Happy Birthday to the late and great Willard Brown, nicknamed “Home Run” Brown. During his eleven-year career in the Negro Leagues, all of them were spent with the Kansas City Monarchs. Willard Brown also established himself as arguably one of the greatest power hitters in Negro League Baseball history, rivaling Josh Gibson.

Career Statistics/Acollades:

.351 BA, 580 HITS, 54 HR, 391 RBI, 332 RUNS, .398 OBP

  • 6x Negro League All-Star
  • Negro League World Series Champion (1942)
  • Negro League Batting Champion (1947)

As an Outfielder for the Monarchs, Brown led the league multiple times in Offensive categories, such as Runs, Hits, Doubles, Triples, Homeruns, and Runs Batted In. He led his league in Hits eight times, tied with Ty Cobb for the most in baseball history. He and Josh Gibson are tied for second for most seasons, leading in RBIs with seven. He played during the same time as Josh Gibson; in fact, both players finished top two in batting average in five seasons each. He only took part in three games in 1944 and missed the entire 1945 season due to his service in the Army. Again his lifetime numbers are low because Negro League baseball teams didn’t have a 150-162 game-long season as they did in the majors. Considering that some seasons only lasted 38 games, Brown did the very best he could do, and if you look at his numbers from Baseball-Reference.com, you’ll see plenty of black boldface type.

Brown did, however, have a nice cup of coffee in the Majors in 1947 with the St. Louis Browns. On August 13th, 1947, he became the first African American ballplayer to record an inside-the-park homerun in the American League. He got the hit off of future Hall of Fame pitcher Hal Newhouser of the Detroit Tigers. 

References:

  1. Willard Brown Career Statistics via Baseball-Reference: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/brownwi02.shtml
  2. Willard Brown via Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Brown#