Frank Selee

Frank Gibson Selee never played professional baseball with any distinction. He spent a few games in the outfield for a Lawrence, Massachusetts, club in 1884 and demonstrated, by his own admission, more enthusiasm than talent. Then he turned to managing and won 1,284 games across 16 major league seasons, captured five National League pennants in eight years with the Boston Beaneaters, assembled the most famous double-play combination in baseball history with the Chicago Cubs, and developed or managed 12 future Hall of Famers. His .598 career winning percentage ranked fourth in baseball history at the time of his election. The Veterans Committee inducted him in 1999, 90 years after tuberculosis killed him at 49.

Melrose

Selee was born on October 26, 1859, in Amherst, New Hampshire, the oldest child of Nathan Selee, a Methodist preacher and former schoolteacher, and Annie Selee. The family moved to Melrose, Massachusetts, eight miles north of Boston, in 1864. Selee played outfield for the local Melrose Alphas as an amateur and left a job at a watch company in 1884 to organize a team in Waltham, raising $1,000 for infrastructure and signing his own players. The franchise collapsed within months. He managed at Haverhill, then won a pennant at Oshkosh in 1887 and two more at Omaha in the Western Association, where his 1889 club went 83-38 for the best record in organized baseball that year.

At Oshkosh, Selee managed Dummy Hoy, the pioneering deaf player, and devised a system of hand signals so the captain's box operator could relay ball-and-strike calls from the umpire. The arrangement may have been the first use of ball-and-strike signals on a baseball field.

Boston

The Boston Beaneaters hired Selee in 1890, and he won five pennants in his first nine seasons. The 1892 Beaneaters went 102-48, the first team in baseball history to win 100 games in a season. The 1898 club matched it at 102-47. Both totals went unmatched by any NL team for years afterward.

Selee built those teams through scouting, player development, and a gift for recognizing where a player belonged on the diamond. He signed Kid Nichols as an 18-year-old prospect from his own Omaha club, and Nichols won 27 games as a rookie in 1890 and 30 or more in each of the next three seasons. He acquired Hugh Duffy and Tommy McCarthy from the defunct American Association. He farmed Jimmy Collins to Louisville for development, brought him back, and converted him into the premier third baseman in the game. He traded Billy Hamilton in from Philadelphia. He purchased Vic Willis from Syracuse for $1,000 and a player, and Willis won 25 games as a rookie in 1898. He converted Fred Tenney from catcher to first base. The roster cycled constantly, but the results stayed.

Selee managed with a philosophy unusual for the era. He was a son of a minister, didn't drink, spoke softly, and believed that team chemistry produced more wins than intimidation. "If I make things pleasant for the players, they reciprocate," he said. "I would not have anyone on a team who was not congenial." His teams refined the hit-and-run play, emphasized sacrifice hitting and place hitting, employed the double steal, and ran the bases with a precision that contemporaries found remarkable. Monte Ward said in 1893, "I have never, in my twelve years' experience on the diamond, seen such skillful playing."

The Beaneaters declined after 1898 as the new American League raided the National League's rosters, and Selee lost players he couldn't replace. Boston finished fifth in 1901, and Selee moved on.

Chicago

Selee took over the Chicago Orphans in 1902 and inherited a team that went 53-86 the previous year. He improved the club to 68-69 in his first season, 82-56 in his second, and 93-60 in his third. The transformation came through the same method he used in Boston: repositioning players to their ideal spots on the field.

He moved Frank Chance from catcher to first base because Chance's defensive struggles behind the plate were wasting his bat. He shifted Joe Tinker from third base to shortstop after examining a dozen candidates. He installed Johnny Evers, an intense young infielder from Troy, New York, at second base, displacing Bobby Lowe. The three of them became Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance, the most famous double-play combination in baseball history. On December 12, 1903, Selee traded 20-game winner Jack Taylor and Larry McLean to the St. Louis Cardinals for a young pitcher named Mordecai Brown, who had gone 9-13 as a rookie. Brown went on to win 186 games for Chicago across nine seasons, including six consecutive 20-win campaigns. On March 27, 1902, the Chicago Daily News reported that Selee would focus on "team work of the new Cubs," the first recorded use of the nickname that stuck.

Selee never managed the dynasty he built. He contracted a severe cold in late 1902 that was diagnosed as pleurisy, and his lungs never fully recovered. He stopped taking road trips in 1905, left Chance in charge, received a formal tuberculosis diagnosis in July, and took a leave of absence. He moved to Denver seeking better air, bought an interest in the Pueblo club of the Western League, and managed three losing seasons before his health failed completely. Chance succeeded him as Chicago's manager and led the Cubs to four pennants between 1906 and 1910 and two World Series titles in 1907 and 1908, using the roster and the system Selee had put in place.

Historian David Nemec wrote that Selee possessed "a flair for bending players acquired from here, there and everywhere" and called him "a master at putting together a team better than the sum of its parts." Twelve Hall of Famers played for him, including King Kelly, John Clarkson, Duffy, McCarthy, Nichols, Hamilton, Collins, Willis, Chance, Tinker, Evers, and Brown. His .598 winning percentage across 1,284 victories speaks for itself.

Selee died on July 5, 1909, in Denver, at 49, in the Reverend Frederick W. Oakes Home for Consumptives. His parents, still living, brought his body back to Massachusetts for burial at Wyoming Cemetery in Melrose. The Veterans Committee elected him alongside Orlando Cepeda, Smokey Joe Williams, and Nestor Chylak in 1999.