Al and I discovered a real treasure in the form of the Negro Southern League Museum (NSLM) on our recent trip to Birmingham for the SEC Baseball Tournament. The museum not only houses the “largest collection of original Negro League baseball artifacts in the country,” it also functions as a research center. The artifacts are from the collection of one man, Dr. Layton Revel, and include an enormous number of autographed balls, uniforms (including a Satchel Paige game-worn uniform), bats, gloves, and even some old stadium seats.

Birmingham was (and still is) the home of the AA Barons of the Southern League, and was also the home of the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Southern League. Both teams played at Rickwood Field, which is the oldest ballpark in the country, having been built in 1910. That makes it two years older than either Wrigley or Fenway and three years older than Bosse Field in Evansville, Indiana. You can still visit Rickwood Field and we were fortunate enough to see it being used as there was a U17 game going on at the time. (If you are interested in visiting that ballpark, however, you should go sooner rather than later, because if three fans all sneezed at the same time, it looks as if the whole place would fall over.)

Many major leaguers including three generations of Hairstons (Sam, Jerry, and Jerry, Jr.), former Oriole and Red Lee May, Cleon Jones, and several others hail from Birmingham. The museum also includes exhibits on the industrial leagues that were prevalent in the city with Birmingham’s iron and steel industry contributing their share of teams. The NSLM ably fulfills its stated mission of telling the story of “African-American baseball in America through the eyes of Birmingham, Alabama.”

We were warmly greeted by the Deputy Director of the Museum, Mr. Frank Adams, a very knowledgeable gentleman and also a real baseball guy. I highly recommend a visit to this wonderful museum.