Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The by Bill James Read Free Book Online Page A

is sometimes difficult to figure out who won what in the 1890s. Each man won about 1,300 games as a manager.
    Selee’s record is significantly better than Hanlon’s, or vastly better, depending on how you rank them. By the scoring system I set up for managerial accomplishments (see “ Ranking Managers ”), Selee ranks as the twelfth greatest manager of all time, Hanlon as the seventeenth. Selee’s career winning percentage was .598; Hanlon’s was .530. Among managers who managed 1,000 or more major league games, Selee ranks fourth in winning percentage; Hanlon ranks thirty-third.
    Selee’s teams won 422 games more than they lost (1,284–862); he also ranks fourth all-time in this regard. Hanlon’s teams were 149 games over .500 (1,313–1,164); he ranks thirty-first.
    Despite this, Hanlon is much more famous than Selee. Hanlon was elected recently to the Hall of Fame; Selee hasn’t been, and won’t be. Hanlon played for the Detroit Wolverines in the 1880s and became the leader of the Baltimore Orioles in the 1890s.
    We knew that they were good, that legend said they were the greatest team of all time until the 1927 Yankees came along (McGraw said they were better than the Yanks) … For three decades sports-writers had been telling and retelling stories about the Old Orioles … how they invented the hit-and-run, the sacrifice bunt, the squeeze play, the double steal and other strategic ploys … how they developed “inside baseball.”
    —Bob Creamer, The Ultimate Baseball Book
    The 1894 Orioles had six Hall of Famers in their everyday lineup—Dan Brouthers, Hughie Jennings, John McGraw, Willie Keeler, Joe Kelley, Wilbert Robinson. They were aggressive to the border of criminality:
    Ned Hanlon’s Baltimore Orioles of the 1890s filed their spikes in front of opponents, then used them on them … He storm-troopered the Orioles to three National League championships.
    —Charles B. Cleveland, The Great Baseball Managers
    But the 1894 Orioles were not the greatest team before the 1927 Yankees, nor even the greatest team of their own generation. The 1897 Boston Beaneaters were the greatest team of the nineteenth century, and the 1906 Chicago Cubs were the greatest team before the 1927 Yankees.
    What those teams have in common is that both teams were built by Frank Selee. Selee’s Beaneaters battled Baltimore to a draw in the 1890s. He left Boston after a couple of .500 seasons and was hired to manage the Cubs, who had been floundering since the retirement of Cap Anson several years earlier. They had gone 53–86 in 1901.
    Deciding to start at shortstop, Selee invited a dozen shortstops to come to camp with the Cubs in 1902. One of them was Joe Tinker. Later in the summer, Selee purchased the contract of another young shortstop, Johnny Evers, and put him at second base. He had two young catchers, Johnny Kling and Frank Chance. He moved Chance to first base, brought in Three Finger Brown and Ed Reulbach, and edged the team forward to 68–69 in 1902, just 6 games behind Hanlon’s men in Brooklyn. They improved to 82–56 in 1903 (11 games ahead of Hanlon’s team), and 93–60 in 1904 (37 games ahead of Hanlon’s last team in Brooklyn).
    Early in 1905, however, the Cubs were sold. According to Bob Richardson in Nineteenth Century Stars (SABR, 1989), Selee retired at that time because he had developed tuberculosis. Other sources say that the new owner fired Selee because he wanted to bring in his own man. In any case, the magnificent team which Selee had spent three and a half years constructing was handed over to Frank Chance, who would do very well with it, indeed.
    Frank Selee is one of my favorite men in baseball history. He was cheated out of the chance to manage his second great team in their greatest years, and the memory of his first great team, in Boston, was obscured by the legends spun by three members of the old Orioles, Wilbert Robinson, Hughie Jennings, and John McGraw, who spent a total of sixty-six