Big Dan Brouthers: Baseball's First Great Slugger

by Roy Kerr

Described as "the Greatest Batsman in the Country" by sportswriters of his era, Dennis "Big Dan" Brouthers compiled a .342 batting average, tying with Babe Ruth for ninth place all-time, and slugged 205 triples, eighth all time, in 16 major league seasons. He won five batting and on-base percentage titles, and seven slugging titles, and was the first player to win batting and slugging crowns in successive years. Although he ranked fourth among nineteenth-century home run hitters, many fair balls he hit into the stands or over the fence were counted only as doubles or triples due to local ground rules. Brouthers was extremely difficult to strike out--in 1889, for example, he did so just six times in 565 plate appearances. He was the first player to be walked intentionally on a regular basis. This comprehensive biography of Dan Brouthers examines his life and career from his youth as an apprentice in a print and dye factory to his final years as an attendant at the Polo Grounds. It corrects numerous errors that have crept into earlier accounts of his life, and clarifies his position as one of the greatest hitters ever to play the game.

216 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid read on one of the more underrated baseball players of all time

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great research on a player for which information had been tough to find.

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Retired academic Roy Kerr absolutely killed it with this book, which puts more widely-publicized work like Edward Achorn's The Summer of Beer and Whiskey to shame. A thorough going-over of all the extant materials related to one of the great "Moustache Dans" of the late 19th century yields a surprisingly nuanced portrait of a talented but (slightly) troubled slugger whose peregrinations call to mind the similarly nomadic careers of Dave Kingman, Reggie Jackson, Jose Canseco, and Manny Ramirez.