BIRMINGHAM — Conversation at Rickwood Field on Thursday offered a sea of famous baseball names, some there in living presence to celebrate the Negro Leagues at America's oldest ballpark, where the Birmingham Black Barons once excelled as one of the best teams who weren't allowed a chance at playing in the Major Leagues. Others honored at the MLB at Rickwood Field's Tribute to the Negro Leagues, where the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants played a regular-season game, weren't present.

Two names that were anything but famous — Army Rhodes and Eddie Vines — deserve mention, too.

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The vast archive of baseballreference.com can filter data on 491 professional baseball players from the state of Alabama, some who reached the big leagues, and many more who didn't. A relatively small handful of those were born in Tuscaloosa, only two of whom — Rhodes and Vines — played in the Negro Leagues. On a night when some of the best players the Negro Leagues ever fielded were so well-remembered, it would have been nice to talk to Rhodes and Vines, who hardly played at all, and ask them about their experiences. They are two of many ghosts of Negro League history whose baseball stories could now barely be told by anyone but themselves.

Both have passed away.

Online records of their ball-playing days are scarce and incomplete.

Armstead Rhodes, who went by Army for short, was born in Tuscaloosa in 1918 and played very briefly for the Chicago American Giants of the Negro American League in 1940 and 1942. We know he was a first baseman, but we don't know why he didn't play pro ball in 1941. We know his entire career comprised of 25 at bats, yet the most meticulous keepers of baseball records can't even say whether he hit left-handed or right-handed. We know he was a teammate of Negro League legend Cool Papa Bell, but we don't know if he ever played at Rickwood Field, because while the Chicago American Giants played in the same league with the Black Barons, there are no game logs to specify exactly where Rhodes recorded his 25 plate appearances.

There's even less to glean from records on Vines.

The left-handed corner infielder notched just four at bats for the Black Barons in 1940, but made the most of them with two hits for a .500 batting average. He was 22 years old at the time, long gone from baseball at age 29 by the time Jackie Robinson broke the MLB color line in 1947. Did he play at Rickwood? Who knows. Those four at bats could've come on the road.

White ballplayers, who barely scratched the pro ranks 80 years ago, might not be well-documented either, but they, at least, were better accounted for.

Did Rhodes and Vines know each other? They were the same age, born about six weeks apart, at a time when Tuscaloosa barely had 10,000 residents. Heck they might've played against each other in a Black Barons-American Giants game in 1940. Curiously, the two Tuscaloosa natives both died more than 800 miles from their birthplace, but only 40 miles apart; Rhodes in 1985 at age 66 in Flint, Mich., Vines in 1992 at age 74 in Pontiac, Mich. Did they turn from baseball to Michigan's auto industry, which was booming with manufacturing jobs in their adult years?

Their stories deserve telling, the same as anyone else who played far more or far better baseball.

Yes, Thursday night at Rickwood Field was for recently-deceased legend Willie Mays, and Cool Papa Bell, and the fire-balling Satchel Paige, and Josh Gibson. It was for Negro League star Mule Suttles, an Alabama native and a fearsome power hitter who was said to have swung a legendarily heavy 50-ounce bat.

But it was for Armstead Rhodes and Eddie Benjamin Vines, too.

Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread is also the weekly co-host of Crimson Cover TV on WVUA-23. Reach him at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on X.com @chasegoodbread.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: MLB Rickwood Field tribute not just for Negro League stars