Pete Browning - Professional Career

Professional Career

Browning quickly distinguished himself as an exceptional slugger. He led the league in both batting (.378) and slugging (.510) in its first season, also finishing in the top five in home runs, runs, hits and total bases. He was consistently among the league's top batters through 1888, winning a second batting crown in 1885 and hitting .402 in 1887.

In 1884, he acquired his first custom-made bat from the Hillerich & Bradsby company, collecting three hits in his first game using it and beginning a baseball tradition. Or so legend has it. The true story of the Louisville Slugger bat is dealt with extensively in his biography, AMERICAN GLADIATOR (Philip Von Borries, 2007, Booklocker.com).

Twice in the decade, he hit for the cycle: on August 8, 1886, and again on June 7, 1889. He also led the league in hits, total bases and on base percentage in 1885. After suffering from mastoiditis from a young age, which caused him to lose his hearing and embarrassed him into avoiding school, resulting in essential illiteracy, he underwent the first of several surgeries to alleviate the condition in 1884, though the problem would afflict him throughout his career.

Other aspects of Browning's game were less polished; he has usually been regarded as one of the worst fielders in major league history, although some recent assessments have begun to question that view. (Notably American Gladiator, his first biography, which recounted numerous "web gems" by Browning from the beginning of his career to the very end. The revised assessment is that when Browning was sober and/or not suffering from the effects of the mastoiditis, he was a superb outfielder.)

After being used primarily as an infielder in his first three seasons, playing every position except catcher over that span, he was shifted to the outfield on a permanent basis in 1885. While the inferior equipment of the time is somewhat of a mitigating factor, Browning's playing record presented various evidence against any hidden defensive prowess. So did his unusual habit of playing the infield while standing on one leg, which he claimed to have adopted in order to avoid collisions with other players; however, some sources have noted that his probable rationale was to gain an advantage against baserunners he could not hear by aiming one leg toward them, and that he continued to do so in the outfield because he couldn't hear his teammates on either side. An oft-reported story, possibly apocryphal, features one of Browning's managers claiming that the team would be better off with a wooden statue of an Indian in the outfield, since there was at least a slim chance that a batted ball might strike the statue and rebound back in the direction of the field. Indeed, he led league outfielders in errors in both 1886 and 1887. Browning's baserunning was also considered sub-par, exacerbated by his refusal to slide.

Browning lost his appetite for playing in Louisville during a hellish 1889 season. That year, the luckless franchise (by now known as the Colonels) finished last in the league with 27 wins and 111 losses, 66.5 games behind the top club. The season included not only a major league record 26-game losing streak, but also a narrow escape from the Johnstown Flood and the sport's first-ever strike. In the dispute, Browning was one of six players who refused to take the field as a protest against a series of heavy fines assessed by team owner Mordecai Davidson. The game took place as scheduled with the assistance of three local amateurs, and the striking players returned to work before the next contest. Browning finished the season with a .256 average, the first time he was not among the league's top three hitters. He left the American Association after eight seasons with a .345 career average, which would stand as the best mark by any player with more than one season in the league; Tip O'Neill ranks second at .343.

As a result of these events, as well as other labor disputes throughout the sport, Browning — along with nearly all the game's stars — chose to jump to the Players League for the 1890 season, and played for the Cleveland Infants. The American Association had long been considered inferior to the NL, but in that season Browning proved that he was indeed among the game's top hitters by winning his third batting title with a .373 mark. The league dissolved after its sole season, and Browning spent the remaining four years of his career bouncing around between franchises in the NL. He spent time with the Pittsburgh Pirates (1891) and Cincinnati Reds (1891–92), then was back with the Colonels, who had joined the NL in a league merger (1892–93), before ending his major-league career in 1894 with a handful of appearances for the St. Louis Browns and Brooklyn Bridegrooms in the National League. (He began the 1894 season playing minor-league ball for "Kelly's Killers" of Allentown, Pa. in the Pennsylvania State League. The team was managed by future Hall-of-Famer Mike "King" Kelly.)

His last professional season was in 1896 with the Columbus Buckeyes in the Western League.

In the years before 1893, among players with at least 2500 career at bats, his batting average of .341 ranked behind only Dan Brouthers (.343) and Dave Orr (.342), with his slugging mark of .467 trailing only those of Brouthers (.520), Orr (.502), Roger Connor (.488) and Sam Thompson (.468). His recognized career hit total through 1893 ranked 10th in major league history to that point. Brouthers, a five-time champion, was the only other major league player to win more than two batting titles in the 19th century.