seamheads.com
Larry Brown was a switch-hitting catcher whose defense was his strength.
Larry Brown had a great arm – wasn’t much of a hitter, but he could catch a cut ball, knuckleball, emery ball, anything.
Ted (Double Duty) Radcliffe
Larry Brown’s career as a catcher and manager spanned from 1919-1949. He spent time with the Birmingham Black Barons, Indianapolis ABC’s, Memphis Red Sox, Detroit Stars, Chicago American Giants, New York Black Yankees, Philadelphia Stars, and a handful of other teams. He earned his nickname “Iron Man” by catching 234 games in 1930 for the New York Lincoln Giants. He was known for not removing his catcher’s mask on pop-ups and for being rough on umpires.
He played on three championship teams, and appeared in six All Star games. He was a successful player manager with the Memphis Red Sox in the 1940s. Here is an unsubstantiated story on his powerful arm, taken from the NLBM emuseum pages:
Oral tradition insists that while playing against Ty Cobb in Cuba in the winter of 1926, Brown threw out the legendary base stealer on five consecutive attempts to steal second base. According to the story, Cobb was sufficiently impressed to try to get the light-skinned Brown to pass as a Cuban and play in the major leagues. The story has not been conclusively proven or disproven.
NLBM emuseum website
Source: James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994