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Dan Brouthers won five National League batting championships on his way to a 19-year Hall of Fame career. His first two big league seasons came in service to the Troy Trojans. The owner of the Trojans was Gardner Earl, the director of a Troy bank and president of the Bell Telephone company of Troy.

Earle’s 1880 Trojan team featured Brouthers and fellow Hall of Fame position players Buck Ewing, and Roger Connor as well as Cooperstown pitchers Tim Keefe and Smiling Mickey Welch.

In the collection is this letter to National League founder William Hulbert from Gardner Earl dated and signed on October 12, 1880.

Letters from the 1800s signed by a National League team owner remain scarce. This one is particularly notable as it’s written to the Hall of Famer Hulbert.

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Dan Brouthers was one of the greatest hitters of the 19th century. The five-time batting champ compiled a .342 lifetime average and a .423 on-base percentage.

Listed at 6’2″, 207 pounds, Brouthers was also quite a slugger. The home run champion in 1881 and 1886 was the career record holder for homers for two seasons.

Brouthers led the league in slugging percentage seven times including each season from 1881-1886. His career .943 OPS still ranks 24th on the All Time list. He also topped the league in total bases four times and in hits and doubled three times each.

For his accomplishments, Brouthers was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1945, thirteen years after his death.

In the collection is a scorecard filled out entirely in the hand of Hall of Famer Harry Wright from June 5, 1883 the year Brouthers won second of three batting crowns.

Hitting in the cleanup position, Brouthers went 0-for-4 in a lineup with future Hall of Famers Jim O’Rourke, Deacon White, and Pud Galvin. The “HW” initials Wright can be found as the scorekeeper for this game.

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Dan Brouthers was the majors career home run leader for two seasons in 1887 and 1888. Before and after Brouthers held the mark, it was owned by Harry Stovey.

A five-time home run champion, Stovey was the first big leaguer to post double-digit round trippers. When he hit his fourth homer of the 1885 season, Stovey’s total of 41 surpassed Charley Jones’ previous mark of 40. Stovey finished the year with 13 homers, a league-leading total for the third time in six seasons.

By the end of 1886 Stovey extended his mark to 57 with Brouthers right behind at 53 homers. Brouthers overtook Stovey in 1887 by out-homering him 12-4. Both men hit 9 home runs in 1888 as Brouthers held on to the record.

Stovey took back the #1 spot by swatting 19 home runs in 1889. When he retired in 1883 Stovey became the first man in big league history to leave the game as baseball’s all-time home run leader. Since then, Roger Connor, Babe Ruth, Henry Aaron, and Barry Bonds have done the same.

Shown here is a pair of Red Sox season passes issued to Stovey. The pass on top is from the final year of Bob Quinn’s stewardship of the Boston franchise in 1932. Quinn’s facsimile signature on the bottom right. Below that pass is one from the following season, the first year of Tom Yawkey’s 44-year reign as the Sox chief.

The story of Stovey’s career as well as his case for Cooperstown can be seen by clicking here. The link also shows the back of these passes that includes signatures of Stovey.