Interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Clay Wallace, WUKY
You're from Maryland, and your previous books - Bluegrass in Baltimore and Leftover Salmon - focused on music and musicians. How did you come to be interested in a 19th century baseball player from Kentucky?
Tim Newby, Author of The Original Louisville Slugger: The Life and Times of Forgotten Baseball Legend Pete Browning
I usually write more about music-type stuff, but I do write some baseball stuff for SABR [Society for American Baseball Research]. The connection is the type of stories I like to tell.
Those first two books, while they're music-centered and music-related, they kind of focus on overlooked and forgotten music scenes or bands or things like that - and I feel Pete Browning is kind of the same.
I had kind of stumbled onto him. My wife and I were in Kentucky on a trip, and we had done ROMP Fest in Owensboro, and we ended up in Louisville at the Slugger Museum. I was vaguely familiar with Pete, just as a baseball fan. They were telling his story on the tour and my wife kept nudging me. She was like, "This guy's pretty interesting!"
I had just had the Leftover Salmon book published, so I was kind of on the lookout for another story. And I thought, "Wow, this guy is pretty interesting!"
At dinner that night, we were sitting there just drinking beers and goofing around on our phones, pulling up things about Pete. And, like, "Oh, this is really interesting!" "That's funny!" And, I thought, I wonder why there's nothing more about him?
And I said to her, "Well, I'm going to take the rest of the summer and just see. Maybe there's a reason. Maybe his story is really small and insignificant. Maybe what they tell on the tour is all that it is."
And I took the rest of the summer and he just has this really interesting story. I felt it fit into what I like to tell - [stories about] these overlooked, kind of forgotten people.
To me, the story had a lot of different levels. It's 19th century baseball, which most baseball fans are kind of unfamiliar with, and that was very intriguing. It's the story of Pete himself, a man who's a bit of a tragic figure, and I like that. And there's the story of his career and all he had overcome. He had health issues, and he overcame that to become one of the best players in the 19th century.
And, then, there's the myth of Pete. He's this larger than life figure, and I wanted to find out what the myth is versus what the truth is.
It's baseball, but it's not just baseball.
Clay
So, what is some of this mythology surrounding Pete? What made him remarkable to you?
Tim
There's this image of him as a player. He's loud. He's boisterous. He talked about himself. And there's the stories of him hitting balls that traveled around the world - obviously, we know that wasn't true.
But there's some truth, like any folk figure, right? I wanted to find where it was.
He was one of the best hitters of the 19th century, and he also was a champion consumer of bourbon; in an era when baseball players drank, he had no peer.
And there's a lot of really interesting quotes that were attributed to him: "I can't hit until I hit the bottle." I wanted to find out, "Okay, well, why did he say that?" or "Did he really say that?"
There were stories in the field. He stood on one leg with his foot pointed out. Well, why was that? But a lot of these stories had reasons behind it. It wasn't just that he was this super eccentric character who stood on one foot like a deranged crane. He had a reason for it.
He couldn't hear. That was his defense mechanism to make sure nobody ran into him that he couldn't see on the base pass running his way.
Clay
So how were you able to separate these Pete Browning myths? Did he leave any primary resources talking about himself? Do we have anecdotes about him from other people?
Tim
Well, Pete was mostly illiterate, so a lot of it was writings in newspapers and sports writers and trying to find like some of these quotes and then tracing them back. The famous one that's attributed to him is "I can't hit until I hit the bottle."
Well, that's not exactly what he said. He was in the midst of a slump and he had stopped drinking. He had signed a temperance pledge and he attributed his slump to not drinking.
And he said, "I think I'll have to drink again so that I can hit the ball again."
So, all of a sudden, that changes the meaning of it a little bit.
It was really digging through and finding these stories on him. It was trying to find all those 19th century papers, small little asides and stories.
And then even sometimes finding that story in other papers that weren't local. Maybe they'd write about it from a different angle. It was a lot of that.
There wasn't, like, his diary where I could just read it and he would give me the truth. That made it a little more difficult.
Clay
You say some of those papers weren't local. How well known was Pete Browning?
Tim
It's fair to say he, in the 19th century, was one of the most well-known players out there. He was definitely recognized as one of the better players of the era. Even for the generation after, when you would read papers, he was remembered as this great player of the era as well.
As we move on and further away, those players become more forgotten over time. That definitely has happened to Pete.
But [during his] era, he was recognized as one of the best - and he was recognized for his personality and the things he would do.
He would get off the train when he arrived at a new city and he'd say, "Hey, the champion batter of the American Association is here!"
He had that larger-than-life personality that people knew about and would associate with him.
Clay
Browning played in baseball's very early days. How did the sport that Browning was playing differ from modern baseball today?
Tim
It's baseball that's figuring out how to be baseball as we know it.
You know, we have certain expectations when we watch a baseball game. There's gonna be three strikes and four balls and players are wearing gloves and fields look a certain way and there's a pitching mound.
Well, Pete's playing in an era when they're still evolving the rules and figuring out how the game's gonna look.
Gloves were just starting. Pete never wore a glove when he played. Balls and strikes were still being very much worked out. They kind of moved up and down throughout his career.
"It's four balls!" "It's five!" "No, we're gonna have nine!"
One year, they counted walks as hits, which leads to some really interesting stat lines. Early on in his career, players couldn't pitch with the release over the shoulder. It had to come almost underhand.
Then they developed a pitching box, and pitchers could take a moving or running start towards the batter. Then pitchers had to put their foot on the back line, which helped set a distance. Then they created the pitching mound.
So it's evolving and growing into the game that we all know as baseball. It would have looked different but, as it was at the time, he was still obviously playing to the rules and succeeding at that level.
I think that's always the hard thing. We go, "Well, what if?"
And I don't think it's a fair to compare those huge generational differences. If a player at that era is dominating with the rules, it's not fair to go, "Yeah, but what would he do now?"
Well, not as well, probably! It's 125 years later!
The game looked vastly different, the equipment they used was different, and that's part of Pete's legacy as well: he really cared about his bats, which is why he gets a bat turned at the Hillerich Company
He cared about his bats at a time when most players just kind of picked up the next bat off the pile and went to bat with it. If it broke, we can nail it back together.
But he said, "Wait a minute, this is the tool of our trade. This is an important thing that we're using. Maybe we should put a little thought into this."
And he did.
He carried a lot of bats with him on the road, So he [could say], "If I'm playing a pitcher who throws really fast, I'm gonna have a lighter bat so I can get it around quicker."
Clay
In the book's summary blurb, it talks about how he named his bats after Biblical characters, and that he thought there was a limited number of hits that each bat was capable of. Can you talk about that?
Tim
The naming of the bats, I think, is just his way of taking ownership and care for his bats. Players still may do that now, but I think for him, it was just a way of heightening that connection between the bats.
As far as the number of hits... I think Pete was always very eager to find other reasons to explain if he wasn't successful. Most players, if they're in the midst of a slump, may just say, "You know what? I've got to work on this or this," or "I've got to improve this."
Pete wouldn't say that. He's not gonna admit those faults.
He would say, "The bat ran out of hits. It's time to get a new bat. Once I have a bat that has more hits in it, I will get hits again."
That's instead of just saying, "Well, that was the problem, it was me."
There was a lot of things like that, where instead of admitting what the problem was, he would find another way about it.
One of the big knocks on him is his fielding, that he wasn't a good fielder, but that's not really true. He played second base in shortstop early in his career. You don't put your worst fielders there. But [since] he couldn't hear, he started moving out of the base pass so he didn't get run over. He stood on one foot with his leg pointed to runners.
It gave the perception that he's a bad fielder when he wasn't, but instead acknowledging that, like, "Hey, I can't do this," he would say other things. When they moved him to the outfield, he would say things like, "Look, I'm not gonna go chase those fly balls down."
Now, the real reason was he couldn't hear his teammate calling him off, but he would say, "If I get tired "and I can't swing the bat, what good is that to you?"
He's like, "Anybody can go chase a fly ball down, but nobody can hit the ball like me."
Clay
Was that a connection that you came to when you were researching him? If he didn't have these direct diary sources, if he wasn't directly writing to people in the future... Were those conclusions you made or were those observations other people made that you're drawing from?
Tim
This is my interpretation of him and his character; who he was and his actions.
He had a really severe health issue, and it's talked about, but the consequences of it aren't always talked about. I believe you can find reasons rooted in there for almost all of his actions.
Now, maybe if Pete were alive today, he'd be like, "Look, dude, no. I did this because I did that."
But I think it's safe to say we can make that leap of faith.
I had a lot of history professors in college who used to always say that you can get all the facts and lay it out, but you may not always get that last keystone, that last moment, and you can make a leap of faith.
And that's what I did on this.
One time, he started using his feet to stop ground balls. That seems very humorous. "Oh, look at weird Pete in the outfield using his feet to stop ground balls."
What?
He also suffered from vertigo because of his health issues. Just bending over, it's gonna cause you to be dizzy and fall over.
So, I think the simple act of using your feet to stop ground balls was him not trying to fall over.
So there are connections that I made with his health issues and his actions.
I mean, even things like... His name isn't Pete.
His name is Louis.
But he couldn't hear, so when he was introduced to people, he would call them Pete because he couldn't hear their name. And, eventually, they just applied that name to him.
He was very loud and talked about himself a lot. Well, if you can't hear very well and you're in a conversation, the easiest thing to do is turn the conversation back to the one thing you know well, and that was him.
You may say, "Hey, Pete, how's the weather?"
And if he doesn't hear, you can go, "Yeah, but I'm the best batter in the American Association."
Again, maybe Pete would show up here and be like, "Nah, dude, you're wrong."
Clay
What was the health condition that was impacting his hearing?
Tim
He had mastoiditis, which developed when he was younger. At the time, it was a pretty big cause of death among young children. It's an infection in the inner ear. Now, it's treatable with penicillin, but that wasn't available at Pete's time as a child.
It would end up causing swelling, which would lead to headaches and vertigo. He lost his hearing. He was mostly deaf probably by the time he was a teenager. It also caused a lot of pain in his eyes because of the swelling which, again, I think explains some of his other actions.
He was known for doing things to take care of his eyes - or what he called his "lamps." He would do things like pour buttermilk in them or, when it rained, he would walk and look up into the sky so the water could wash them out.
That sounds really crazy, but here's a man of limited education in an era of questionable medical practices.
His eyes hurt; he pours buttermilk in there because he believes it's soothing.
Clay
Tell me about the relationship between Pete Browning and the Louisville Slugger bat.
Tim
The legend is: in 1884, he had broke his bat, and Bud Hillerich, who was the son of [the owner of] the Hillerich Company, approached him and said, "Hey, I can help you replace the bat."
So, they went into the store at night, and Pete watched Bud as he was turning the bat and gave him specific directions. The next day, he went out and he had three hits and he got out of the slump that he was in, and the legend of the Louisville Slugger is born.
There's some questions about how that happened, because the part of the myth is that at the time, the company wasn't really making bats as a bat company. They were making things like butter churns, chair legs, and stairwells - things that you can make with lathes.
And Bud's father was a little against the idea of bats because of the gambling and drinking associated with [baseball].
There is some debate, did this happen?
But the Louisville Slugger brand itself, it definitely takes its name from Pete. That was a nickname applied to him later in his career. There's stories throughout Pete's career of him getting a bat turned by a Louisville company, and Bud makes comments throughout his life about turning a bat for Pete.
And he helped popularize this idea of bats too. He was known to order bats from home and then give them to his teammates. So, when he was in Pittsburgh, there's some great articles about how Pete was the happiest man in the city, and he cried tears of joy because this crate had been delivered with all these bats to give to his teammates.
He gave them out and helped popularize this idea of getting these bats made specifically, not just grabbing the next one off the pile.
Clay
In your research, did you discover any lesser known stories about him that you found particularly interesting?
Tim
He was known to take gum and stick it in his eyebrows because he said it was gonna help keep his lamps clean. And, as much as I tried, I couldn't really find what I felt was a good reason for that.
He always kept a die in his pocket for luck.
He actually ran for city council a couple of times in Louisville which, for a man like Pete, seems really out of his wheelhouse, but he seemed to really wanna get in city council. He never won, but I always thought that was an interesting kind of change.
Clay
Are there aspects of him that you find relatable?
Tim
Yeah, I mean, I feel connected to him because I spent the last five years reading every possible thing I could have about him.
It's funny; my wife and I talk about Pete, and it's like we know him.
But I do think he's relatable. I mean, he's a bit of a tragic figure. He had to overcome this health issue.
I think sometimes what's forgotten is it's easy to look at these silly things he did, but he was doing it so he could play baseball on a high level - and was succeeding.
He wasn't getting any help for this medical condition and he was still - he won three batting titles in two leagues! He was a whisker away from winning four titles in three leagues, and he was a whisker away of winning like three titles in a row!
He literally could have had a title in 1882, '85, '86, '87, '90, '91.
I mean, it's crazy. And he was doing this while battling this health issue. So I think that's what I find relatable, him overcoming that. And we can all relate to having some tragic side. I mean, we're all, on some level, tragic figures. We've had to overcome things.
At his core, despite his outward persona, I think he was a very shy individual. He had opportunities to leave and play elsewhere early on his career. And, despite what he said, it never seemed like he really wanted to.
I think he really needed that safety of being home,
I think there's these relatable things that we all have. We're all scared and nervous to move away and go away. And for somebody who was so good at what he did, but yet seemed so insecure at times, I think that's what made him such a relatable figure.
He's not just this loud, drunken, boisterous baseball player. He's a person that we can all relate to and understand those flaws.
Clay
This book is being released through the University Press of Kentucky. How did they come to be the publisher and what was the experience like?
Tim
As you would with any book, I put together proposals and I sent it out; Kentucky seemed like a really nice fit because he's from here and they were very interested because he's a local figure. It really ties into what they do and it's been a great experience.
As somebody who's not from the area (I'm from Baltimore), it's been a great experience to kind of have this new connection back here. I enjoyed working with all of them. They've been wonderful throughout the whole process.
As a writer, there's a lot of questions you have. I mean, you're writing this manuscript and you're giving it to someone. There's a big level of trust, like, "Okay, help get this out there now.
I'm very happy with what they've done and getting it out there and spreading the word. And I love the cover, which I think is amazing.
Clay
What are the upcoming events to promote the book?
Tim
I'll be at the Slugger Museum on Saturday, September 7th. There'll be a question and answer in the museum, and then there'll be a signing after that in the theater.
I will be in the museum for the rest of the day, so I encourage people to come on by, stop, talk, talk some baseball, talk some Pete, pick up a book, and come say "Hey!"
A little bit later, back in my hometown in Baltimore on September 19th, we're gonna have a little bit of music and book event at Pickett Brewing Company.
I have an amazing band that I've been lucky enough to put together. It's John Bolten and Sarah Larsen from Geraldine, Ryan Rogers from the Dirty Grass Players, Danny Stewart from Country Current, and Greg Garrison from Leftover Salmon.
I'm gonna talk and they're gonna play some music and I'm gonna talk and they're gonna play some music. There's gonna be baseball-themed songs and bluegrass-themed songs and Kentucky-themed songs and whiskey-themed songs, so it'll be a really super night.
Clay
Where can people keep up with you and your work?
Tim
I'm on all the socials: Twitter (or X, whatever we call it), Instagram, Facebook, and Threads. It's my name, Tim Newby, usually with a 9 after it.
You can find me on there. We'll have all dates, events, books, other writings, and other things I do.
Clay
Is there anything I missed that you think people should know about your book?
Tim
Besides picking up a copy?
It's always fun to kind of go talk about Pete. I think anybody can relate to it.
Sometimes, with any sports book, there's a natural hesitancy from people who aren't sports fans or baseball fans or whatever it's about to kind of go, "Oh yeah, but I'm not a big baseball fan."
And part of what I wanted to do when I wrote this is not just make it this over-the-top baseball book.
There's baseball there. If you're a baseball fan, you're gonna get enough of that. But I think there's enough of just his story that baseball can just be the backdrop for who Pete is.
If you like stories of people who are overcoming things to become really good at what they do and getting to the top of their profession, this is a good story for that.