Tommy Brown

During WW II, major league baseball made do with players who were too young or too old to be drafted, or physically unfit for active duty. In 1943 Brooklyn-born Tommy Brown was a fifteen-year-old high school dropout working on the New York docks and playing sandlot baseball on weekends. One year later he became the youngest player ever to start a major league game and a year later the youngest to hit a home run. He had a nine-year career 1944-1953 as a utility infielder and outfielder with the Dodgers, Phillies and Cubs.

Interview by Norman L. Macht
Brentwood, Tennessee
1994

In 1943 a friend of mine was invited to a tryout at Ebbets Field and he asked me to go with him, so I went along. They stuck a number on my back and I worked out. I guess I had a good day because they asked me to come back the next day. I didn’t get a contract until December, when they invited me to spring training at Bear Mountain, New York, near West Point. My bonus was a ferryboat ride up the Hudson River to West Point.

They sent me to Newport News in the Piedmont League. I was hitting but I had a scatter-arm. One day in July the manager, Jake Pitler, got a call from [Brooklyn general manager] Branch Rickey. Pitler told him, “I have a shortstop who can run and hit. But his throwing is so wild, some of the fans behind first base wear gloves to catch his overthrows.”

Rickey said, “How old is he?”

“Sixteen.”

“Put him on the next train.”

I didn’t really want to go. I was having fun in Newport News.

[At the age of 16 years seven months twenty-seven days, Brown started both games of a doubleheader against the Cubs.]

I was nervous. Our first baseman was 6-foot-6 Howie Schultz. The first ball hit to me I threw over his head way up in the stands. Leo Durocher called me “Buckshot.” Other players called me “Barbasol” because I was the only player who didn’t have to shave.

Last spring my house burned down with all my scrapbooks and collection of autographed bats and balls.