He is a baseball historian who grew up playing Khoury League and high school baseball in the St. Louis area. Since 2016, he has continued to play in over 100 games a year across America in the Roy Hobbs Senior Baseball League.

Wheatley has written many books on the history of St. Louis baseball which have received national recognition. His goal is to preserve the history and stories of the leagues and players within the amateur and professional ranks. His book "The St. Louis Browns - The Story of a Beloved Team" was selected by Sports Digest as the best baseball book of 2017. The Society For American Baseball Research (SABR) included the book as a finalist for the Lawrence Ritter Award. Wheatley's latest book "Baseball in St. Louis From Little Leagues to Major Leagues" was selected as one of the Top 25 books of 2020 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Both books were selected by a recent panel as two of the Top 100 baseball books of all time.

Wheatley has produced two Emmy nominated films on St. Louis baseball for the PBS network for which he received an Emmy Award. The National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York has invited him twice to speak about his films.

Wheatley has been president of the St. Louis Browns Historical Society since 2016. He has been on the Board of Directors of the St. Louis Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame since 2019. In 2018, he accepted the Halls first Legacy Award on behalf of the St. Louis Browns. Since 2021, Wheatley has been on the Board of Directors of the SABR (Bob Broeg Chapter). He has been on the Executive Committee of the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame since 2017. He has been an archivist for Khoury League International since 2016.

Wheatley grew up in the world of amateur baseball in St. Louis, playing in the Dellwood Khoury League from 1961 to 1969. He played for Riverview Gardens High School in 1969 and 1970.

He began as a bat boy for his father's teams and learned to appreciate the game. Many of the men on those teams are now in the St. Louis Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame. Ed Wheatlev, Sr. was inducted as a player in 1989.