On the blog today, we spotlight SHOULD-BE Hall of Famer Pete Browning, from my 2018 custom "19th Century Base Ball Champions" set:
How is this man still not in the Hall!?
Over
the course of his tumultuous 13-year career, he took home three batting
titles, topped .400 in 1887 when he also stole 103 bases, and finished
with a .341 career average.
He is also famously the man who
put "Louisville Slugger" on the map, with company founder John Andrew
"Bud" Hillerich custom-making Browning a bat when he was mired in a
slump.
Almost at the level of "quirky" as Rube Waddell, please do yourself a favor and read more about his life here:
Nevertheless,
by the time he retired after the 1894 season, Browning finished with a
.341 average, with 1646 hits over 4820 at-bats, with a .403 OBP while
stealing 258 bases and scoring 954 runs.
Because so much of
his career was in the American Association, playing for Louisville, it
seems to have kept him out of the Hall, where I feel he should be.
