Ben Geraghty Obituary

Baseball Almanac presents the actual word-for-word transcript from the obituary of Ben Geraghty, taken from New York Times.

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"Invariably, they would be refused service. While (Hank) Aaron waited nervously outside, (Ben) Geraghty complained loudly to the management ... They [would go] to the next best restaurant, and the next and the next, until Geraghty finally located one that would serve [them] ..." - Author Pat Jordan in A False Spring (1975)

Ben Geraghty Obituary

Appeared in The New York Times on June 19, 1963 / Obituaries / Ben Geraghty

Ben Geraghty, Ballplayer, Dies;
Managed Minor League Teams

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., June 18 (AP) - Ben Geraghty, a former major league infielder and manager of the International League baseball team here, the Jacksonville Suns, died today, apparently of a heart attack. He was 50 years old.

Played for Dodgers

Mr. Geraghty, one of the most successful minor league managers, was graduated from Villanova University, Villanova, Pa., in 1936, with a bachelor's degree in journalism. He played for the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Braves in the next 11 years.

In 1947 he was named manager of the Spokane, Wash., club of the Western International League. Later he managed teams in Bristol, Va.; Palatka, Fla., and Meridian, Miss.

He took over the Jacksonville team in 1953, when it was the Jacksonville Braves of the South Atlantic League. He led the team to league pennants in 1953, 1954 and 1956. In the last six years his teams never finished below second place.

At Wichita, Kan., in 1957, he managed the American Association team to a pennant and in the next year won the league's pennant as manager in Louisville, Ky.

He returned to Jacksonville last year and his team won the International League pennant. Yesterday the Suns were in fourth place in the league's southern division.

He leaves his widow, the former Mary Dowd of Orange, N.J., and five childred: Patrick, Elizabeth, Barry, Tommy and Benjie.

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Ben Geraghty, over the course of his historic seventeen-year managing career, won one-thousand three-hundred seventeen games, lost one-thousand twenty-one, and won five pennants in a seven year span (1953-59).

Geraghty was never called to manage in the major leagues. In 1962, he left the Braves and joined the Cleveland Indians farm system as manager of their new AAA International League affiliate - in Jacksonville. His team won 94 games, and Geraghty earned his second Minor League Manager of the Year Award and the final pennant of his career. The following June 18, in the middle of his second season in the new job, Geraghty was stricken with a fatal heart attack. He was one month shy of his 51st birthday.

Did you know that on June 24, 1946, Ben Geraghty was aboard the bus carrying his team, the Spokane Indians of the Class B Western International League, when it crashed while attempting to avert an oncoming car on a rain-slicked mountain pass? Nine players were killed and the team was decimated and could only continue the season with players loaned from other clubs and organizations.