Pete Browning, born in Louisville, Kentucky on June 17, 1861, was a true titan of 19th-century baseball, capturing three batting titles and achieving the rare feat of hitting for the cycle twice in the 1880s. Despite his incredible stats, Browning was famously eccentric, refusing to ever turn right on a ballfield because he believed it brought bad luck, and regularly talking to his bats to “cajole” hits out of them.
Browning’s legacy changed the fabric of American sports business forever in 1884. After breaking his favorite bat during a hitting slump, a young spectator named Bud Hillerich offered to custom-turn a new one out of a piece of white ash in his father’s woodworking shop. Browning broke out of his slump the very next day with three hits, cementing the prototype for what Hillerich would officially patent in 1894 as the “Louisville Slugger”—a brand that would go on to manufacture over 100 million bats for generations of ballplayers.
