Willard Brown Marquee Hall of Fame 2006

Nobody in this archive has more hits titles than his eight, and only Cobb matches them. He led in runs batted in eight times too, in home runs six, in doubles six and in triples four. Across eleven seasons from 1937 he batted .360 for the Kansas City Monarchs with 597 hits in 428 recorded games, and was chosen for five East-West All-Star games.

The St. Louis Browns signed him in July 1947 and used him in 21 games. He hit .179 and they released him inside six weeks. The one home run he hit for them was the first hit by a Black player in the American League: Larry Doby, who had debuted five weeks earlier, hit none that season.

He went back to Kansas City and kept hitting. The figures are partial because these statistics were not kept with the resources the white major leagues had, and what the major leagues did record of him is 67 at-bats taken at thirty-two by a club that had no interest in him. The Hall of Fame elected him in 2006 through the special Negro Leagues committee, ten years after he died.