Frank Chance

Investor

• Born: September 9, 1877
• Birthplace: Fresno, California
• Died: September 15, 1924
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

Sport: Baseball

Early Life

Frank Leroy Chance was born into an affluent California family on September 9, 1877. His father, a bank president, sent him to Washington College in Irvington, California, to study medicine. There, starring as a catcher on the school baseball team, Frank was spotted by Bill Lange, who was nearing the end of a short but spectacular career as a major leaguer. He persuaded Frank to leave college after two years and try his luck with a semiprofessional baseball team in Illinois. The tryout was successful, and the next year, 1898, Frank reported to Lange’s team, the Chicago Cubs.

The Road to Excellence

Ruggedly handsome and large for his day at more than 6 feet tall and weighing close to 200 pounds, “Husk” (short for Husky) Chance spent his first five seasons in Chicago as a substitute catcher and outfielder. A promising right-handed hitter and a surprisingly agile base runner, he appeared by big-league standards to be awkward behind the plate and clumsy out by the fences. In 1902, a new manager, Frank Selee, ordered Frank, over his protests, to play first base.

By the following season, Frank was a star at that position, quickly becoming a graceful fielder, batting .327, .310, .316, and .319 over a four-year period. During that time, Frank led the National League twice in stolen bases and once in runs scored.

Although he had the physical strength to be a power hitter, Frank preferred to hold a long, thin bat well up on the handle and hit line drives with a compact swing. Fearlessly crowding the plate, he was hit by pitched balls thirty-six times. On many occasions, he was struck in the head. These “bean balls” caused complete hearing loss in his left ear and, ultimately, a serious brain operation. During one doubleheader, Frank was hit five times by opposing pitchers, coming away with a black eye and a badly bruised forehead.

The Emerging Champion

When Selee became ill and was forced to resign as the Cubs’ manager late in 1905, Frank took over the job at the age of twenty-seven. During the next five years, he became known as the “Peerless Leader,” as he exhorted, threatened, and cajoled his teammates—including future hall-of-famers Johnny Evers, Joe Tinker, and Mordecai Brown—to two World Series Championships and four pennants. In 1906, the team finished with an overall seasonal record of 116 wins and only 36 losses for a record percentage of .763.

With a .296 lifetime batting average and more than 40 stolen bases per season in his prime, Frank was also a dependable fielder and clever strategist. His players, many of them of German immigrant background, although generally heavy drinkers and brawlers, never disputed his authority and admired his leadership by example. Evers called him “the greatest first baseman of all time,” and Tinker asserted that “Husk was always square … and smart.” Brown admired him for his “stout heart” and keen mind.

Continuing the Story

In 1909, a broken shoulder limited Frank’s playing time to ninety-three games. The following year, while managing the Cubs to another league championship, he appeared as a player in only eighty-eight regular-season contests, although he hit .353 in the World Series that fall. Early in 1911, he badly fractured his ankle, an injury that ended his playing career. Despite the loss of four of the eight position players from his 1910 pennant winners, Frank’s 1911 club still finished second, only seven games behind John McGraw’s New York Giants. In 1912, however, the Cubs could do no better than third place, and Frank, who quarreled with the team’s owners over his relatively low salary, which was only about one-half of McGraw’s, was dismissed from the team.

Signed to manage the New York Yankees at a salary two and one-half times more than the Cubs had paid him, Frank had his authority with the Yankees players undermined by the brilliant but dishonest Hal Chase, who had successfully purged three managers before Frank. Protesting that “Chase is throwing games on me,” Frank finally persuaded the reluctant team owners to trade Chase to the White Sox, but Frank himself only lasted in New York through the 1914 season. Frequently incapacitated by severe headaches, probably resulting from the many “beanings” of his earlier years, and frustrated by the lack of home-team talent at the Hilltop Park on Washington Heights, Frank resigned to return to California and his investments in orange groves.

Feeling better in 1915, Frank managed the Los Angeles team to a Pacific Coast League title, but when he tried to make a major-league comeback managing the 1924 White Sox, he was forced by ill health to resign the position before the season even began. He died on September 15, 1924, in Los Angeles, at the relatively young age of forty-seven. He left behind his wife, Edith, the only person to whom he had ever been really close.

Summary

In the 1923 edition of his memoir, My Thirty Years in Baseball, the formidable John McGraw placed Frank Chance at first base on his all-time National League team. “Frank Chance,” declared the old New York Giants manager, “knew baseball from A to Z.” Moreover, the “Peerless Leader” could always be relied upon to make key plays in important games, “as a hitter, a fielder and a base runner.” No greater praise could have been bestowed upon “Husk” than these expressions of admiration from his longtime rival, whose teams fought Frank’s Cubs, with fists as well as with skilled play, for league domination for more than a decade. As Joe Tinker testified in his reminiscences, “Chance and McGraw were born to battle on baseball fields. If you didn’t honestly and furiously hate the Giants, you weren’t a real Cub.” Frank, a true “gray-eyed man of destiny,” was called by the eminent sports columnist Dan Daniel the greatest Cub of all time.

Bibliography

Ahrens, Art. Chicago Cubs: Tinker to Evers to Chance. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2007.

Bogen, Gil. Tinker, Evers, and Chance: A Triple Biography. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003.

Porter, David L., ed. Biographical Dictionary of American Sports: Baseball. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000.

Shatzkin, Mike, Stephen Holtje, and Jane Charlton, eds. The Ballplayers: Baseball’s Ultimate Biographical Reference. New York: Ideal Logic Press, 1999.

Snyder, John. Cubs Journal: Year by Year and Day by Day with the Chicago Cubs, Since 1876. Cincinnati: Emmis Books, 2005.