Hoy is the most accomplished deaf player in MLB history, and is credited by some sources with causing the establishment of signals for safe and out calls.

He opened a shoe repair store in his hometown and played baseball on weekends, earning a professional contract in 1886 with an Oshkosh, Wisconsin, team which was managed by Frank Selee in 1887.

In his rookie year he led the league in stolen bases (although the statistic was defined differently prior to 1898),[4] and also finished second with 69 walks while batting .274.

At 5'4" and batting left-handed, he was able to gain numerous walks with a small strike zone, leading the league twice and compiling a .386 career on-base percentage.

Hoy later joined the Louisville Colonels, where his teammates included Honus Wagner, Fred Clarke and Tommy Leach, who was his roommate.

In 1901, he broke Tom Brown's record of 3,623 career outfield putouts, and led the league with 86 walks and 14 times hit by pitch.

In May of his last season with the Reds, he batted against pitcher Dummy Taylor of the New York Giants in the first faceoff between deaf players in the Major Leagues.

In the November 6, 1886 issue of The Sporting News, the deaf pitcher Ed Dundon is credited as using hand signals while umpiring a game in Mobile, Alabama on October 20, 1886.

[6] No articles printed during Hoy's lifetime have been found to support the suggestion that he influenced the creation of signals, nor did he ever maintain that he had such a role.

[6] In retirement, Hoy and his wife Anna Maria, who was also deaf, operated a dairy farm in Mount Healthy, Ohio, outside Cincinnati.

Upon his death that December, his remains were cremated according to family tradition and were scattered at Lytle Park in Cincinnati.

[11] In 2008, the Documentary Channel aired the biography Dummy Hoy: A Deaf Hero (aka: I See the Crowd Roar).

[14] The 2019 limited-release movie The Silent Natural, tells the story of Hoy, who is played by Miles Barbee, who is deaf in real life.