Rube foster biography information

American baseball player (–)

This article is about former Negro leagues player, manager and executive.

Rube Foster excelled on the diamond as a pitcher, manager and as an executive, earning him the recognition as the “father of black baseball.” Few men have dominant careers as baseball players. Even fewer have accomplishment as a manager.

For the former Boston Red Sox pitcher from the early 20th century, see Rube Foster (AL pitcher).

Baseball player

Rube Foster
Pitcher / Manager / Owner
Born:()September 17, Calvert, Texas, U.S.[1]
Died: December 9, () (aged&#;51) Kankakee, Illinois, U.S.
Batted: Right Threw: Right
,&#;for the&#;Chicago Union Giants
,&#;for the&#;Chicago American Giants
Managerial record	––11
Winning&#;%
Managerial record&#;at Baseball Reference&#;
As Player As Manager
Induction
Election method	Veterans Committee

Andrew "Rube" Foster (September 17, – December 9, ) was an American baseball player, manager, and executive in the Negro leagues.

He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in

Foster, considered by historians to have been perhaps the best African-American pitcher of the first decade of the s, also founded and managed the Chicago American Giants, one of the most successful dark baseball teams of the pre-integration era.

Most notably, he organized the Negro National League, the first long-lasting professional league for African-American ballplayers, which operated from to He is known as the "father of Black Baseball."^[5]

Foster adopted his longtime nickname, "Rube", as his official middle call later in life.

Early years

Foster was born in Calvert, Texas,^[1] on September 17, His father, also named Andrew, was a minister and elder of the local African Methodist Episcopal Church.^[6] Foster started his professional career with the Waco Yellow Jackets, an independent black team, in and played for the Steamy Springs Arlingtons in ^[7] Over the next few years he gradually built up a reputation among white and black fans alike, until he was signed by Frank Leland's Chicago Union Giants, a team in the top ranks of black baseball, in He was released after a slump and signed with a white semipro team based in Otsego, Michigan—Bardeen'sOtsego Independents.

According to Phil Dixon's American Baseball Chronicles: Great Teams, The Philadelphia Giants, Volume III: "In completing the summer of with Otsego's multi-ethnic team—the only multi-race team with which he would ever regularly perform—Foster is reported to have pitched twelve games.

But perhaps the person with the greatest impact upon Black baseball is Andrew “Rube” Foster. 2 Not only was Foster one of the best pitchers and managers of the early twentieth century but he also was the architect of the Negro National League.

He finished with a documented record of eight wins and four losses along with eighty-two documented strikeouts. Ironically, strikeout totals for five games in which he appeared were not recorded. If found, the totals would likely show that Foster struck out more than one-hundred batters for Otsego.

In the seven games where details exist, Foster averaged eleven strikeouts per outing." Toward the finish of the season, he connected the Cuban X-Giants of Philadelphia, perhaps the best team in black baseball. The season saw Foster establish himself as the X-Giants' pitching star.

In a postseason series for the eastern black championship, the X-Giants crushed Sol White's Philadelphia Giants five games to two, with Foster himself winning four games.

According to various accounts, including his own, Foster acquired the nickname "Rube" after defeating star Philadelphia Athletics left-hander Rube Waddell in a postseason exhibition game played sometime between and ^[8][9][10] A newspaper story in the Trenton (NJ) Times from July 26, , contains the earliest recognizable example of Foster being referred to as "Rube," indicating that the supposed meeting with Waddell must have taken place earlier than that.

Recent research has uncovered a game played on August 2, , in which Foster met and defeated Waddell while the latter was playing under an assumed name for a semipro team in Modern York City.^[11]

Foster, now a luminary, jumped to the Philadelphia Giants for the season.

Legend has it that John McGraw, manager of the New York Giants, hired Foster to teach the young Christy Mathewson the "fadeaway", or screwball, though historians acquire cast doubt on this story. During the season, Foster won 20 games against all contest (including two no-hitters) and missing six.

In a rematch with Foster's old team, the Cuban X-Giants, he won two games and batted in leading the Philadelphia Giants to the shadowy championship.

In , Foster—by his own account several years later—compiled a fantastic record of 51–4 (though recent research has confirmed only a 25–3 record) and led the Giants to another series championship, this time over the Brooklyn Royal Giants.

The Philadelphia Telegraph wrote that "Foster has never been equalled in a pitcher's box." The accompanying season, the Philadelphia Giants helped form the International League of Independent Professional Ball Players, calm of both all-black and all-white teams in the Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware, areas.

Leland Giants

In , Foster's manager Sol Colorless published his Official Baseball Guide: History of Colored Baseball, with Foster contributing an article on "How to Pitch." However, before the season began, he and several other stars (including, most importantly, the outfielder Pete Hill) left the Philadelphia Giants for the Chicago Leland Giants, with Foster named playing manager.

Under his leadership, the Lelands won games (including 48 straight) and lost only ten, and took the Chicago City League pennant. The following season the Lelands tied a national championship series with the Philadelphia Giants, each team winning three games.

Foster suffered a broken leg in July , but rushed himself back into the lineup in time for an October exhibition series against the Chicago Cubs. Foster, pitching the second game, squandered a 5–2 lead in the ninth inning, then missing the game on a controversial play when a Cubs jogger stole home while Foster was arguing with the umpire.

The Lelands lost the series, three games to nothing. The Lelands also lost the unofficial western black championship to the St. Paul Colored Gophers.

In , Foster wrested legal control of the team from its founder, Frank Leland.^[12] He proceeded to put together the team he later considered his finest.

He signed John Henry Lloyd away from the Philadelphia Giants; along with Hill, second baseman Grant Johnson, catcher Bruce Petway, and pitchers Frank Wickware and Pat Dougherty, Lloyd sparked the Lelands to a –6 record (with Foster himself contributing a 13–2 record on the mound).

Chicago American Giants

The following season, Foster established a partnership with colorless businessman John M. Schorling. The White Sox had just moved into Comiskey Park, and Schorling arranged for Foster's team to use the vacated South Side Park, at 39th and Wentworth.

Settling into their new house (now called Schorling's Park), the Lelands became the Chicago American Giants. For the next four seasons, the American Giants claimed the western black baseball championship, though they lost a series to the Lincoln Giants for the national championship.

By , Foster's first serious rival in the midwest had emerged: C. I. Taylor's Indianapolis ABCs, who claimed the western championship after defeating the American Giants four games to none in July. One of the victories was a forfeit called after a brawl between the two teams broke out.

After the series, Foster and Taylor engaged in a public dispute about that game and the championship. In , both teams again claimed the western title. The continued wrangling led to calls for a black baseball league to be formed, but Foster, Taylor, and the other major clubs in the midwest were unable to come to any consent.

By this time, Foster was pitching very little, compiling only a 2–2 record in His last recorded outing on the mound was in ; from this time he became purely a bench manager. As a manager and team owner, Foster was a disciplinarian. He asserted control over every aspect of the game, and set a high standard for personal actions, appearance, and professionalism among his players.

Given Schorling Park's gigantic dimensions, Foster developed a design of play that emphasized speed, bunting, place hitting, power pitching, and defense. He was also considered a great teacher, and many of his players themselves eventually became managers, including Pete Hill, Bruce Petway, Bingo DeMoss, Dave Malarcher, Sam Crawford, Poindexter Williams, and many others.

In , Foster helped Tenny Blount finance a new club in Detroit, the Stars. He also transferred several of his veteran players there, including Hill, who was to manage the novel team, and Petway. He may have been preparing the way for the formation, the monitoring year, of the Negro National League (NNL).

Negro National League

In , Foster, Taylor, and the owners of six other midwestern clubs met in the spring to form a professional baseball circuit for African-American teams. Foster, as president, controlled league operations, while remaining owner and manager of the American Giants.

He was periodically accused of favoring his own team, especially in matters of scheduling (the Giants in the early years tended to have a disproportionate number of home games) and personnel: Foster seemed able to secure whatever talent he needed from other clubs, such as Jimmie Lyons, the Detroit Stars' foremost player in , who was transferred to the American Giants for , or Foster's control younger brother, Bill, who linked the American Giants unwillingly when Rube forced the Memphis Red Sox to give him up in His critics believed he had organized the league primarily for purposes of booking games for the American Giants.

With a stable schedule and reasonably solvent opponents, Foster was capable to improve receipts at the gate. It is also authentic that when opposing clubs clueless money, he was known to help them meet payroll, sometimes out of his own pocket.^[13]

His American Giants won the novel league's first three pennants before being overtaken by the Kansas City Monarchs in In the same year the Hilldale Club and Bacharach Giants, the most important eastern clubs, pulled out of an agreement with the NNL and founded their possess league, the Eastern Colored League (ECL).

The ECL raided the older circuit for players, Foster's own ace pitcher Dave Brown among them. Eventually the two leagues reached an agreement to respect one another's contracts and to play a world series.

After two years of finishing behind the Monarchs, Foster "cleaned house" in spring , releasing several veterans (including Lyons and pitchers Dick Whitworth and Tom Williams).

On May 26, Foster was nearly asphyxiated by a gas leak in Indianapolis.^[14] Though he recovered and returned to his team, his behavior grew erratic from then on.^{[citation needed]} Foster had instituted a split-season format, and his American Giants finished third in both halves.

The year saw him finish his team's reshaping, leaving only a handful of veterans from the championship squads of to The club finished third in the season's first half, but Foster would never finish the second.

Over the years, "Foster grew increasingly paranoid. Took to carrying a revolver with him everywhere he went." Suffering from serious delusions, including one where he believed he was about to receive a call to pitch in the World Series, he was institutionalized midway through the season at an asylum in Kankakee, Illinois.^[15][16]

The American Giants and the NNL lived on—in fact, led by Dave Malarcher, the Giants won the pennant and World Series in both and —but the league clearly suffered in the absence of Foster's leadership.

Foster died in , never having recovered his sanity, and a year later the league he had founded fell apart.

Rube Foster | Biography, Baseball, & Facts | Britannica: Andrew "Rube" Foster (September 17, – December 9, ) was an American baseball player, manager, and executive in the Negro leagues. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in

Foster is interred in Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island, Illinois. Thousands attended his funeral in Bronzeville, Chicago, including "an overflow crowd of 3, people who 'stood in the snow and rain.'^[17] At his funeral, his coffin was closed, according to attendees, "at the usual hour a ballgame ends."

Legacy

In , Foster was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

He was the first representative of the Negro leagues elected as a pioneer or executive.

On December 30, , the U.S. Postal Service announced that it planned to issue a pair of postage stamps in June honoring Negro leagues Baseball.^[18] On July 17, , the Postal Service issued a se-tenant pair of cent, first-class, U.S.

commemorative postage stamps, to honor the all-black professional baseball leagues that operated from to about One of the stamps depicts Foster, along with his name and the words "NEGRO LEAGUES BASEBALL".

An outstanding pitcher who began his own career as a player at age 17, Foster supported black teams throughout his animation and worked for the legitimization, respect, and financial success of African-American baseball. A creative and intelligent businessman, Foster also helped to form the Chicago American Giants, a powerhouse team that some say would have rivaled the New York Yankees had they been allowed to perform in the same league. Foster began his career as a team manager with the Leland Giants inurging them to a record. Although his career came to an end in after he suffered a mental breakdown, Foster had firmly established the Negro leagues as an vital institution in American baseball.

The stamps were formally issued at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, during the celebration of the museum's twentieth anniversary.^[19]

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum hosts the annual Andrew "Rube" Foster Lecture, in September.^[5]

In , Rube Foster was posthumously inducted into the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame.^[20]

On November 10, , the United States Mint announced the designs for the Negro Leagues Centennial Commemorative coins, with Foster featured on the $5 gold half eagle.^[21][22]

Managerial record

Notes

References

• Burns, Ken (), Baseball:A Film by Ken Burns, Florentine Films, The Baseball Film Project, WETA
• Clark, Dick; Lester, Larry (), The Negro Leagues Book, Cleveland, Ohio: World for American Baseball Research
• Cottrell, Robert Charles (), The Best Pitcher in Baseball: The Life of Rube Foster, Negro League Giant, New York: New York University Press, ISBN&#;
• Holway, John B.

  (), Blackball Stars: Negro League Pioneers, Westport, Connecticut: Meckler Books, ISBN&#;

• Holway, John B. (), The Accomplish Book of Baseball's Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History, Fern Park, Florida: Hastings House Publishers, ISBN&#;
• Riley, James A.

  (). "Foster, Andrew (Rube, Jock)". The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues.

  Andrew " Rube " Foster September 17, — December 9, was an American baseball player, manager, and executive in the Negro leagues. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Foster, considered by historians to have been perhaps the leading African-American pitcher of the first decade of the s, also founded and managed the Chicago American Giantsone of the most successful black baseball teams of the pre-integration era. Most notably, he organized the Negro National Leaguethe first long-lasting professional league for African-American ballplayers, which operated from to

  Carroll & Graf. pp.&#;– ISBN&#;.

• (Riley.) Andrew "Rube" Foster, Personal profiles at Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. &#; identical to Riley (confirmed )

External links