Billy Geer: A baseball oddity who went through Brooklyn

August 2, 2024 William A. Gralnick

Ebbets Field. AP Photo/Tom Fitzsimmons, File

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Oddly enough, but for Clem Labine who has already appeared in these pages under my by-line, the Dodgers of the ‘40s and ‘50’s had zero ball players born in August. I turned to the Brooklyn teams that played in the early days of the sport. The Brooklyn teams, some of which were so bad one went 2 and 41! Scouring the Brooklyn rosters, I finally hit paydirt with Billy Geer.

Let me share with the reader that what follows is less a story of baseball played but one of a baseball player, a player who for reasons this reporter could not uncover, went to wasting precious on-field promise to having a longer career in crime than in baseball.

Billy Geer was an American Major League Baseball player who played most of his career as a shortstop for five seasons. Depending on how you slice it, he played for a total of seven teams. He is most notable for his status as possibly the youngest player in Major League history. He was 16. But that piece of history pales in the face of the rest. Billy Geer went both to college and prison

Here’s a snapshot at this near wonder boy’s life. He was born in New York City in 1852. Baseball America tells us that his full name was William Henry Harrison Geer and that he was chunky of build, tipping the scales at 160 lbs and standing 5’8” tall. He was a righty.

Geer was multi-talented playing the infield and outfield and also being a featured singer in the Manhattan College choir. At 16, he was signed on by a team called The Unions of Morrisania, NY, and heralded as having so much talent that he was supposed by the local sports writers to dislodge from their perch some of the Union’s top players. The local paper put it this way, “The Unions have gained an addition to their nine in a young man named Geer, whose admirers claim can eclipse either Stockman or George Wright at shortstop.” The Unions included several future major leaguers “so a sixteen-year-old playing on the same team was an impressive accomplishment.”

It was his mobility off the diamond that is so interesting. Bill Carlye put it this way for SABR. “Billy Geer had a somewhat nomadic baseball career, playing parts of six major league seasons with seven different teams. That nomadic life would continue in his post-baseball career as he took up another profession that would keep him on the run for the rest of his life.”

In his six-season career, he played for 19 teams, not seven, according to Baseball Reference.com. The discrepancy is caused by his being so peripatetic. For some teams, he played for so short a time that his stay wasn’t counted. An example would be the Philadelphia team where after two weeks he up and disappeared. He left without paying his room, board, or gambling debts. To say he was “a character” would be accurate.

For the “Deadball” era, Geer was a decent ball player. He didn’t hit for average, that’s for sure, nor power. In six seasons, he had 893 at-bats and garnered 191 hits. He hit no home runs, but in those days that wasn’t that unusual. His career average was .214 with 33 RBIs and 128 runs scored. But he was a spark plug. This from Baseball-Reference.com.

Understand, it was a different game then. To give the reader an idea of what baseball was like during that era, I offer this from the Chicago Tribune. (Note the Tribune’s comments on a game played by the Brooklyn Atlantics.) The 1875 National Association race was one of the most unbalanced in baseball history. Several teams folded by midseason. Boston romped to the league crown with a 71-8 record, while teams like Geer’s New Haven club managed to make it through the season, albeit with an awful 7-40 record. Even they were not as bad as the pathetic Brooklyn Atlantics, who managed to play the entire season but finished 2-42.”

Here’s a description of the two teams that appeared in the Chicago Tribune:

“There will be a shout of joy among the baseball reporters, if in no other quarter, when the Atlantic, the New Haven, and the Washington nines follow the example just set by the Centennials. The general public have long since ceased going to a game in which either of these clubs participates, but the unfortunate baseball reporter must go…, so that he can tell the public the next morning what an infernal set of asses they are. Think of one being compelled to sit by and witness such a game as that played by the (Brooklyn) Atlantics and New Haven yesterday. It took these novices three mortal hours to play nine innings, and I speak but the truth when I say there was not a single sharp or in any way brilliant play made during the entire struggle.” That’s a new definition to “color commentary.” Geer played his last season in Louisville. Stats Muse shares how the mighty had fallen. He played in 14 games batting .118 with 6 hits, and 3 rbi’s. He scored 2 runs.hit.118 with 6 hits, 3 RBIs and 2 runs scored in 14 games in his last season.

Who knows why Geer stripped his gears. It wasn’t the money. At $140 a month, he was making over 50 grand in today’s dollars. Then again, depending on the team, he was making more or less than that and also went for periods without playing at all. Maybe it was the playing conditions, maybe it was just who he really was, but Billy Geer came off the rails.

His season ended abruptly, said the local paper in Ontario, Canada, where he was playing. It reported that “he had been arrested with his teammate Henry Luff in New Haven and charged with stealing several items from the Tecumseh Hotel in Toronto, Ontario. Among the items they were accused of stealing were a policeman’s revolver, a meerschaum pipe, a gold watch, and several expensive dress coats. They were immediately suspended by the team.”

By 1878 it looked like he had turned it around. He worked hard at it and almost didn’t make it happen. He married into a prominent family. Money and off-field business opportunities were there for him. The town paper reported that “Geer of the Cincinnati club of 1878 has written to every League club, seeking an engagement for the upcoming season. He eventually was picked up by the Worcester club, but lasted only two games.”

Geer was finally able to land a regular job with a team in 1883 when Brooklyn formed a team in the Interstate Association. He signed in March, but the team did not begin play until May. While waiting for the season to start, he umpired some games in Philadelphia, then served as captain of the Brooklyn club and led them to the Interstate championship.” Again, the promise. But again the failure.

Geer was sought after or arrested in more than two dozen cities from coast to coast. And this was the era of the steam engine! How he got to so many different places in such short periods is almost miraculous.

More reporting. “In April, Geer was once again in prison, not in California, but on the other side of the country in Richmond, Virginia: W. H. Geer, an ex-ball player and professional forger, with a new alias for every city, and neat enough to pass checks on the Boston store, and Thomas Kilpatrick and Company, has been located by Chief of Detectives Cox in the penitentiary at Richmond, Virginia, where he began March 21 a sixteen-month sentence for forgery. His criminal record includes a seven-year sentence at Stillwater, Minnesota, whence he was sent from St. Paul in 1892, and pardoned last year. The Pinkertons are after him and promise to see to his extradition and prosecution for forgery in other states after his release at Richmond.”

In 1904 Geer was arrested for forgery once again, this time in Iowa using the name Bruce Barrington. He was sentenced to two years in the Iowa State Prison. Upon his release, he was at it again, using a variety of names.

“Fifty business houses in this city are alleged to have cashed bogus checks for Nelson B. Sears, alias William H. Geer, W. H. W. Dwight, George M. Myer, J. B. Rowan, R. A. Myer, J. R. Mott, and Ed Lyon, who was arrested in Freeport, Illinois. When arrested, Sears had 22 worthless checks in his pocket.”

How did this mind-boggling story end? Read on. “…he was arrested in Joplin, Missouri, this time using the name N. N. Vedee. He received a ten-year sentence and is listed in the Missouri prison database as M. M. Adams., alias N. N. Vedee.

Geer was in the Missouri penitentiary until June of 1928 when he was issued a sick pardon by the governor because he was suffering from an incurable illness. He was paroled to the care of Mrs. S. B. Turner, who ran a boarding house in Chicago. It was here that Geer died on September 30, 1928, under the name Bruce Barrington, the name Geer had been using when he was arrested in 1904. His body was donated to a mortuary school. While Geer’s baseball career was somewhat mundane, his forgery career was prolific and widespread.”

I close with this. This story had a lot of contributors. I leaned heavily on the work of Bill Carlye and SABR. The story of Billy Geer should be a book, not an article and Carlye should write it.