Family members of late baseball legend and Birmingham-native Willie Mays are working to preserve his childhood home in Fairfield.

Mays, who died earlier this year at the age of 93, was born in Westfield, a coal-mining company town near Fairfield. The house Mays grew up in with his father, aunts, and other family members sits today in a dilapidated state, heavily damaged by fire and years of neglect.

Now Mays’ son Michael is leading an effort to turn the ruined house into a site that both honors his father’s achievements and offers a glimpse of what life was like in Birmingham in the 1930s. In an interview with CBS 42, Michael said he is working with a group of family members, contractors and baseball enthusiasts to submit a bid to the City of Fairfield to take over the property and turn it into a museum.

Among those working on the project is former Auburn football star Reggie Torbor, who is now the president of Pylon Building Group. Torbor says he feels very optimistic about the task of preserving and restoring the property.

“From a preservation standpoint, if you’re asking me can it be preserved – I would say yes, it can.”

-Reggie Torbor, president of Pylon Building Group

For now, Michael Mays and his partners are awaiting a response on their bid to the city. It would be the latest in a wave of recent efforts in Birmingham to recognize the contributions and achievements of Willie Mays and other Black baseball stars to the history of both baseball and the city of Birmingham.