The San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals will pay homage to the Negro Leagues by wearing throwback uniforms for their June 20 game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama.
The uniforms are designed as tributes to the Negro Leagues teams San Francisco Sea Lions and St. Louis Stars, the MLB announced Wednesday.
Rickwood Field was from 1924 to 1960 the home of the Birmingham Black Barons, the Negro Leagues team where Willie Mays got his professional start in 1948.
The Black Barons will be honored two days prior to the Giants and Cardinals game when the Birmingham Barons, an affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, and the Montgomery Biscuits, an affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, face off on June 18 at Rickwood Field.
The Barons will wear Black Barons jerseys, while the Biscuits will honor the Montgomery Gray Sox.
The San Francisco Sea Lions were members of the West Coast Negro Baseball League, a six-team league that played during the 1946 season.
The uniform features a bear cub rather than a sea lion because the Sea Lions purchased uniforms that were previously worn by a semi-professional team called the San Francisco Cubs, according to Ebbets Field Flannels.
The hats worn with the throwback uniforms are rumored to similarly feature the bear.
The St. Louis Stars, originally the St. Louis Giants, joined the Negro National league in 1920. The team featuring Hall of Famers Papa Bell, Mule Suttles and Willie Wells won three championships before disbanding in 1931.
Both the Giants and Cardinals have worn similar tribute jerseys multiple times. The Cardinals donned Stars jerseys in 1997, while Giants first honored the Sea Lions in 2014.
The Gray Sox played in the Negro Southern League from 1920 to 1932. The Black Barons, a team that also rostered Hall of Famers in Mays, Suttles and Satchel Paige, became full members of the Negro National League in 1925 and existed in different forms until the 1960s.
