Billy Geer

William H. Geer (died September 30, 1928),

Later life and criminal career

After leaving baseball in the mid-1880s, Geer turned to check forgery. According to a biography published by the Society for American Baseball Research, he was arrested numerous times across the United States over the following two decades, frequently operating under aliases, and was convicted and imprisoned on several occasions. These included a sentence at Stillwater State Prison in Minnesota in 1892, followed by further prison terms in Virginia, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri. While serving a sentence in Missouri, he was granted a pardon in 1928 because of a terminal illness, and died later that year.

Age controversy

At age 15 years 63 days, he is credited as the youngest player to ever appear in a Major League Baseball game. There is controversy about his age, or the fact that the National Association has not been officially credited as a "major league". Assuming the veracity of his date of birth, he didn't actually make his Major League debut until the age of 18 years, 3 months, when he played for the Cincinnati Reds of the National League in .