Willard Brown and the Border League
This article was written by Martin Lacoste
This article was published in From Bytown to the Big Leagues: Ottawa Baseball From 1865 to 2025
Only 21 Border League (1946-51) players made it to the major leagues.1 Of these, only one made it all the way to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Willard Jessie Brown was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1915. In 1934, Brown played with the Monroe Monarchs of the Negro Southern League. He rose to the major leagues only three years later with the Kansas City Monarchs, a charter member of the Negro American League, and quickly established himself as a superior player. He led the league in home runs (10), hits (81), triples (10), and RBIs (60) in his rookie season, and led the Monarchs to the first Negro American League title. In his sophomore season, he led the league in hits, doubles, home runs, and RBIs, and in 1939 he similarly led the league in six offensive categories while batting .368.
He only played two games with the Monarchs in 1940 as he was tempted by a better salary to head south to play in the Mexican Leagues, as did many other Negro Leaguers. Returning to Kansas City in 1941, he continued to dominate by leading the league in nine offensive categories including home runs, RBIs and stolen bases, showcasing his combination of power and speed. He continued to excel over the next two seasons, batting .338 and .340 respectively, but only played three games in 1944 as he joined the U.S. Army in Europe at the height of World War II. He missed the entire 1945 season due to his service, and upon his return to Kansas City in 1946, he again led the league in hits, home runs, and RBIs. From 1937-1946, Brown led the Monarchs to six pennants in 10 years.
In July 1947, only months after the landmark signing of Jackie Robinson and only days after the signing of the first Black player by an AL team (Larry Doby with the Cleveland Indians), the last-place St. Louis Browns signed him and infielder Hank Thompson from the Monarchs for $5,000 each. It would be almost another full year before another Black player was signed in the AL (Satchel Paige with Cleveland in July 1948). With Brown’s signing, “outfielder Brown was considered to be the prize package of the lot, with only his age against him.”2
Brown never really got on track in St. Louis (despite displaying his enormous power in batting practice). His best game with the Browns was at Yankee Stadium on July 23, where he went 4-for-5 and drove in three runs. On August 13, Brown hit his only homer with St. Louis, the first in the AL by a Black player, an inside-the-parker off Detroit’s Hal Newhouser.
On August 23, Browns manager Muddy Ruel released both Brown and Hank Thompson, stating that they lacked major-league talent. During his tenure with St. Louis, he played in 21 games and hit .179. Brown and Thompson both rejoined the Monarchs, where the money was better, and at season’s end, Brown led the league in batting with a .377 average.
During the offseasons, Brown often went south to play in the Puerto Rican Winter League. In the winter of 1947-48, while playing for the Santurce Cangrejeros (Crabbers), Brown won the Triple Crown, hitting .432 (fourth-highest in Puerto Rican Winter League history) and 27 home runs (still a Puerto Rican Winter League record). He also drove in 86 runs, impressive for only a 60-game season. He again won the Triple Crown in the 1949-50 season.
In 1948, he continued to lead the Negro American League in several offensive categories, including home runs, RBIs and slugging, while batting .408, second only to Artie Wilson (.433). Brown continued to play with Kansas City for several more seasons, winning the Negro American League batting title again in 1951 with a .417 average.
On August 5, 1950, Brown was purchased by the Ottawa Nationals of the Border League. As he was tending to his ailing wife, he felt that Ottawa was too far for him to go and was reluctant to report. He nevertheless arrived in Ottawa on August 12 and in the 30 games he played with the Nationals he batted .352 to help lead the team to the league championship. In the playoffs, Ottawa defeated Kingston four games to one, aided by Brown’s strong showing, notably in Game Three where he went 3-for-6 with four RBIs. Ottawa eventually fell four games to two to Ogdensburg in the finals. In Game Six, Brown went 2-for-5 including a “two-bagger [that bounced] off the right-center field fence”3 in what proved to be his last game with Ottawa.
Over the next few years, Brown played in Venezuela and in the Dominican Republic, then in the Texas League and Western League from 1953-1956. He continued to play in Puerto Rico until the 1956-57 season 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 is regarded by some as having the most raw power in Negro Leagues history, and possibly in all of baseball. He hit home runs more often than Josh Gibson, who gave him the nickname “Home Run” Brown. He is also considered by many as one of the fastest players in baseball in the late 1930s and 1940s. Despite this, he would not live to celebrate his election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. After baseball, he retired to Houston and died there on August 4, 1996. Almost 10 years later, in February 2006, a special committee elected Willard Brown along with 16 other Negro League and pre-Negro League candidates to Cooperstown. Dick Clark, a member of the selection committee, said of his enshrinement: “Brown’s credentials made his election an easy one… [he] was the preeminent right-handed slugger for the Negro American League throughout the ’40s.”4
recently retired as a high school music educator and is excited to have more time to devote to some of his interests, including baseball. Once an avid Montreal Expos fan, since their relocation he has refocused his passion for the sport towards its history, notably nineteenth-century Canadian baseball. He has presented papers at the Canadian Baseball History Conference, written biographies for SABR, and contributed articles for the 2022 SABR publication on the development of Canadian baseball, entitled Our Game, Too.
SOURCES
In addition to the sources listed in the endnotes, the author consulted various newspapers, including: The Sporting News (at Paper of Record), Ottawa Journal (at Newspapers.com) and Le Droit (Ottawa) (at Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec)
The author also consulted:
“Willard Brown,” Hall of Fame Explorer, https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/brown-willard, accessed January 11, 2023.
PHOTO CREDIT
Willard Brown, SABR-Rucker Archive.
NOTES
1 This includes all leagues considered major by Major League Baseball as of June 2024, including the Negro National (II) and Negro American Leagues. Along with Willard Brown, there were six other Negro Leagues players: Gideon Applegate (1949-51 Kingston Ponies), Joe Campini (1950 Watertown Athletics), Pedro Miró (1951 Geneva Robins), Maurice Peatros (1949 Geneva Robins), John Sanderson (1951 Geneva Robins), and Bo Wallace (1950 Ottawa Nationals).
2 Rory Costello, “Willard Brown,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Willard-Brown/.
3 “Ogdensburg Captures Border League Title,” Evening Citizen (Ottawa), September 26, 1950:18.
4 Ted Lewis, “Willard Brown’s Legacy Remains As Prominent Slugger.” Original publication may have been in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, where Lewis was employed as sportswriter. Reposted on the W.E. A.L.L. B.E. blog, June 15, 2007. (http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2007/06/legend-of-willard-brown-forgotten.html)