MLB held a regular season game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama on June 20th, 2024 as a tribute to the Negro Leagues.
As the oldest professional ballpark in America, Rickwood Field has seen a little bit of everything in its 114 years. This includes segregated baseball as home to the Black Barons, a women's suffrage event, a Klan rally, and eventually the first integrated sports team in Alabama.
It's a challenging and complicated story to tell. And unfortunately, very little of this history was captured on film. But we needed to promote the cultural relevancy of the game, while educating and entertaining our audience.
So we partnered with NPR and its local affiliates in New Orleans and Baton Rouge to create "Road to Rickwood," a four-part narrative podcast series that explores the intersection between baseball and the Civil Rights Movement, hosted by Alabama native Roy Wood Jr.
Roy brings this story to life through his own commentary alongside interviews of historians, former Negro Leaguers, members of Birmingham's first integrated baseball team, MLB executives, and other key players.
The episodes were released each week leading up to the game, and the series was well received by both baseball fans and those who don't even follow the sport. It was featured in "New & Noteworthy" on Apple, it reached the top ten in the History category, and the supporting social content we created drove over 8 million impressions. Road to Rickwood has also been named a Finalist in two categories at the Signal Awards, which recognize the podcasts that define culture. And as for the game itself, the St Louis Cardinals defeated the San Francisco Giants in front of the largest Thursday night televised baseball audience in two years.
The Road to Rickwood trailer is below, and the full series is available on Apple, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts.
During the 2022 Season, our team created weekly spots under the “Enjoy the Show” campaign to highlight various storylines as they naturally unfolded. When the Postseason arrived, we turned things up a notch, creating 20 contextually relevant spots across one crazy, exciting month of baseball. It was a massive, worthwhile undertaking to emotionally connect with fans while keeping pace with the action on the field.
We created a spot for MLB Shop to celebrate the authentic connection between baseball fandom, community, and culture.
Each year, the winner of the Home Run Derby is awarded a custom-made chain. We took fans behind the scenes to show how this iconic piece of hardware is made.
For the 2023 Season, MLB introduced a handful of rules changes, bringing more excitement and pace back to the game. We created a series of spots highlighting the drama of the new pitch timer.