42|Rickwood Field — The One Ballpark Where Robinson Really Stood

Walk through the turnstiles on Second Avenue West and the first thing you notice is how close the grandstand feels to the plate. Rickwood Field opened in August 1910, which makes it the oldest surviving professional ballpark in America, older than Fenway by two years and older than Wrigley by four. Steel trusses hold the roof up over the wooden seats. The scoreboard is still worked by hand.

Jackie Robinson played here for real. In 1945, before Branch Rickey ever called him into an office in Brooklyn, he came through Birmingham with the Kansas City Monarchs to face the Black Barons on this dirt. That fact is why the production of 42 treated the park differently from every other location in the film. When the crew arrived in spring 2012, they did not use Rickwood as one ballpark. They used it as several. Dress the outfield wall one way and it is Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Change the signage and the bunting and it becomes Forbes Field, or Shibe Park in Philadelphia, both of them long gone under wrecking balls. Six hundred to seven hundred local extras filled the seats in period wool and straw hats.

The park survives because a volunteer group, the Friends of Rickwood, refused to let it go. They open the gates. You can climb into the grandstand, walk out onto the field, and run the bases if you feel like it. Miles College began playing its home games here in 2025, and the annual Rickwood Classic still brings a throwback crowd every summer.

Stand at the rail behind first base in the late afternoon. The light comes in low under the roof and lands on the same infield Robinson crossed in 1945 and Chadwick Boseman crossed in 2012, and for a moment there is no distance between the two at all.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.