A Jersey City native, Geraghty went right from Villanova University to the 1936 Brooklyn Dodgers, appearing in 51 games with the team in his rookie season.

Patrick held several jobs during Ben's childhood; he was employed for over ten years as a teamster, then as a chauffeur for a tea factory, and finally as a night manager at the garage for the National Grocery Company.

The Geraghtys lived on 157 Grand Street in Jersey City, along with two of Ida's brothers, the four-member Greaves family, and a boarder from Sweden.

Standing 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m) tall and weighing 170 pounds (77 kg), Geraghty was shorter than average for a basketball player, but he scored a great deal of points and was named the team captain as a senior.

At the close of spring training, Stengel decided to move Frey to second base and added Geraghty to the Opening Day roster.

[2] Making his MLB debut on April 17, he played all 10 innings of a game against the Philadelphia Phillies, recording two hits and a run batted in (RBI) in a 4–3 Dodger victory.

[10][13] He sat out the 1941 and 1942 seasons, taking a job with a California shipyard before Stengel, now manager of the Boston Braves encouraged him to return east and make a comeback in 1943.

[14] Training in Wallingford, Connecticut, the Braves tried to do most of their work indoors initially, but they ended this practice after Geraghty and two others suffered minor leg injuries because of the slick floor.

[2] Geraghty started 1944 with the Braves, appearing in seven games through mid-May before again getting sent to the minors, this time to the Syracuse Chiefs of the Class AA International League.

[2][1] His final game was against the Dodgers on September 14; pinch-running for Buck Etchison, he scored to give the Braves the lead, though Boston allowed runs in the eighth and ninth and lost 5–4.

[10] Heading west in 1946, he joined the Sacramento Solons of the Class AAA Pacific Coast League but only lasted four games before getting released.

[2] On June 24, 1946, Geraghty survived one of the greatest tragedies in baseball history, when the bus carrying the Spokane Indians crashed and caught fire after attempting to avert an oncoming car on a rain-slicked mountain pass.

He sustained a severe head wound when he was thrown through a window before the bus burst into flames, but he was able to climb up the hillside and signal for help.

[2] Despite his head injury, Geraghty was named the immediate replacement for Mel Cole—the team's catcher and player-manager who perished in the crash—as the Indians' first post-accident skipper.

George Booker of The Sporting News wrote in August, "A great deal of the Tar success this season must be attributed to Ben Geraghty, who, with his magic touch, has turned a poor spring team into a 1951 pennant contender for the first time in years.

[22] Baseball's future home run king also recalled that "he chewed me out when I needed it, but he told me how good I could be and – most important – he taught me how to study the game, and never make the same mistake twice.

"[9] Pat Jordan, another 1953 Jacksonville Brave, remembered that Geraghty, a white man, would regularly confront the rigid racial segregation of the times.

Geraghty would insist that he and his minority players (Aaron, Horace Garner, and Felix Mantilla) be served as equals at the finest restaurants.

[2][10] Over the 1954-55 offseason, Geraghty managed the Caguas-Guayama Criollos of the Puerto Rican Winter League, a last-minute replacement for Mickey Owen, who chose to play for a Venezuelan team instead.

[2] In 1955, Geraghty expressed his desire that players pay attention to the game: "A guy who doesn't study to improve himself has got no place in baseball.

"Look at what Ben Geraghty's done to that club" was a remark Frank Haraway of The Sporting News overheard many times in the season's first two months; he attributed the improvement to a change in the team's attitude.

[27] As it battled for the title, Wichita dealt with injuries to key players and saw several of their regulars promoted to the major league club, which was also in a pennant race.

In fact, Geraghty recommended to Milwaukee general manager John Quinn that the team promote Bob Hazle, one of Wichita's starting outfielders.

[28] Hazle went on to bat .403 in the season's final two months, helping the parent club win the National League (NL) pennant and ultimately the 1957 World Series.

Geraghty first suffered a knee injuring while demonstrating a double play, then had to go to Milwaukee for treatment after getting struck by a foul ball during batting practice.

[2][10] This time, the Colonels won in the American Association playoffs, allowing them to advance to the Junior World Series, where the Buffalo Bisons swept them.

His wife phoned for medical help, but Geraghty was stricken with a fatal heart attack, dying at 4:15 A.M., one month shy of his 51st birthday.

[2] "I don't know of another manager in baseball whom the paying fans held in so much respect", Bill Foley, the Florida Times-Union's sports editor, wrote upon Geraghty's death.

[2] He was very superstitious, once having a lucky rabbit's foot flown to a visiting city on a Trans World Airlines flight when he forgot to bring it with him on the team's road trip.

Jordan recalled that he would wear a lucky shirt, drink an entire case of beer, and chatter incessantly with the bus driver.