Bill Boyd

William John Boyd

• Bats Unknown, Throws Unknown

Weight 250 lbs.

• Debut April 22, 1872
• Final Game October 9, 1875
• Born December 22, 1852 in New York, NY USA
• Died October 1, 1912 in Jamaica, NY USA

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Biographical Information

Bill Boyd was born at the right time and in the right place to be involved with the young professional sport of baseball. Born in 1852 in New York City where baseball started, he joined the New York Mutuals of the National Association at age 19 in 1872. He was the youngest man on a team that averaged 25 years of age (Candy Cummings was 23). He played third base. The next season, 1873, he stayed in the area, playing for the Brooklyn Atlantics, primarily as an outfielder. He hit better than most of his teammates.

1874 was his big year, as he moved to Connecticut to play for the Hartford Dark Blues, and hit .350 on a team that hit .274. He did not have enough at-bats to be listed among the leaders, but would have been fourth in the league in both batting average and slugging percentage. He went back to Brooklyn in 1875, where he played for a terrible team that won only 2 games all season. He hit .291 on a team that hit only .197. His batting average and slugging percentage were by far the highest among the regulars on the team. He managed the team for two games and also umpired 20 games (he had umpired a game in 1873 as well).

During the winter between 1875 and 1876, the National League started and the National Association folded after five years of existence. Brooklyn was not one of the teams that made the jump to the new National League, probably because its 1875 record was so bad. Bill Boyd, who had been an excellent player in 1874 and 1875 in the National Association, never appeared in the National League, even though he was still only 23 years old in 1876. He supposedly weighed 250 lbs, which would have made him the heaviest known player of the 1870s (for many players in the early decades of baseball, weights are missing or wild guesses).

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