Goodbye to Tommy Brown
 

Former Dodger Tommy Brown died today at the age of 97.

From his SABR bio :
Tommy was only seventeen years old when he hit that first home run. Five days later, he connected for another circuit blast off Adrian Zabala of the New York Giants. As a result, he is both the youngest and second youngest player ever to homer in a Major League game.

The scored Dodgers program is for his second career homer on Aug 25, 1945

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/...251BRO1945.htm


The scored Cards scorecard is the last game from his career that I have where he is mentioned (shown on the roster as #12). He didn't play in this game on Sept 20, 1953, but he only made three more appearance in his career on Sept 21-22-25.

RIP. He was the last living player who appeared on a card from the 1940s (1949 Bowman). He signed one for me a few years ago, I'll have to dig it up and post it.

Sad. RIP...

Sad news...I think that leaves Bobby Shantz as the only person alive to have played in an American League or National League game prior to 1950...and he will be 100 this year.

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I just read that Brown was the second youngest major leaguer ever, after Joe Nuxhall. I had no idea.

Random thoughts about player longevity
 

Looking at Tommy Brown's record from 1945, I wondered about the longevity of other players on that team, as I knew Branca had lived to a ripe age. I know it sounds unlikely, but there was some impressive fountain-of-youth water in Brooklyn in 1945. They had a roster full of obscure dudes like every team in '45, but look at these lifespans-

Bordagaray 1910-2000 90
Branca 1926-2016 90
Lund 1923-2013 90
Buker 1918-2011 93
Rudolph 1909-2003 94
Pfund 1919-2016 97
Olmo 1919-2017 98
Brown 1927-2025 98
Hayworth 1904-2002 98
Basinski 1922-2021 99
Hathaway 1916-2015 99
Sukeforth 1901-2000 99
Sandlock 1915-2016 101

Almost half the team's roster (20) lived to be at least 85. 8 guys made it to 97 - to me that's amazing.

Then for a point of comparison, I checked the 1910 Brooklyn team (pretty much a random choice) - only 2 guys lived to 85 or more (Rucker and Knetzer). Just over half were dead before the age of 70.