| Willard Brown | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Outfielder | |
| Born:(1915-06-26)June 26, 1915 Shreveport, Louisiana, U.S. | |
| Died: August 4, 1996(1996-08-04) (aged 81) Houston, Texas, U.S. | |
Batted: Right Threw: Right | |
| Professional debut | |
| NgL: 1936, for the Kansas City Monarchs | |
| MLB: July 19, 1947, for the St. Louis Browns | |
| Last appearance | |
| MLB: August 17, 1947, for the St. Louis Browns | |
| NgL: 1951, for the Kansas City Monarchs | |
| MLB[a] statistics | |
| Batting average | .351 |
| Hits | 580 |
| Home runs | 54 |
| Runs batted in | 391 |
Stats atBaseball Reference  | |
| Teams | |
| Career highlights and awards | |
| |
| Member of the National | |
 Baseball Hall of Fame | |
| Induction | 2006 |
| Election method | Committee on African-American Baseball |
Willard Jessie Brown (June 26, 1915 – August 4, 1996) was an Americanbaseball player who played as an outfielder in theNegro leagues for theKansas City Monarchs and inMajor League Baseball (MLB) for theSt. Louis Browns, where he was one of the league's first African American players.[2] Often called "Home Run Brown" for making history as the first Black ballplayer to hit a home run in theAmerican League, Brown's other nicknames included "Sonny", due to his preference for crowded Sunday games, and "Ese Hombre" ("That Man"), due to his offensive dominance playing in thePuerto Rican Winter League.[2][3]
For the Monarchs, Brown led theNegro American League in hits for eight seasons (1937–39, 1941–43, 1946, 1948) andruns batted in (RBI) seven times during his career. His eight times leading a league in hits is tied withTy Cobb for most in baseball history while his seven times leading in RBI for a league is tied for second-most in baseball history withJosh Gibson; Gibson and Brown also finished in the top two in batting average in five seasons each, the most in Negro league history.[4]
In 1947, Willard Brown and fellowMonarchs playerHank Thompson both signed with theSt. Louis Browns, becoming the third and fourth Black ballplayers in the MLB and marking the first time two African Americans played as teammates on the sameMLB team.[5] Brown is a member of theNational Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
Brown was born inShreveport, Louisiana on 26 June 1915. He grew up inNatchitoches, Louisiana and in Shreveport. Brown's father was a mill laborer who became the owner of a cabinetmaking shop. Brown was a batboy in spring training for theKansas City Monarchs, as the Negro league team held its workouts in Shreveport.[6]
He began his baseball career in1934 with theMonroe Monarchs, a minor Negro league team in the Negro Southern League. In1937, he signed with the Kansas City Monarchs, for which he would play in six out of the next eight years. A rookie season of 56 games played with a .379 batting average, ten home runs, 81 hits, and 60 RBI (for which he led the latter three categories) proved to be the beginning of a career full of raw power.
During his pre-war baseball years, he established himself as having the most raw power in Negro league history, and possibly in the history of baseball. He hithome runs more often than the better knownJosh Gibson, causing Gibson to give Brown his nickname.
He also hit for abatting average of .374 in1948 and regularly hitting over .350. Brown was one of the fastest players in baseball in the late 1930s and 1940s, as well as a solid outfielder. From 1937 to 1946, Brown helped lead the Monarchs to six pennants in ten seasons. He finished second in batting average three times during this period (1937, 1939, 1943).[7]
Brown left the Monarchs for the first time in 1940, swayed by theMexican Leagues (as devised byJorge Pasquel), who raided 63 players with the promise of more money ($1,000 per month); Brown played in Nuevo Laredo.
In the 1942 season, the Monarchs met theNegro National League championHomestead Grays in the1942 Negro World Series, the first Negro World Series between the Negro American League and the Negro National League since 1927. Brown stole a base in Game 2 and hit a home run in Game 3 while collecting seven hits in sixteen combined at-bats in four official games (an exhibition game and a game later not counted by the league was also played).[8][9][10][11][12]
In the winter of 1941-42, he moved to the Puerto Rican leagues in Humacao. He also played parts of 1943-44 in the California Winter League. He served in the U.S. Army in 1944, seeing service in Europe before returning to the Monarchs in 1946 after being released from duty as atechnician fifth grade.[13] He batted .371 in 1947, leading the league for the first and only time.
Like many players of this era, in 1944 Brown left baseball to serve for two years in the U.S. Army during WWII. In 1946 he would return to play for theMonarchs for another year, when everything changedJackie Robinson broke the MLB's color barrier.[3]
In 1947, mere months afterJackie Robinson signed with theBrooklyn Dodgers, the flounderingSt. Louis Browns signed both Willard Brown andMonarchs teammateHank Thompson. This made them the third and fourth Black ballplayers inMLB history and made the St. Louis Browns the first MLB team with two Black players on their roster. TheAssociated Press reported at the time that of all the Black players signed by MLB teams that season, "Outfielder Brown was considered to be the prize package of the lot, with only his age against him.
On July 20th 1947, Brown andThompson both played for St. Louis against theBoston Red Sox. This marked the first time in history that two black players appeared in an MLB game together playing for the same team.[14]
Brown entered the baseball record books again on August 13, 1947, when he became the first African-American player to hit a home run in theAmerican League: aninside-the-park homer offDetroit Tigers pitcher and future Hall of FamerHal Newhouser.[15]
Brown's time in the MLB would be unfortunately brief - after two years spent enlisted in the U.S. Army during WWII, he wasn't able to match the physical prowess he had previously shown in theNegro Leagues and in Mexico and Puerto Rico during the winter off-seasons.[2][3] But the biggest obstacle was racism - St. Louis was the southernmost team in Major League Baseball at the time and Brown and Thompson faced much more discrimination and hostility from their own teammates thanJackie Robinson orLarry Doby did from their teammates on theBrooklyn Dodgers andCleveland Indians, respectively.[2]
Throughout the season Brown struggled fromracism in his new surroundings, hitting .179 in just 21 games between July 19 and August 21 before he was released.[15]
That winter, Brown went toPuerto Rico and had one of his greatest seasons ever, batting .432 with 27 home runs and 86RBI in just 60 games, winning theTriple Crown and earning the nicknameEse Hombre or "That Man". He then won the Puerto Rican Winter League Triple Crown in the 1949–1950 season, and alsohit for the cycle once in his career.
He returned to the Monarchs for the 1948 season (the last before the Negro leagues started to decline in terms of player quality). He played in 44 games and batted .404 while having 67 hits and 53 RBI, with the latter two topping the league totals once again (he finished second in batting average for the fourth and final time). His career home run total is not known, but he is considered to be among the Negro league career leaders in homers despite a relatively brief career.
He continued to play for a time with the Monarchs until the early 1950s while also still playing winter ball in Puerto Rico, where he won another Triple Crown in the winter of 1949-50. He played in Canada with theBorder League for theOttawa Nationals for a 30-game pennant run. He also played in theCaribbean Series inVenezuela along with summer ball in theDominican Republic (1951–52). He then played in theTexas League andWestern League from1953 through1956. He finished his Puerto Rico play in 1956-57; he batted .350 in his career there and was named to the Puerto Rican Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991. He played in 1957 for the Minot Mallards of the Manitoba-Dakota League before closing out his career barnstorming with the Monarchs in 1958. He then retired to his home in Houston.
Brown retired with the most times leading a league inExtra-base hits with eight, later tied byHank Aaron.
After retiring from baseball, Brown was a long time resident ofHouston, Texas. He died there in 1996 at the age of 81, after suffering fromAlzheimer's disease for several years.[6] Brown was interred atHouston National Cemetery on August 12, 1996.[13]
He was featured on several baseball cards during his playing days, including ones from Toleteros that were inserts in packages of tobacco.[16][17]Buck O'Neil described Brown as the "most natural ballplayer I ever saw”.[18]
Brown was elected to theBaseball Hall of Fame in2006.[15] The same year, he gained induction into theCaribbean Baseball Hall of Fame as part of their first class.[citation needed]
In 2013, theBob Feller Act of Valor Award honored Brown as one of 37 Baseball Hall of Fame members for his service in the United States Army during World War II.[19]
· Baseball Almanac andBaseball-Reference Black Baseball, Mexican League, and Minor League stats andSeamheads
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