Thomas Devyr
Thomas Devyr (1844 – January 22, 1896) was an American baseball player who played shortstop for the Brooklyn Eckfords during their team's championship seasons of 1862 and 1863. Later, in 1867, he confessed, along with two other New York Mutuals team members, to accepting money in a scheme to lose a game against his former club, the Eckfords, in 1865. The incident is considered baseball's first gambling scandal, and all three players were banished from playing competitively. The Mutuals reinstated Devyr in 1867 after his banishment, and went on to play several more seasons, his last in 1870 with the Eckfords. Early life Thomas Devyr was born in 1844 in Brooklyn, New York. His father was Thomas Ainge Devyr, an Irish political journalist and activist involved in the Chartism movement in Ireland. In 1840, he and his family fled the country to the United States when threatened with imprisonment. The family settled into Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, where the elder Thomas became an influential progressive writer and newspaper editor. He founded the first daily newspaper in the area's history, the Williamsburgh Daily Post. The Devyr family included five sons, and two daughters, and younger Thomas' middle initial has