Mordecai Three-Finger Brown, our Chicago Cub

Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown, of Nyesville, is a 1949 Hall of Fame inductee and maintains a Major League Baseball record for best ERA at 2.06 among pitchers with more than 200 wins. Brown earned the nickname due to having just three fingers on his throwing hand after suffering a farming accident as a child. A memorial still stands to this day on his family farm.

Growing up with baseball in Indiana can be a very special thing.

And with the likes of Tommy John, Don Mattingly and Cy Williams all coming from the state (Terre Haute, Evansville and Wadena, respectively), perhaps the most famous Hoosier to break into the Big Leagues was none other than Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown of Nyesville.

Born Oct. 19, 1876, Three-Finger Brown (a.k.a. “The Miner”) had a rather unique skill set which undoubtedly set him apart from the rest.

Indeed, having no less than three fingers and a nub for an index finger on his throwing hand, Brown regularly offered up a curveball which Ty Cobb called “the most devastating pitch I ever faced.”

Enabling Brown to throw that sort of cheese was an unfortunate, freak farming accident he suffered at the tender age of seven when his hand slipped into a feed chopper on his family’s farm in Nyesville, located just east of Rockville and north of U.S. Highway 36.

A memorial in Brown’s honor still stands to this day on the site.

To make matters worse, Brown had not yet recovered from the injury when he took a fall, breaking several bones in his middle finger. The bones were never reset properly, leaving his middle (now index) finger as crooked as a question mark.

However, rather than limiting Brown in life or excluding him from success on the field, the manglement instead produced a nasty curveball that also broke downward at the last second, leaving batters either swinging at air or producing a very manageable ground ball.

Fred Massey, Brown’s great-nephew, said “it didn’t only curve -- it curved and dropped at the same time.”

“It made it extremely hard to hit and if you did hit it at all, you hit it into the ground; you couldn’t get under it.” (Source: Wikipedia)

After a successful run in the minor leagues as a third baseman, playing in the Three-I League in Terre Haute for two seasons, Brown broke into the major leagues at the relatively old age of 26, being later picked up by the Chicago Cubs at the age of 28 in 1904 after a growing reputation made him what New York Giants Manager John McGraw called the best pitcher in baseball next to then-popular Giant Christy Mathewson.

Brown’s time spent with the Chicago Cubs (1904-12) was by far the greatest stint of his professional career, pitching in two World Series Championships (1907-08) and winning 20 or more games six times. According to several sources, Brown’s most important performance came in a pennant-winning game against the Giants in what today would be called the National League Championship Series on Oct. 8, 1908.

In that game, Brown quickly relieved Cubs’ starter Jack Pfiester after getting off to a weak start, allowing two runs to be scored in the early innings. Though ace Mathewson was throwing for the Giants that night, the Cubs still managed to score four runs throughout the game.

However, thanks to Brown and his curveball, fastball and dreadful change-up, the Giants didn’t produce another run in 1908, losing the game by a 4-2 score which sent the Cubs to their third straight World Series appearance.

Brown had a slim 13-11 winning record against Mathewson. Though the pair faced off a total of 25 times, there was only one no-decision game in the bunch.

After spending time in the now-extinct Federal League with the Chicago Whales, the St. Louis Terriers and Brooklyn Tip-Tops from 1913-15, Three-Finger Brown ended his professional career in 1916 when he was nearly 40 years old. Brown signed briefly with the Cubs for one season in 1916 before officially retiring due to an enduring mysterious illness that affected his right knee and threatened the loss of use.

Brown finished his major league career with a 239-130 record, 1,375 strikeouts and a 2.06 ERA, the third-best ERA in Major League Baseball history among players inducted into the Hall of Fame (after Ed Walsh and Addie Joss). (Source: Wikipedia)

While having the third-best ERA in the history of professional baseball, Brown still maintains the lowest ERA among pitchers with more than 200 wins.

A switch-hitter, which was a bit unusual for a pitcher, Brown took pride in his batting, averaging near .200 for his major league career.

From 1920 to 1945, Brown owned and operated a filling station in Terre Haute that served as a town gathering place and unofficial baseball museum. He was also a frequent guest at “Old-Timers’” games at Wrigley Field until his death in 1948 caused by complications with diabetes.

Brown was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, the following year in 1949. He was also named as a finalist in 1999 to the Major League All-Century Team.

His legacy still continuing to this day, Brown occasionally appears in pop-culture, especially now that the Cubs have won their first World Series title since his time in 1908.

Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown’s legacy has been immortalized by a memorial in Nyesville (located at approximately 1314 N. Nyesville Rd., Rockville) and his grave can be found in Roselawn Cemetery, located at 7500 N. Clinton St. in Terre Haute.