Baseball encyclopedias give his birth date as 1900, but his son Eddie Jr. says he subtracted a year from his age when he entered professional ball.

[2] He was an outstanding football, baseball and track and field athlete as part of the Morgan City High School, Class of 1917.

His father owned a general store and a lumber yard and served as mayor of Morgan City, but lost it all during a recession before World War I and moved his family to Houston, Texas where an oil boom was just beginning.

[3][4] Dyer left school two credits short of graduation in 1922 when Branch Rickey gave him a $2,500 bonus to sign with the Cardinals.

He made his debut with the Cardinals on the mound on July 8, 1922, and pitched twice in relief before he was farmed out to Syracuse, at the highest minor-league level.

During much of the wartime period that followed, Dyer was director of the entire Cardinals farm system, although he left that post in the midst of the 1944 season to tend to his oil, real estate and insurance businesses in Houston.

The Cardinals were a powerhouse, having won three straight NL pennants from 1942 to 1944 and finished second in 1941 and 1945, but 1946 was an extremely challenging season for Dyer and his team.

Dyer also had to deal with the Cards' implacable foes, the Dodgers of Leo Durocher, back at full strength after the war.

Led by pitchers Howie Pollet and Harry Brecheen, and the hitting and leadership of future Hall of Famers Stan Musial and Enos Slaughter, the Cardinals made up a five-game All-Star Break deficit, won 14 of their 22 regular-season games with the Dodgers, and were tied with Brooklyn for the pennant on the season's final day.

The Red Sox had breezed to the American League pennant by 12 games and featured 20-game winners Dave Ferriss and Tex Hughson.

Idle during the NL playoffs, Boston played an exhibition game against an AL "all-star" team in an effort to tune up for the Fall Classic.

With the team's legendary farm system struggling without its founder — Branch Rickey, the very man who brought Robinson to Brooklyn — the Cardinals’ quarter-century of baseball dominance was coming to an end.