or from the major leagues. Classic baseball — America’s pastime of the day.

    In researching his books, the author relied on newspaper accounts of the day. How better to tell the story of people and places of long ago.

“The author has a great eye for details that make a story come alive and the insights that reveal a story’s meaning. He has given us three of the best books on baseball in Birmingham.” — Jim Baggett, Archivist, Birmingham Public Library