AFRICATOWN — Cleon Jones was born here and he will die here and he will spend his remaining days working so that his community long outlives him. He will play the final few innings like Gil Hodges would have wanted: With purpose. With passion. With belief.

Jones has plenty of time left. The celebrated Mets left fielder just turned 80, making him middle-aged in this Alabama town starving for young blood. It isn’t like when he grew up on a block with 75 other kids, when the narrow roads were made from the region’s famed red clay and cars rarely touched them. He had no indoor plumbing and no electricity and no idea that Africatown’s greatest hardships were still ahead.

He gives a guided tour of his hometown, surveying the damage from decades of neglect, abuse, indifference and poverty. There is a vacant lot. There is another one. That home is boarded up. That one’s been empty for years. Bars affixed to windows and doors are among the most common features. Uninviting collages of garbage, tires, broken furniture and appliances rest alongside the roads, haphazardly strewn among overgrown weeds.

“I saw what this community could do, and to look at it now is depressing,” Jones said. “People looked out for another. It was supportive. You knew everybody. Everybody knew you. You didn’t have to lock your doors. You slept with the windows open.