Browning took his hitting seriously, as it was believed that he was one of the first players to have his bats custom made. He went as far as to give names of each of his bats, which may have been eccentric at the time, but the man who was known as the “Louisville Slugger” was one of the better hitters of his time.
Browning’s career began in his home town of Louisville in 1882 with the Eclipse of the American Association, the team he played for the rest of the decade. In his rookie season, Browning swept the Slash Line (.378/.420/.510) and again led the AA in Batting Average (.362) and On Base Percentage (.392). He batted over .300 in the first eight of his nine years in baseball.
After Louisville, he played in Cleveland in the one season of the Player's League, and he won the Batting Title (.373). Browning would bounce around for the rest of his career in the National League with stops in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and Brooklyn.
Over a 13-year career, Browning had 1,646 Hits with a .341 Batting Average. This was an incredible career for someone who drank himself to death and dealt with mastoiditis and partial deafness.
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