Roy S. Johnson: Did MLB Rickwood boost minority and women-owned businesses? [Video]

Bernadine Birdsong confesses: She doesn’t know sports. Not even football, admits the owner of Michael’s, the elegant restaurant on Birmingham’s southside with a left-field home run view of Region’s Field. On this day, while relaxing on her back porch, she laughs: “Isn’t that a shame?”

Not surprisingly, given the location of her business, baseball, of all the sports, “is the one I do kind of understand.”

Birdsong certainly knows business. Knows why it is vital for small businesses such as hers to capitalize when major events come to the city.

“It’s life-changing,” she says. “They’ll come in and have an impact in one week that it would have taken me a month to raise.”

Last month, Major League Baseball descended upon Birmingham for several days of events surrounding MLB at Rickwood: A Salute to the Negro Leagues, which culminated with a regular-season game between the San Francisco Giants and St. …