Primary Position: Catcher
Birthplace: Wilmington
First, Middle Names: August Schuster Nicknames: Shuny
Date of Birth: Nov. 29, 1909 Date and Place of Death: Feb. 16, 1974
Burial: Oakdale Cemetery, Wilmington
High School: New Hanover High School, Wilmington
Bats: R Throws: R Height and Weight: 5-10, 192
Debut Year: 1937 Final Year: 1937 Years Played: 1
Team and Year: Cincinnati Reds, 1937
Career Summary
G AB H R RBI HR BA. OBP. SLG. WAR
3 6 1 0 0 0 .167 .167 .167 -0.1
Gus Brittain was undeniably one tough SOB. A baseball player who knew him well was once riding on a train that hit a car. This is how he described the awful grinding and crunching of metal: “Sounds like Gus Brittain is under the train.”[I]
Though he spent only two months in the major leagues, Brittain, like so many players of his era, had a long career in the minors as a player, coach or manager. From the Piedmont League to the Sally League, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Trenton, New Jersey, Brittain left a trail of suspensions and fines for feuding with umpires and fighting with players, even those on his own team. His reputation was such that a newspaper in Maryland in 1940 felt it necessary to warn players with “pugilistic tendencies” in the Eastern Shore League when Brittain was hired to manage the team in Salisbury. “Brittain is a swash-buckling, rugged fellow, a great jockey who can give and take and pretty handy man with his dookies,” the newspaper noted.[II]
It’s likely that Gus Brittain is the only player from North Carolina promoted to the majors solely for those fighting skills. He’s certainly the only one who was ever banned from baseball.
Augustus Shuster – his nickname “Shuny” was likely a corruption of his middle name – was born in Wilmington and lived most of his life in the area. The youngest of William and Katherine Brittain’s five children, Gus was a star athlete at New Hanover High School.
His first professional baseball job was as the catcher of his hometown Pirates of the Piedmont League. He soon was fined for fighting. “It just ain’t me to back away,” is how Brittain once explained it.[III]
His home-state Durham Bulls in 1937 wanted to get rid of Brittain because of his pugnacious ways. Charlie Dressen was only too glad to take him. The manager of the Cincinnati Reds, Dressen was a hot-tempered, combative guy himself. He thought his team was being intimidated by National League pitchers who seemed to always throw at his batters. Dressen wanted an enforcer. He signed the 5-10, solidly built Brittain as his third-string catcher. His job, Dressen announced to all, was “to fight.” To sportswriters, Brittain became “the fighting bullpen catcher.” [IV]
It was a role Brittain knew he was well qualified to fill. “First they tell me I gotta quit fighting to stay in baseball,” he said “and now I go to the big leagues because I get into fights. Boy, oh boy! If it’s fights they want I’ll supply ‘em.”[V]
It didn’t work out exactly as Dressen had planned. Brittain got into three games while with the Reds and one fight. It just so happened to be with Paul Derringer, the Reds’ star pitcher. [1] The squabble started on the bench, recalled an eyewitness years later. “And Derringer picked up the catcher’s mask and hit Gus right between the eyes,” he remembered. “Gus didn’t even blink. He got Derringer down on the floor of the dugout, under the bench, and it took the whole team to get him off.”[VI]
Dressen soon released his fighting catcher.
Brittain was back in Wilmington in 1946, this time as the Pirates’ player-manager. Though the team wasn’t very good, Brittain was a fan favorite. Those in the right-field bleachers at old Legion Stadium would cheer his every hit and catch. Brittain responded by bowing and doffing his cap.
The manager did what by then was expected and charged the field to argue a call at second base in a home game against Clinton that August 13. Brittain cursed a little and then went back to the dugout, a rather mild outburst by his standards.
He was crouched behind the plate catching to the start the next inning when Van Mungo, the Clinton player-manager and former Brooklyn Dodger star, stepped up. Words were exchanged. Brittain claimed years later that Mungo struck first. Brittain returned fire, and several hundred people stormed out of the stands.
“Everybody was fighting all over the place,” Brittain recalled. “Somebody hit the umpire, but I was trying to protect him. It kept up for a pretty good while and when it ended Mungo looked pretty bad.”[VII]
Mungo would later testify that several players and fans threw him to the ground and beat him. He and the second-base umpire ended up in the hospital.
Brittain was fined $100 and suspended indefinitely. He appealed what he thought was an unusually harsh sentence. Under the rules governing such things at the time, a federal judge in Durham heard the appeal. He placed Brittain on baseball’s ineligible list for triggering what he called “one of the worst demonstrations of rowdyism in the minor leagues in the last 20 years.[VIII] Brittain was banned from baseball.
The ban was lifted two years later, but by then no one in baseball would hire Brittain. That part of his life was over.
Brittain opened Shuny’s Place in Wrightsville Beach, a beer and hot dog joint where beachgoers could also can dance all night and, said its proprietor, “You can’t get a table wearing anything less than a bathing suit.”[IX] His wife, Laura, and their son lived out back.
A bad heart was one foe Brittain couldn’t beat. He died of a heart attack in 1974 and age 64.
Footnote
[1] One of the most-dominant pitchers in the National League in the late 1930s, Paul Derringer was Gus Brittain’s equal as a belligerent man who often used his fists to settle disputes. He once awoke from an operation in a hospital recovery room, swung at a nurse, and knocked her out. Enough said.
References
[I] Richman, Milton, United Press International. “Twins’ Scout Says Watch For Parker.” Desert Sun (Palm Springs, CA.), April 6, 1977.
[II] “Information Regarding Shore Ball Managers.” Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enteprise (Pocomoke City, MD.), May 3, 1940.
[III] Ibid.
[IV] Barber, Red. “Once a Catcher Was Hired to Just Use His Fists.” Tallahassee (FL.) Democrat. March 10, 1974.
[V] “Information Regarding Shore Ball Managers.”
[VI] Richman.
[VII] Quincy, Bob. “Not the Ritz, But Still Formal.” Charlotte (NC) News, July 20, 1951.
[VIII] Associated Press. “Gus Brittain Ordered Placed On Baseball’s Ineligible List.” The Wilmington (NC) Morning Star, August 31, 1946.
[IX] Quincy.