PHILADELPHIA — God, imagine it: 3 a.m. inside the living room of a Southwest Philadelphia home in the early 1960s, three men seated there, each of them a famous athlete, each of them a running back in the National Football League. The house belonged to Clarence Peaks, the Eagles’ starting fullback then, and from time to time, he would invite over two of his friends — his teammate Timmy Brown and a fellow named Jim Brown — to play chess.
His son Clarence Jr., no more than 7 or 8 years old at the time, would peek in and listen.
“It was the most fascinating thing I’ve ever witnessed,” Clarence Jr. said by phone Tuesday morning. “I thought they were the most intelligent men I’d heard.”
