Jim Burns

Jim Burns was a solid hitter in the 19th century. He batted .322 in 10 minor-league seasons, 1886-96, and .305 in 169 major-league games, 1888-91. He was regarded as an excellent outfielder, though he had a weak throwing arm,1 and he was speedy on the basepaths. In his only full season in the majors, with the 1889 Kansas City Cowboys of the American Association, he was credited with 56 stolen bases.

James Milton Burns was born in St. Louis, Missouri on an undiscovered date in 1859 or 1860. He was the eldest of four children born to Irish immigrants Thomas and Ellen Burns.2 Young Jim grew up in Quincy, Illinois, and played baseball on the sandlots there. Nothing else regarding the first quarter-century of his life is known at present.

In spring 1886, Jim Burns joined a Decatur (Illinois) team and was named captain. At shortstop, he “let two grounders through his legs” in the season opener on May 24,3 and by July he was in the outfield. In a 19-2 thrashing of Cairo, Illinois, on July 28, he hit a double and two triples.4 He was signed in August by Oshkosh, Wisconsin, of the Northwestern League.5 He played in left field for Oshkosh and batted .237 in 21 games.6

Burns stood 5-foot-7 and weighed 168 pounds. He was a right-handed batter and right-handed thrower. He returned to Oshkosh for the 1887 season, and under the leadership of manager Frank Selee, the team won the Northwestern League pennant. Burns played in left field. Billy Hoy, a deaf mute, played in center field, and Tommy McCarthy, the future Hall of Famer, was in right field. Batting averages were inflated that year because walks were counted as hits.7 Burns’s lofty .352 mark exceeded the .315 league average.8 He ranked in the top 10 in the league in runs (122), hits (190), triples (15), home runs (9), and total bases (268).

In 1888 Burns went with Selee and several Oshkosh teammates to Omaha in the Western Association. Burns’s .273 batting average was the highest on Omaha and ranked seventh in the league among players with at least 400 at-bats. That September, an injury sidelined outfielder Billy Hamilton of the Kansas City Cowboys in the major-league American Association, and the Cowboys acquired Burns to replace him.9

Burns made his major-league debut in Kansas City’s 7-4 loss to Brooklyn on September 25, 1888. He played in left field, singled twice off pitcher Al Mays, and scored two runs.10 On October 10, he went 4-for-4 facing Cincinnati ace Tony Mullane.11 In 15 games for the 1888 Cowboys, Burns batted .303, well above the league average of .238 and the Cowboys’ team average of .218.

In 1889 Burns appeared in 134 games for Kansas City and played in center field. His .304 average led the Cowboys and ranked 12th in the league. The Kansas City Journal called him “an earnest, hardworking player, who covers an immense amount of ground in the field, is a sure and safe hitter and a baserunner far above the average.”12

Burns clouted five home runs in 1889, the first off Louisville’s Toad Ramsey on April 20. In a 16-9 victory over St. Louis on May 4, he hit three doubles.13 On May 20, he contributed four hits in an 18-12 victory over Brooklyn, and his running grab of a line drive a foot from the ground was hailed as “one of the finest catches ever made” at Kansas City’s Exposition Park.14 Two days later, “the nimble center fielder stole three bases in fine style.”15 And on June 3, his ninth-inning, three-run home run provided the margin of victory in a 9-6 triumph at Brooklyn.16

The Cowboys finished seventh in the eight-team American Association and disbanded after the season. Burns rejected offers from a trio of Players League clubs—Brooklyn, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo17—and in 1890 he batted .273 for the pennant-winning Kansas City Blues of the high minor league Western Association.18 On July 31, 1890, he slugged a grand slam to deep center field in the Blues’ 14-1 rout of Des Moines.19

Burns returned briefly to the American Association in the spring of 1891. He signed with Washington but was released after appearing in only 20 games. The Washington Herald said he was let go to make room for a newly acquired outfielder, Larry Murphy, and because Burns was dissatisfied in Washington and not playing “the ball he was capable of.”20 Burns, however, batted .317, well above Washington’s .251 team average that year. He would never return to the majors.

Burns finished the 1891 season back in the Western Association, batting .309 in 67 games for Denver. On July 18, 1891, he hit a double and two home runs in a 10-inning, 8-7 victory over his former team, the Kansas City Blues.21 Glimpses of his personality emerged in newspaper reports. He was described as a good-natured “josher”22 and as “one of the most gentlemanly men” in baseball.23

Over the next two seasons, Burns played in opposite corners of the country, with Portland in the Pacific Northwest League in 1892 and Savannah in the Southern Association in 1893. With both teams his hitting was on full display: He batted .308 for Portland and .316 for Savannah.

On July 24, 1892, Burns hit a single, two doubles, and a home run in Portland’s 10-6 victory over Spokane, and his four putouts in center field were dazzling. “He is possessed of wings and a phenomenal prescience that enabled him to discover in advance the particular objective point of long-distance flies,” marveled the Spokane Review, “so much so that the presence of other fielders seemed to be entirely superfluous.”24

From 1894 to 1896, Burns played in the Western League, primarily with Minneapolis and St. Paul. The circuit was a hitters’ league and Burns’s combined batting average in those seasons was .351. His home run and two doubles helped Minneapolis trounce Kansas City, 22-8, on June 27, 1894.25 And he clubbed two home runs on August 9, 1894, in Minneapolis’s 12-8 victory over Sioux City.26

The St. Paul Saints were managed by Charles Comiskey. In Burns’s first game with the Saints, on July 31, 1895, he “smashed the leather with a mighty swing, and sent the ball moaning over the long left field fence, making one of the longest drives ever seen on the home grounds,” said the St. Paul Globe.27 Twelve days later, he made headlines with an 11th-inning, walk-off home run against Minneapolis.28 The Globe colorfully described his home run against Detroit on May 13, 1896:

“High in the air it sailed. [Detroit center fielder Julius] Knoll thought it was easy and lingered in the lot, about thirty yards back of second base. That was not the place he should have picked out. The ball had a through ticket, with no stops for way stations, and by the time Mr. Knoll had presented his credentials the sphere was rolling down the well packed sand almost directly toward the farthest corner of the fence. Well, you know how Jim Burns can run. … That ball was hardly within sight of the diamond when Jim danced an Irish jig on the home plate.”29

Burns’s vision began to decline in 1896, and Comiskey assisted him in finding medical help.30 But the impairment ended Burns’s baseball career. In 1899 he worked as a hotel clerk in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and a year later he was a bartender in Quincy, Illinois.31 In 1901 he was employed by a tobacco company in St. Louis.32 He was later employed by the Edison Electric Company in Chicago.33 No mention was found of a wife or children, suggesting that he was a lifelong bachelor.

After an illness of seven months, Burns died on February 17, 1909, at a Chicago hospital. The cause of death was pulmonary tuberculosis. He was interred at St. Peter’s Cemetery in Quincy.34

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Bill Lamb and Rory-Costello and fact-checked by Dan Schoenholz.

Sources

Ancestry.com and Baseball-Reference.com were accessed in the summer of 2025. Burns’s minor-league statistics are from Baseball-Reference.com, or if unavailable there, from the Reach baseball guides (1887, 1891, and 1897 editions).

Image: 1889 cabinet card of Jim Burns by Mitchell of Kansas City.

Notes

1 “Base Ball,” Minneapolis Tribune, April 21, 1896: 3.

2 1870 and 1880 US census records. Thomas’s occupation is listed as “laborer” in the 1880 census. An unverified source at Ancestry.com gives Ellen’s maiden name as Powers.

3 “Diamond Dust,” Decatur (Illinois) Herald, May 25, 1886: 3.

4 “Another Victory,” Decatur (Illinois) Review, July 29, 1886: 3.

5 “Sporting Events,” Oshkosh (Wisconsin) Northwestern, August 17, 1886: 3.

6 Reach’s Official American Association Base Ball Guide for 1887 (Philadelphia: A.J. Reach & Co., 1887), 65.

7 “The Pitching Rules,” Oshkosh Northwestern, April 23, 1887: 1.

8 Reach’s Official American Association Base Ball Guide for 1888 (Philadelphia: A.J. Reach & Co., 1888).

9 “Kansas City Splits Even,” Kansas City Times, September 20, 1888: 3; “Base Ball Briefs,” Kansas City Times, September 25, 1888: 3.

10 “American Association,” Kansas City Times, September 26, 1888: 3.

11 “Lost by a Wild Throw,” Kansas City Journal, October 11, 1888: 2.

12 “What the Team Has Done,” Kansas City Journal, April 9, 1889: 2.

13 “Bring on More Pitchers,” Kansas City Journal, May 5, 1889: 2.

14 “Scored in Every Inning,” Kansas City Journal, May 21, 1889: 2.

15 “Lost by Ragged Fielding,” Kansas City Journal, May 23, 1889: 2.

16 “Won by Burns,” Kansas City Star, June 4, 1889: 2.

17 “Jimmy Burns May Jump,” Pittsburgh Post, March 1, 1890: 6.

18 Reach’s Official American Association Base Ball Guide for 1891 (Philadelphia: A.J. Reach & Co., 1891), 60, 61.

19 “They Are the King Hitters,” Kansas City Times, August 1, 1890: 2.

20 Washington Herald, May 31, 1891: 5.

21 “Diamond and Track,” Rocky Mountain News (Denver), July 19, 1891: 7.

22 “Notes of the Game,” Portland Oregonian, June 3, 1892: 2.

23 “Some Diamond Dust,” Sioux City (Iowa) Journal, August 29, 1891: 2.

24 “Winning Webfooters,” Spokane (Washington) Review, July 26, 1892: 8.

25 “Western League,” St. Paul (Minnesota) Globe, June 28, 1894: 5.

26 “As Barnes Predicted,” Minneapolis Times, August 10, 1894: 2.

27 “Weak Wanderers,” St. Paul Globe, August 1, 1895: 5.

28 “Homer by Burns,” Minneapolis Times, August 13, 1895: 2.

29 “Tigers’ Claws Cut,” St. Paul Globe, May 14, 1896: 5.

30 “Old Decatur Player Dead,” Decatur Review, February 19, 1909: 5.

31 “Hotel Clerk and Umpire,” St. Paul Globe, August 20, 1899: 8; 1900 Quincy, Illinois city directory.

32 “Said in a Second,” Quincy (Illinois) Herald, August 12, 1901: 1.

33 “Old Decatur Player Dead.”

34 “Ball Player Laid to Rest,” Quincy Herald, February 20, 1909: 3.