Tommy Brown, a career utility player and the final living member of the color-barrier-breaking 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, has passed away at the age of 97.
Brown died Wednesday at a rehabilitation center in the Orlando, Florida suburb of Altamonte Springs. He was there after breaking his hip and arm in a fall.
His oldest daughter, Paula Brown Caplice, confirmed the news to the Associated Press, saying, ‘He had a nice live and he loved his sports.’
Brown was born in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bensonhurst in 1927, he tried out for his hometown Dodgers in 1943.
After playing in the minors in the first four months of the 1944 season in Newport News, Virginia, he made his major league debut with the Dodgers on August 3, 1944 against the Chicago Cubs at his home stadium of Ebbets Field. He hit a double in his debut for his first major league hit.
At the time, he was the youngest non-pitcher to ever play in a major league game and the second-youngest player ever after left-handed-hurler Joe Nuxhall made his debut the same year at age 15.
Tommy Brown, the final living member of the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, has died at the age of 97
Brown (fourth from left, top row) was part of the team that broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947 when the Dodgers promoted Jackie Robinson (second from right, third row)
Brown (front row, pipe) was a Brooklyn native who first played for his hometown team in 1944
Over a year on from his debut on August 20, 1945, Brown hit a home run against the Pittsburgh Pirates off Preacher Roe to set the MLB record for the youngest player to ever hit a home run at the age of 17 years, 257 days old. The record still stands today.
Brown Caplice told the AP that every year, she would call her father on August 20 to ask him what had happened on that very day.
‘He said, ‘Ah, yes, I hit my first home run,” she said. ‘The Dodgers signed Preacher Roe a few years later. My dad joked his home run ability went down when Preacher Roe signed. They became good friends.’
After spending 1946 serving in the US Army, he returned to Brooklyn to play in the 1947 season.
That year, Brooklyn general manager Branch Rickey promoted first baseman Jackie Robinson to the team – making him the first Black player in the history of Major League Baseball.
Robinson’s addition to the squad was a contentious decision among some in the clubhouse, with a petition being passed around by several white players on the team to protest the promotion of a black player.
“He said, ‘I’m not signing anything like that,'” Brown Caplice said. “I thought that was pretty standup for a 20-year-old on a club with a lot of senior players trying to bully. That told me who he really was.”
Brown Caplice added that her mother, Ann, became friends with Robinson’s wife, Rachel.
Brown (front row, far left) played in two World Series with Brooklyn in both 1947 and 1949
In 1951, the Dodgers traded him to the Phladelphia Phillies. Philly then sold his contract to the Chicago Cubs the following season. Brown’s final season in the major leagues was 1953.
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1947 marked Brown’s first appearance in a World Series. The Dodgers lost to the crosstown rival New York Yankees in seven games. He would play in one more World Series with the Dodgers in 1949 – losing once again to the Yankees, this time in five games.
Brown continued to play for his hometown team until the Dodgers traded him to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1951. After that year, Philadelphia sold his contract to the Cubs.
By 1953, Brown’s days in the majors were over. He was just 25 years old when he made his final MLB appearance. Brown finished his time at the top of the baseball world as a career .241 hitter with 31 home runs and 159 RBIs.
He would continue to play baseball in the minor leagues until 1959 before retiring. He then moved to Tennessee where he worked at a Ford plant until he retired from that profession in 1993.
Brown is survived by Paula as well as his daughters Michele and Pamela and a son, Bill.
With Brown now passed, only one MLB player from the 1940s remains alive: Bobby Shantz, a pitcher who began his career with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1949.
Not only was Brown the final member of that memorable Dodgers team, he was the last living player who ever took the field in the midst of World War II.