April 1, 1954: Integrated baseball briefly comes to Birmingham as Cardinals beat White Sox in exhibition

“It shall be unlawful for a negro and a white person to play together, or in company with each other in any game of cards, dice, dominoes, checkers, baseball, softball, football, basketball, or similar game.” – Birmingham City Code (Section 597, Ordinance 798-F)1

The rule was no longer Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor’s to enforce. The staunch segregationist, a former announcer for the all-White Birmingham Barons minor-league team, had decided in 1953 not to seek a fifth term as Birmingham’s public safety commissioner. The voluntary exit allowed him to escape a third impeachment trial, the first two of which had ended in mistrials. So ended an almost-two-decade reign marred by charges of “moral turpitude”: assaulting a switchboard operator at City Hall, using prisoners for personal yardwork, and spending a Friday night with a woman other than his wife in a hotel.2

With Connor gone, outside forces pressured the Birmingham City Commission to loosen its grip. The Milwaukee Braves and defending National League-champion Brooklyn Dodgers announced on January 26, 1954, that they would play two preseason games in the city that spring – with no plans to scratch players of color from their lineups.3

Within hours the body took a formal step toward allowing integrated professional baseball and football games.4 The commissioners, hoping to avoid costly boycotts from America’s growing number of mixed pro teams in both sports, gave their okay. “It simply boiled down to this: accept Negroes or face social ostracism from the major-league elite,” wrote an Atlanta Daily World columnist, declaring that “baseball took the initiative.”5

The result was later described as “Bull Connor’s worst nightmare”6 – the first organized mixed-race ballgames under Birmingham code – and by January 29 there were four such games scheduled.7 The St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago White Sox planned to visit Rickwood Field on April 1, followed by the Dodgers and Braves on April 2 and 3, and the Cleveland Indians and New York Giants on April 7.8 In a city where swimming pools, playgrounds, restaurants, buses, schools, theaters, hotels, ballpark seats, all amateur events, and most other professional contests remained divided by race, these exhibitions brought tastes of change.

To start the April 1 showcase, Chicago left fielder Bob Boyd and third baseman Minnie Miñoso, both former Negro Leaguers, took their positions alongside White teammates. Cardinals rookie Tom Alston prepared to become the first Black batter to face a White pitcher in Rickwood’s 44-year history. Looking on, according to the Birmingham Post-Herald, was a Thursday afternoon crowd of “2,950, of which nearly 1,000 were Negro fans,” still more or less segregated.9

The Cardinals slugged early. Red Schoendienst, batting second, sent a pitch by Birmingham native Virgil Trucks into the right-field bleachers. After Stan Musial singled, a home run by Joe Frazier flew past where Schoendienst had hit his, giving St. Louis a 3-0 lead.

Alston, who had homered 23 times for minor-league San Diego in 1953, fell short this time but still reached base.10 The 6-foot-5 28-year-old hit a roller that slid past Chicago doorkeeper Ferris Fain. He touched first safely.

Trucks picked off Alston moments later – and followed up with three scoreless frames, two of them hitless.

But for the 36-year-old White Sox pitcher who admittedly had “never won a ballgame at Rickwood in my life,” his teammates’ shaky fielding and inconsistent offense didn’t help.11 A third-inning double by Red Wilson, a sacrifice by Trucks, and a single by Chico Carrasquel provided just one run. Fain dropped a toss by Trucks in the fourth, which left Cardinals sophomore Ray Jablonski safe at first base. Center fielder Jim Rivera’s two errors, according to The Birmingham News, included “dropping a routine fly ball in center that a grammar school lad could have handled.”12 Trucks left the game with a 3-1 deficit after four innings, which once again disqualified him from a win.

Chicago reliever Mike Fornieles inherited the lack of support. In the bottom of the fourth, before Fornieles even took the mound, Rivera was picked off at first base. “Rivera looked very bad,” the Post-Herald’s Naylor Stone wrote, “when Cardinals starter Vic] Raschi’s throw caught him far off base.”13

The White Sox’s fielding woes also persisted. A fifth-inning misplay by Fain, who ended the day with three errors, put Schoendienst on base.14 The next hitter, Musial, towered a two-run homer over the right-field scoreboard. St. Louis 5, Chicago 1.

Raschi held his own through five. The four-time New York Yankees All-Star and six-time World Series champion had turned 35 four days earlier and was no longer in the organization he had been with since 1941, but neither of those changes fazed him. Aside from three hits and a run surrendered in the third, he threw four hitless innings. Even in Cardinals red, he resembled “the Yankee hurler of old,” according to Stone.15

St. Louis gave its bullpen two insurance runs. In the seventh inning, Alex Grammas, a Birminghamian who spent winters at his father’s candy factory,16 tripled to deep left-center and scored on a grounder by Rip Repulski. Frazier’s second home run of the day, this one to right-center off 30-year-old soon-to-be-rookie Dick Strahs, made the score 7-1 in the eighth.17

Three Chicago homers halved the margin. Carrasquel knocked one past the left-field bleachers in the eighth, off Joe Presko. Willard Marshall and Rivera hit back-to-back right-field shots in the ninth, both off Birmingham-area native Royce Lint.

Still, a White Sox comeback was not to be. For the final two outs, St. Louis manager Eddie Stanky – who called Fairhope, Alabama, home18 – swapped lefty Lint for righty Cot Deal. Cass Michaels lined to left fielder Musial. To quote the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a “curved third strike past Carrasquel” cemented the Cardinals’ 7-4 victory.19

Raschi earned the win. Trucks carried the loss. And ahead of a Cardinals-White Sox exhibition the following week in Memphis20 – which happened to be that city’s first integrated pro sporting event21 – Grammas took some of his father’s candy for the road.22

The Post-Herald’s Clarke Stallworth reported his own takeaway: Birmingham’s “first ‘mixed’ baseball game” had gone off “without a hitch. There were no boos, and applause was heard, when the Negro batters came to the plate.”23

The next two days brought larger crowds. On Friday, April 2, 4,823 fans watched the Milwaukee Braves – featuring Joe Adcock, Eddie Mathews, Billy Bruton, Jim Pendleton, Charlie White, and a rookie from Mobile named Henry Aaron – trounce Joe Black and the Brooklyn Dodgers’ bullpen, 17-2.24 The April 3 pack of 10,474 saw Brooklyn’s Jackie Robinson, Sandy Amorós, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and company best Milwaukee’s Warren Spahn with a 9-1 victory.25

The Associated Black Press reported “no racial incidents … as a result of the mixed play” between the Braves and Dodgers, but one account stated otherwise. “I never heard so many curses in my life,” Aaron said in an interview published in 1964, noting that Brooklyn received more ire for having more Black players than Milwaukee did. “The Dodgers had seven or eight Negro ballplayers, all very good. … [The crowd] was giving it to Jackie and Campy and Newcombe.”26

The April 7 game lent a preview of that year’s World Series. Willie Mays, who had played at Rickwood with the Negro American League’s Black Barons while still attending Fairfield Industrial High School, returned with Monte Irvin, Hank Thompson, Alvin Dark, and his other Giants teammates.27 Against an Indians cast that included Larry Doby, Luke Easter, and Bobby Ávila, the eventual 1954 champions won, 2-1. A Wednesday afternoon crowd upwards of 3,600 watched.28

However loud or quiet the ballpark vitriol, voters in Alabama’s long-segregated capital made their disapproval known. Before the exhibitions, a group called the Citizens Segregation Committee had scored 10,000 signatures, double the threshold for a citywide referendum.29 The majority-White city voted on June 1, by a roughly 3-1 margin, to reinstate Ordinance 798-F in full.30 The baseball exemption was dead.31 “So far as is generally known,” wrote the Post-Herald’s Martin Waldron, “Birmingham now is the only large city in the country which has a law prohibiting Negroes and whites from playing sports together.”32

And Bull Connor made sure of it. He recaptured his old seat in June 1957 by defeating Robert Lindbergh, the public safety commissioner who had permitted the mixed-race games.

Baseball in Birmingham suffered. A 1961 mandate by Major League Baseball required all minor-league clubs, including the Barons, to allow players of color. Barons owner Albert Belcher, whom Connor urged not to accept “the mongrelization of our great national pastime,” chose to disband the team.33 The owner’s decision, paired with the 1960 breakup of the city’s Negro American League team, left Birmingham without professional baseball for the first time in more than half a century.34

Only after Connor’s job was eliminated in 1963, following a vote to replace Birmingham’s commission-style government with a mayor-council system, did the pros return.35 With each of the city’s segregation ordinances finally repealed, the Barons reemerged in 1964 – as an integrated team in a desegregated ballpark.

On August 3, 1964, Birmingham-born Charlie Finley brought his Kansas City Athletics to play their new Double-A affiliate. The Barons won, 7-4, before Rickwood’s third-largest baseball crowd up to that point: 16,912. Kids scaled the fences to chase loose balls. A headline in the next day’s Birmingham News read, “AN OLD GAME IS A SWEET SONG AGAIN.”36

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Thomas J. Brown Jr. and copy-edited by Mike Eisenbath. Additional thanks to Gary Belleville, Kurt Blumenau, and John Fredland for their input.

Photo credit: Chris “Mojo” Denbow/Creative Commons

Sources

In addition to the sources listed in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com for player and team information.

Notes

1 The full text of “Ordinance 798-F: An Ordinance to Amend Section 597 of the General Code of the City of Birmingham of 1944” – as approved on September 19, 1950 – is available in Birmingham Post-Herald, September 21, 1950: 2.

2 “‘Connor Unfit – Impeach Him,’ Grand Jury Declares in Bareknuckle Report,” Birmingham News, February 8, 1952: 1; “Here’s Text of Grand Jury’s Scathing Report on Connor and Call for His Impeachment,” Birmingham News, February 8, 1952: 2.

3 “City Abolishes Color Line in Sports Events,” Birmingham News, January 26, 1954: 1; Marion E. Jackson, “Sports of the World,” Atlanta Daily World, January 28, 1954: 5.

4 Initial news reports stated that the Birmingham City Commission had planned to drop the words “baseball,” “football,” and “or similar game[s]” from Ordinance 798-F. (See “City Abolishes Color Line in Sports Events,” Birmingham News, January 26, 1954: 1.) But according to the Birmingham Post-Herald, the commission’s members later clarified that “their intention was to allow only professional baseball and football to be unsegregated.” “Here’s What the New Sports Plan Provides,” Birmingham Post-Herald, March 23, 1954: 1.

5 Jackson, “Sports of the World.”

6 Tom Verducci, “Rickwood Field Was a Scene of Change for Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron,” Sports Illustrated online, June 20, 2024, https://www.si.com/mlb/rickwood-field-birmingham-jackie-robinson-hank-aaron-segregation. Accessed March 2026.

7 “Seven Major League Teams Appear Here,” Birmingham News, January 29, 1954: 30.

8 In addition to the three mixed-race major-league games at Rickwood between April 1 and 7, the Philadelphia Phillies and minor-league Birmingham Barons played an exhibition on April 4. That game featured only White players, as neither team had yet signed any players of color. The Barons won, 2-1. Naylor Stone, “Urban Pitches Barons Over Phillies, 2 to 1,” Birmingham Post-Herald, April 5, 1954: 1.

9 Unless otherwise noted, all play-by-play details from the April 1 exhibition come from these sources: Naylor Stone, “Raschi, Musial Star as Cards Down Trucks, White Sox, 7-4,” Birmingham Post-Herald, April 2, 1954: 12; Walton Lowry, “Braves, Dodgers Move in for Two Rickwood Tilts,” Birmingham News, April 2, 1954: 23; “Cards Box Score,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 2, 1954: 2B.

10 Accounts differ regarding how Alston reached base. Verducci writes that Alston singled, but the box scores published on April 2 in The Birmingham News (page 23), Birmingham Post-Herald (12), St. Louis Post-Dispatch (8C) and St. Louis Globe-Democrat (2B) show Alston as hitless.

11 Lowry, “Braves, Dodgers Move in for Two Rickwood Tilts.”

12 Lowry, “Braves, Dodgers Move in for Two Rickwood Tilts.”

13 Stone, “Raschi, Musial Star as Cards Down Trucks, White Sox, 7-4.”

14 Stone’s account does not elaborate on Fain’s fifth-inning error, only writing that it allowed Schoendienst to reach base safely.

15 Stone, “Raschi Musial Star as Cards Down Trucks, White Sox, 7-4.”

16 Walton Lowry, “Raschi vs. Trucks in Exhibition Opener Tomorrow,” Birmingham News, March 31, 1954: 32.

17 Strahs made his major-league debut on July 24, 1954. His short big-league career included only nine games, all with the ’54 White Sox.

18 Fairhope sits on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, in southern Alabama. southern coast, near Mobile. It is about a four-hour drive from Birmingham, which is in the north-central part of the state.

19 Bob Broeg, “Cards Improved, Raschi Is Seen as Key to Pennant Chances,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 2, 1954: 8C.

20 The Cardinals ended the 1954 season ranked sixth in the National League, with a 72-82 record that left them 25 games behind the first-place New York Giants. The White Sox, at 94-60, finished 17 games behind the American League-champion Cleveland Indians.

21 Associated Negro Press, “White Sox Break Baseball Color Line in Memphis,” Atlanta Daily World, April 11, 1954: 7.

22 Broeg, “Cards Improved, Raschi Is Seen as Key to Pennant Chances.”

23 Clarke Stallworth, “Stan the Man Brings Baseball Fever Here,” Birmingham Post-Herald, April 2, 1954: 32.

24 A box score of the April 2 game, which includes information on turnout, is available on Birmingham Post-Herald, April 3, 1954: 12.

25 A box score of the April 3 game, including attendance data, is available on Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 4, 1954: 24.

26 Jackie Robinson, Baseball Has Done It (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1964), 131-32.

27 The 1954 season marked Mays’s first since completing his military service. He had been drafted into the US Army in 1952, missing most of the ’52 campaign and all of ’53.

28 Game accounts by The Birmingham News and Birmingham Post-Herald present conflicting attendance data. Reporters from both newspapers wrote that the turnout was 3,667, but nearby box scores show the total at 3,677. (See Alf Van Hoose, “Giants Impressive in 2-1 Victory Over Tribe,” Birmingham News, April 8, 1954: 57; Bob Phillips, “Giants Shade Indians,” Birmingham Post-Herald, April 8, 1954: 29.)

29 Martin Waldron, “Commission Says – Sports Racial Ease to Stay Until Vote,” Birmingham Post-Herald, March 16, 1954: 1.

30 U.S. Census figures show that Birmingham remained a majority-White city until sometime between 1970 and 1980. (See “Government Documents – Birmingham’s Population, 1880-2020,” Birmingham Public Library, https://www.cobpl.org/resources/government/BirminghamPopulation.aspx. Accessed March 2026.) According to The Birmingham News, “Vote for the segregated play ordinance was 16,686, with 5,890 cast against it. This was in 164 of the city’s 179 boxes.” (See “Mixed Sport Events Out – Voters Overwhelmingly Back Continued Segregation, Birmingham News, June 2, 1954: 31.)

31 In the years immediately after Birmingham voters reinstated the segregation ordinance, multiple major-league teams continued playing exhibitions at Rickwood Field, albeit with White players only.

32 Martin Waldron, “Segregation Voted for City Sports,” Birmingham Post-Herald, June 2, 1954: 1.

33 Larry Colton, Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South’s Most Compelling Pennant Race (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2013), 75-76.

34 Before 1961, Birmingham had last been without a professional ballclub in 1899 and 1900, after the Southern League’s Birmingham Reds folded.

35 The end of Birmingham’s commission-style government did not end Connor’s political career. He went on to serve eight years as president of the Alabama Public Service Commission, from 1965 to 1972.

36 Benny Marshall, “Farmhand Barons Take Parent A’s to the Woodshed,” Birmingham News, August 4, 1964: 1; Benny Marshall, “An Old Game Is a Sweet Song Again,” Birmingham News, August 4, 1964: 12.