Born Mordecai Peter Centennial Brown to a farming family in Nyesville, Indiana in 1876, he would go on to be known as “Three Finger” Brown, the ace right-hander for the great Chicago Cubs teams during the early decade of the Twentieth Century.
The reason for his nickname came when Mordecai Brown was just five years old. When feeding material into the farm’s feed chopper, his hand slipped and was mangled, severing much of his index finger and damaging the others. He further caused injury to the hand while it was healing after he fell chasing a rabbit, resulting in the breaking of his other fingers and were not set properly.