KINSTON — Numerous dents and scrapes are still visible on the side of a shoddy old building just beyond the left field wall at Grainger Stadium.

Carl Long claims to be the culprit.

“I owned that building,” said Long, with a nostalgic grin. “I hit balls up there all the time.”

Long, a Negro League Hall of Fame inductee, spoke to the Cary Bulls between their two games on championship Sunday. He preached about the importance of education, hardships of race barriers and the joys of success.

“Playing in the Negro League, they taught me all about life,” said Long, who was the first black player to play in the Carolina League when he signed with the Kinston Eagles in 1956. “They paid me $150 a month, but I would have played baseball for nothing.”

Long left his hometown of Rock Hill, S.C., when he was just 14 to play in the Negro League against some of baseball’s most legendary players.

“I looked up and saw Hank Aaron playing shortstop for the Indianapolis Clowns, and I didn’t know who he was,” said Long. “But I knew that I didn’t know how to play him. I couldn’t get him out, that’s how good of a hitter he was.”

Before signing with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1954, Long returned home to Rock Hill to focus on education, a move that secured his life after baseball.

“You’ve got to get your education,” Long said. “I got my education because I already knew how to play baseball. Education was the key.”

A shoulder injury in 1957 ended Long’s promising career, and he moved back to Kinston to become the town’s first black deputy sheriff at a time when civil rights was at the forefront of American politics.

“When Martin Luther King got killed, I was the one who kept this town from burning down,” Long said. “I did a whole lot for Kinston, and Kinston has done a whole lot for me.”

Long still resides in Kinston and makes regular appearances at Grainger Stadium, like on Sunday. Cary Bulls centerfielder Grant Shambley enjoyed the pregame talk.

“There are not many people from the Negro Leagues around anymore. So to get him to be so close and talk to all of us, it was really cool,” Shambley said. “He’s been through a lot, so we can learn from him.”