The Great Rube Foster
He Was the True Founder of Negro League Baseball in America
Mar 29, 2007 James Lincoln Ray
Andrew ‘Rube’ Foster was born in Calvert, Texas in 1879. Foster started his professional career in 1897 as a pitcher for the Waco Yellow Jackets. Over the next few years, Foster developed a reputation as a top pitcher, and eventually signed with the Cuban X-Giants of Philadelphia in 1903. That season Foster established himself as the X-Giants' top pitching star. In a post-season series for the eastern black championship, the X-Giants defeated the Philadelphia Giants five games to two, with Foster winning four games.
Rube Foster Becomes a Pitching Legend
Foster jumped to the similarly named Philadelphia Giants in the off-season. During the 1904 season, Foster was 20-6, and in a postseason exhibition game against Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics, Foster defeated star lefthander Rube Waddell. From then on, people called him simply ‘Rube.’
In 1905, Foster had a 25-3 record, and led the Giants to another championship. The Philadelphia Telegraph spoke very highly of him, saying that, "Foster has never been equaled in a pitcher's box." In 1907, Foster left the Philadelphia Giants to be the player/manager of the Chicago Leland Giants. The Leland Giants went 110-10 in 1907, and took the Chicago City League pennant.
Rube Foster Takes Over the American Giants
By 1910, Foster wrested legal control of the team from Frank Leland. He signed several of the top black ballplayers in the country, which sparked the Lelands to a 123-6 record that season. The following season Foster renamed the team the Chicago American Giants. For the next four seasons, the American Giants won the western black baseball championship.
By this time, Foster was pitching very little, compiling only a 2-2 record in 1915. His last recorded outing on the mound was in 1917; from this time on he became purely a bench manager. In 1919, Foster helped found a new team called the Detroit Stars. Although he continued to manage the Chicago American Giants, Foster transferred several of his best players to the Stars. Some thought he was preparing to shift his club operations to Detroit. He had bigger plans.
Rube Foster founds the First Successful Negro League Baseball Circuit
In the spring of 1920, Foster and seven others formed a brand new professional baseball circuit for African-American teams called the Negro National League (NNL). Foster served as both the president of the new league and continued on the owner/manager of the American Giants. Foster was sometimes accused of favoring his own team, especially in matters of scheduling and personnel. He was able to acquire great talent from other clubs such as Jimmie Lyons of the Detroit Stars, and Foster’s own younger brother, Bill. Foster’s critics believed he had organized the NNL primarily for purposes of drawing fans – and gate receipts – to the American Giants’ games. But Foster was more about baseball than greed. He was known to occasionally reach into his own pocket to help other NNL teams meet payroll.
Foster’s team won the NNL’s first three pennants, before being overtaken by the Kansas City Monarchs in 1923. In that same year, two of the league’s most important teams pulled out of an agreement with the NNL and founded the Eastern Colored League (ECL). The ECL initially raided the NNL for players, but eventually the two leagues reached an agreement to respect one another's contracts, and to play a world series.
In 1926, Foster completely reshaped the American Giants, leaving only a handful of veterans from the championship squads of 1920-22. Midway through the season, however, Foster was overtaken by mental illness, and was confined to an asylum in Kankakee, Illinois. The American Giants and the NNL both collapsed within a year.
Foster never recovered his sanity and passed away in 1930. In 1981, Rube Foster was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. It took 51 years for the individual who perhaps did more to integrate baseball, other than Jackie Robinson in 1947, to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. That fact speaks volumes about America and its baseball establishment.
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Read more about the origins of Negro League Baseball.
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