[2] After playing baseball in various minor league teams for a couple of years, he enrolled in 1878 in dental school at the University of Pennsylvania.

[3] While attending dental school, he played professional baseball every year, catching in more than 230 games as well as "barnstorming" in the off-season with a different team, the Hop Bitters.

His most notable performance is most likely in the 1886 St. Louis Browns of the American Association when they beat the Chicago White Stockings of the National League, for the Championship (later called World Series).

For his part in the championship, in 1886, the Missouri Pacific Railroad, honored Bushong and several other players by renaming some of their whistle-stop towns.

[2] In 1887 Bushong became one of the first baseball players to do paid product endorsements, in an advertisement for Merrell's Penetrating Oil, which was a cold medicine.

[2] In a game that was traditionally played bare-handed, it is difficult to say who was first to make and use the padded catcher's mitt similar to today's glove.

Further, an article on October 13, 1887, by the Brooklyn Eagle, tells of Bushong losing his old glove.... "he feels pretty badly over the matter.. it was padded and fixed up until it was as soft to his hand as a pillow and it was his best friend while he was up under the bat.

Following his baseball retirement in 1891, Bushong, then 33 years old, began practicing dentistry full-time along with two brothers, who were also dentists, at a large dental house in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Also while working in Hoboken, he began and, according to baseball historian William Rankin, "built up a large and flourishing practice", at his home in south Brooklyn, 442 Ninth Street.

[1][2] On November 9, 1898, Bushong's 4-year-old son died after being severely burned in an election night bonfire, which were common ritual at the time.