Last Updated: Monday, February 08, 2016, 7:01 PM EST
In the years before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, and in the few years to follow, the predominantly African-American Negro Leagues thrived.
Tampa native Clifford “Quack” Brown played shortstop and second base for the Philadelphia Stars from 1949 to 1951.
Brown said players faced discrimination while on the road, like the time a gas station owner wouldn’t let the team fill up at the pumps.
“Oscar Charleston was the manager he said 'The hell with that,' ” Brown said. “So we pushed the bus about 10 miles down to another station.”
Brown was signed to the Stars at just 16 years old. Earning just $200 a month, Brown played against future baseball legends like Willie Mays.
“We had to get permission from our mothers to go,” Brown said. “We were so young.”
In 1951, Brown got what could’ve been his big break, when he was selected to play for the St. Louis Cardinals. In the end, racial tensions in the South kept him from going.
“Then they wanted to send us to class D in Mississippi,” Brown said. “I said 'No.' We weren’t about to go to Mississippi back in those times.”
Years after his professional career ended, Brown returned to the fields he played as a kid to inspire a new generation.
By then, the field had become home the Belmont Heights Little League, which sent teams to the Little League World Series three different times in the 1970s and 80s.
It’s also where players like Gary Sheffield, Derek Bell and Dwight Gooden began their careers.
Brown spent 11 years coaching young players, including his own son. Now 85-years-old, Brown lives in Tampa with his wife. He says he still thinks about playing in the Negro Leagues every day.