He also participated in a December 1891 exhibition of indoor, winter baseball played with a hair-filled ball measuring 19 inches in diameter and with bats reportedly resembling cut-off broomsticks.

Carfrey's minor league and semi-pro assignments include the Houston team (1882–1883, 1888), the Haymaker club (1884), the Athletic Cub of Schuylkill Navy (1891–1892), Philadelphia Colts (1894), Hazleton Quay-kers (1895), Salem (1895), Ansonia (1896), York (1896), Media (1897), and Mount Holly (1899).

He and his older brother William were both employed at that time in a rolling mill, while their father continued to work as a shoe maker.

In the 1882 league championship game on September 30, 1882, Carfrey drove in the winning run with a hit to right field for Houston.

[6] In the spring of 1883, a newspaper account noted his contributions to the 1882 team: "Carfrey played behind the bat with scarcely an error to his credit and succeeded in putting a number of men out.

[8][9] In September 1883, he scored three runs and "received a terrible blow in the eye"—one of several incidents that a newspaper report characterized as "little incivilities" that "were constantly exchanged" during the game.

Carfrey attempted to play the role of a peace-maker amid a scene described as "a pushing, swearing, fighting mob" which would have injured the Philadelphia men had the Bristol players and police not come to their assistance.

As the team left the field, "a howling crowd of young boys" threw stones, "smooth and jagged," at the Navy's bus.

The game was played with a hair-filled ball measuring 19 inches in diameter and with bats reportedly resembling cut-off broomsticks.

[23] In 1899, Carfrey, at age 35, played at second base for the Mount Holly (a suburb of Philadelphia in New Jersey) team in the Burlington County League.

[27] At the time of the 1900 United States census, Carfrey was living in Philadelphia's 19th Ward with his wife, Emma, at the home of his in-laws, Howard and Mary Chapman.