A catcher who spent most of his 19-year active (1910–1928) playing career in the minor leagues, he threw and batted right-handed, and was listed as 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 m) tall and 170 pounds (77 kg).

Then, a generation-and-a-half later, Meyer managed the 1952 Pittsburgh Pirates to the third-worst record in modern National League history, the Bucs winning only 42 of 154 games.

However, during the period from 1932 through 1947, Meyer was a highly successful minor league manager, helming high-level teams in the New York Yankees' organization and winning four playoff championships.

In addition, in 1948, Meyer's first season at the helm of the Pirates, he was selected The Sporting News Major League Manager of the Year,[1] after he led the Bucs to a surprising first-division finish.

During his sophomore year of high school, Meyer was offered $75 per month to catch for a Lakeland, Florida, team, but was expected to inherit the brewery so his father resisted the idea.

[2] In 1915, Meyer played so well for a Davenport, Iowa, team Connie Mack acquired him to back up catcher Wally Schang for his major league Philadelphia Athletics.

[2][3] In his first season, Louisville won a second consecutive pennant with a team which included future Baseball Hall of Fame second baseman Billy Herman (whom Meyer would replace as skipper of the Pirates over 20 years later).

He produced one playoff team in two seasons while at Oakland and was named to manage another top-level Yankees farm outlet, the Kansas City Blues of the American Association, in 1938.

[1] For the next ten years, Meyer alternated as the manager of the Blues (1938–1941; 1946–1947) and another elite Yankee farm club, the Newark Bears of the International League (1942–1945).

[2] Later, he was derailed by the clubs' preference of the time for player–managers, thus saving salary during the Great Depression, or men whose major league résumés were stronger than Meyer's.

[1] When the Cubs fired Gabby Hartnett after the 1940 campaign Meyer was considered, but Jimmie Wilson got the job after helping the Cincinnati Reds win the 1940 World Series.

In 1945, Frank E. McKinney, owner of the Indianapolis Indians of the American Association, approached Meyer at the Little World Series in Louisville on behalf of the Indians' parent team, the Boston Braves, about their managerial opening, but the Braves owners, led by Lou Perini, ultimately chose Billy Southworth,[2] winner of three straight NL pennants and two World Series titles from 1942 to 1944 with the St. Louis Cardinals; Southworth would be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame as a manager in 2008.

The parent Yankees, meanwhile, had only one skipper from 1931 through 1945: McCarthy, who won eight American League pennants, seven World Series titles, and 1,438 regular-season games (an average of 96 a season) during that span.

[6] Meyer declined MacPhail's offer and instead returned to Kansas City, leading the 1947 Blues to a first-place finish,[2] while the Yankees rebounded to win the 1947 pennant under Bucky Harris.

His ownership group, which included entertainer Bing Crosby and real-estate magnate John W. Galbreath, hired a new management team at the close of the 1946 season.

However the managerial move backfired: the 37-year-old Herman was at the end of the line as a player, appearing in only 18 games and hitting .213, and his Pirates stumbled to the club's second consecutive seventh-place season in the eight-team National League.

[1] In December 1950, the Pirate ownership replaced Hamey with Branch Rickey, whose solution was to purge the team of high-salaried veterans and bring up young players from the farm system—the same tactic he'd used to rebuild the St. Louis Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers.

[8] Despite a managing record of 317–452 (.412) over five seasons, all with Pittsburgh, and his pedestrian big league playing career, Meyer was given two significant honors, a measure of how widely respected he was.