Pete Browning - Personal Life

Personal Life

Browning was tormented for his entire life by mastoiditis, a serious infection of the inner ear usually contracted during childhood, which can result in deafness, vertigo, facial palsy, and brain damage. As a result, he lost his hearing at a young age, and was faced with frequent bouts of crippling head pain. The deafness had led Browning to drop out of school at an early age, so that he went through life as a virtual illiterate, and in order to deaden the physical pain resulting from his condition, he began drinking heavily in his youth. The drinking quickly spiraled out of control; he often appeared on the field while drunk, and was suspended for the final two months of the 1889 season for drunkenness, along with other shorter suspensions at different times. He was unable to stop, however, frequently stating, "I can't hit the ball until I hit the bottle."

Browning was a man of eccentric personal habits, particularly in relation to his bats. He spoke to them, and gave each one a name, often that of a Biblical figure. In the belief that any individual bat contained only a certain number of hits, he would periodically "retire" bats, keeping vast numbers of the retired ones in the home he shared with his mother. These bats were 37 inches long and 48 ounces in weight, enormous even by the standards of the time. He also habitually stared at the sun, thinking that by doing so, he would strengthen his eyes. He also "cleansed" his eyes when travelling by train by sticking his head out the window in an effort to catch cinders in them. Browning also computed his average on his cuffs on a regular basis, and was not above announcing to all when his train arrived at a depot that he was the champion batter of the American Association.

He remained a lifelong bachelor, though his affection for prostitutes was a matter of much discussion in the newspapers.

After his retirement as a player, Browning worked as a cigar salesman and owned a bar, which ultimately failed; but his physical condition continued to deteriorate due to the mastoiditis and resulting complications. He remained a popular Louisville figure until June 7, 1905, when he was declared insane and committed to a local asylum (Lakeland). A sister released him two weeks later, but a month after that, he was in the hospital, suffering from a general physical collapse. He died in Louisville on September 10 of that year at age 44. The specific cause of death was listed as asthenia (a weakening of the body), a cover-all medical term used by doctors of that time. However, he no doubt suffered from a wide variety of serious physical complaints. In addition to the mastoiditis, he was afflicted with cancer, advanced cirrhosis of the liver, alcohol-related brain damage, and according to some sources, paresis. He is buried in historic Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.

(Some sources report that he died in an insane asylum. This is incorrect, though he was in Lakeland Asylum a short time before he died.)