Bobby Doerr, the soft-spoken Hall of Fame second baseman lauded by his teammate and friend Ted Williams as “the silent captain of the Red Sox,’’ died Monday in Junction City, Ore. He was 99.

The oldest living former Major League Baseball player, Mr. Doerr was the last surviving member of the four Sox players in “The Teammates’’ statue, outside of Fenway Park’s Gate B. The others are Williams, Johnny Pesky, and Dom DiMaggio.

“Bobby Doerr was part of an era of baseball giants and still stood out as one himself,’’ Red Sox owner John Henry said. “And even with his Hall of Fame achievements at second base, his character and personality outshined it all.’’

Mr. Doerr, a nine-time All-Star who was elected to Cooperstown in 1986 by the Veterans Committee, played in the major leagues from 1937 to 1951. He was second only to Williams as a mainstay of the Red Sox teams that dueled the New York Yankees for dominance in the American League during the 1940s.

A model of consistency at the plate and in the field, Mr. Doerr spent his entire career with the Red Sox. He was only the third member of the team to have his number retired, his #1 joining Williams’s #9 and Joe Cronin’s #4. Carl Yastrzemski’s #8, Carlton Fisk’s #27, Pesky’s #6, Jim Rice’s #14, Wade Boggs’s #26, Pedro Martinez’s #45, and David Ortiz’s #34 have since been retired.

Mr. Doerr was voted all-time Red Sox second baseman in polls conducted in 1969, 1982, and 2001. He finished with a career batting average of .288 and led the American League in fielding four times.

In 1943, Mr. Doerr went errorless for 73 consecutive games — and 414 fielding chances. Those were long the major league records for second basemen.

“Bobby was smooth. He just did everything right,’’ Pesky, his favorite double-play partner, said in a 1999 Globe interview.

Mr. Doerr’s seemingly effortless fielding drew less attention than his prowess at the plate. The righthanded batter had an odd stance: feet spread wide, bat kept high. That didn’t prevent him from being the only player in Red Sox history to twice hit for the cycle (hitting a single, double, triple, and home run in the same game). He hit 223 home runs and six times knocked in 100 or more runs in a season. The last year he did so, 1950, he had 120 RBIs. It would be a quarter-century before another second baseman, Joe Morgan, broke the 100-RBI mark.

Mr. Doerr’s best season was 1944. He led the American League in slugging percentage, .528, batted .325, and was named The Sporting News’ American League player of the year.

Two years later, he helped lead the Sox to the World Series. “We wouldn’t have won the pennant in 1946 without Bobby Doerr,’’ Williams declared. “Doerr, and not Ted Williams, is the No. 1 player on the team,’’ said no less an authority than Babe Ruth. “He rates the Most Valuable Player in the American League.’’

Mr. Doerr hit .409 in the World Series, which the Red Sox lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. With characteristic modesty, he downplayed his standout performance. “I just happened to be lucky to get into a little hot groove just before that,’’ he said in a 2002 interview.

As his World Series performance suggests, Mr. Doerr excelled in the clutch. He homered and had two RBIs in his only other postseason appearance, the one-game playoff the Red Sox lost to Cleveland in 1948. Mr. Doerr hit a three-run homer to help the American League win the 1943 All-Star Game and in the 1947 All-Star Game scored the winning run.

The son of Harold Austin Doerr and Frances (Herrnberger) Doerr, Robert Pershing Doerr was born on April 7, 1918, in Los Angeles. He received his middle name in honor of General John J. Pershing, head of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War I.

Coached by his father, Mr. Doerr showed promise at an early age. He led his American Legion team to state and regional championships when he was 14. Two years later, he was playing in the Pacific Coast League for the Hollywood Stars. His parents agreed to his signing with the Stars on condition he earn his high school diploma in the offseason, which he did.

In 1936, the Stars moved to San Diego and became the Padres. That year Red Sox general manager Eddie Collins signed two Padres: Mr. Doerr and Williams. It was a mark of Mr. Doerr’s diamond precocity that he went straight to the Red Sox the next season, while Williams needed two more years in the minors.

Red Sox player-manager Joe Cronin got his first look at Mr. Doerr in spring training: “I’ve got a kid from the coast who can do anything around second base anyone ever saw. He’s a natural — just can’t miss.’’

Mr. Doerr appeared in 55 games that season, his play limited by some uncharacteristically shaky hitting (he batted .224, the lowest average he would record in 17 professional seasons). The next year, he hit .289 and was on his way.

After that breakout season, Mr. Doerr married Monica Terpin, an Oregon schoolteacher he had met two years earlier on a hunting and fishing trip. She died in 2003. Mr. Doerr leaves a son, Don, two grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

An avid outdoorsman, Mr. Doerr bought land in Oregon and lived there the rest of his life. “When I got here I thought I’d gone to heaven,’’ Mr. Doerr said in a 2002 interview with a website, Oregon Baseball Campaign, “all the mountains and rivers, just beautiful country.’’

Throughout his career, debate raged over who was the better second baseman: Mr. Doerr or the Yankees’ Joe Gordon. Their rivalry mirrored that of outfielders Williams and Joe DiMaggio of the Yankees (Dom’s brother) — or, half a century later, shortstops Nomar Garciaparra and Derek Jeter. Although Gordon hit for more power and was flashier in the field, he didn’t get his plaque in Cooperstown until 23 years after Mr. Doerr.

“What pleases me most is being put into the same class with Bobby,’’ Gordon said in 1947. “Anyone who argues that I’m as good as Bobby is doing me a big favor, and anyone who says I’m better is flattering me.’’

Chronic back trouble forced Mr. Doerr’s retirement after the 1951 season. He was only 33. It was widely rumored that the Red Sox offered him the job of manager, a mark of the high regard in which he was held throughout the organization.

“Maybe anybody who plays baseball would like to manage,’’ Mr. Doerr recalled in a 1974 Globe Magazine profile. “But some way or another, in the latter part of my baseball career I just made up my mind that I was never going to manage.’’

Mr. Doerr returned to Oregon to raise cattle and hunt and fish. Yet the lure of baseball brought him back to the Sox, as a scout and special instructor in the minor league system from 1957 to 1966. He became the team’s first base coach and hitting instructor in 1967, lending a sense of continuity to what would become the Sox’ first pennant-winning season since 1946.

Mr. Doerr quit his coaching job at the end of the 1969 season to protest the firing of manager Dick Williams. He later worked as a scout and coach for the Toronto Blue Jays.

He was named American League honorary captain at the 1988 All-Star Game.

In 2012, the most moving moment of the 100th anniversary celebration of Fenway Park came when Mr. Doerr and Pesky, seated in wheelchairs, were assisted on to the field by Tim Wakefield, Jason Varitek, and David Ortiz.

It was a measure of how the high regard for Mr. Doerr spanned baseball generations. “Bobby Doerr might be the finest gentleman I’ve ever met in the game,’’ Bruce Hurst, the standout Red Sox lefthander of the 1980s, said that day.

“I got a chance to play on the same team with Ted Williams,’’ Mr. Doerr said in a 1988 Globe interview. “I played in one city; and, luckily, it was Boston. I was named to an All-Star Game [nine times], was in a World Series, was elected to the Hall of Fame, and now they’re going to retire my number. How lucky can a person’s career be?’’

Mark Feeney can be reached at mark.feeney@globe.com.