Tommy Brown, who became the youngest position player in modern major-league baseball when he made his debut as a shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers in August 1944 at the age of 16, died on Wednesday in Altamonte Springs, Fla. He was 97.

His daughter, Pamela Brown Leon, said the cause was complications of a recent fall at a rehabilitation center near where he lived in Altamonte Springs, north of Orlando.

In the spring of 1943, Brown was among some 3,000 teenagers attending a Brooklyn Dodgers tryout camp at the Parade Ground, the baseball complex at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. The Dodgers signed him to their farm system at the outset of the following season.

On Aug. 3, 1944, newly called up by the Dodgers from their farm team in Newport News, Va., Brown made his major league debut playing shortstop in a doubleheader against the Chicago Cubs at Ebbets Field, the Dodgers’ home stadium.

Playing in both games, Brown had a double and a single but let a ground ball go through his legs, and his tosses in infield warm-ups went sailing beyond the reach of the Dodgers’ 6-foot-6 first baseman, Howie Schultz, who was known as Steeple.

Though he was nervous on that long August afternoon, Brown entered the baseball record books, and remained there.