Birmingham's Rickwood Field, the oldest professional ballpark in the United States, will host a special regular-season Major League Baseball game between the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants on June 20.

Rickwood was chosen by MLB for the event to highlight the history of the Negro Leagues. The Birmingham Black Barons played at Rickwood Field from 1924-60. Some of the greatest players in baseball history graced the stadium during their time with the Black Barons, including Leroy "Satchel" Paige and Willie Mays.

"For some time, we've wanted to do something in what I think of as that SEC belt. The Rickwood (game) gives us a chance to do that," MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said Monday at league offices in New York City at the Associated Press Sports Editors commissioners meetings.

"It's obviously important for us to have an opportunity to pay tribute to the Negro Leagues, and I think the ballpark itself is going to really surprise people."

The idea for a game in Rickwood was conceived alongside the league's ideas of playing on a military base and the Field of Dreams games played in 2021 and 2022. According to Manfred, Rickwood had been on the MLB's radar for some time.

"I have not seen the ballpark since the renovations were done, but we've been aware of the ballpark for a while," Manfred said. "We identified it pretty early on. ... We are going to have a Willie Mays focus, he's from that area. So, you know, we've had that one on our agenda for a long time, and (it) takes time to pull one of these off. You've got to get some local and governmental support, you know, there's renovations involved that are very expensive. So we've been working on it for literally years."

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The passion project of Allen Harvey "Rick" Woodward, a Birmingham industrialist for whom the field is named, Rickwood Field opened Aug. 18, 1910. It was the first steel-and-concrete stadium in the minor leagues and the first one south of Ohio. Rickwood was modeled after Shibe Park, later known as Connie Mack Stadium, in Philadelphia and Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, but it has outlasted both.

Rickwood Field was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1993. Since then, it has undergone renovations and, since 1996, has hosted an annual Barons game dubbed "The Rickwood Classic." Baseball movies such as "Cobb," "Soul of the Game" and "42" have been filmed on location in Rickwood.

"I think it's going to be a setting you know, I'm not sure anything's quite like Field of Dreams, but the setting itself I think it's going to be really special," Manfred said.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: MLB at Rickwood: Cardinals and Giants to play at historic ballpark