Foster, Rube

By: Gerald Early

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Foster, Rube

Sex:  Male

Born:  Calvert, Texas, United States
17 September 1879

Died:  Kankakee, Illinois, United States
9 December 1930

Activity/Profession:  Baseball Player, Athletic Coach / Manager, Entrepreneur

1879–1930
African American baseball player, manager, and entrepreneur.

Rube Foster was born Andrew Foster in Calvert, Texas, the fifth child of the Reverend Andrew Foster, presiding elder of the American Episcopal Church of Calvert, and his wife. Growing up in a post-Reconstruction world of strictly enforced racial segregation backed by white terrorist violence, Andrew attended the segregated school in Calvert. As a boy Andrew had a knack for baseball, the most popular sport in America at the time. His father, a devout churchman, tried to discourage him from playing, but he persisted and even organized a team while he was still in grade school. Indeed, he was so drawn to the game that he quit school after the eighth grade to pursue baseball as a career.

Foster began pitching for the Waco Yellow Jackets, becoming a star pitcher by the time he was eighteen. By 1902 he had a reputation for being a tough pitcher, with a fastball, curve, and screwball. That year he joined the Chicago Union Giants (most all-black teams at this time called themselves the Giants) and supposedly won fifty-one games, including a victory over the great white professional pitcher Rube Waddell, which is how Foster earned his nickname. As records for barnstorming black players were poorly kept, it is difficult to know exactly how many games Foster may have won. By this time Foster was officially part of the itinerant, rough-and-tumble world of the professional African American baseball player, a world not unlike that of the black professional prizefighter. (Boxing was, like baseball, very popular at this time.)

Baseball in post-Civil War America was still developing and did not entirely resemble the modern game. By the 1880s, however, three strikes equaled a strikeout, four balls were a walk, leather gloves were regularly used, and pitchers could throw overhand. By 1889 something like today's major league baseball existed, with two leagues: the National League, founded in 1876, and the American Association, founded in 1882. The American League, which replaced the American Association, came into existence under the leadership of Ban Johnson in 1901. There were several other professional leagues, as well as a good number of barnstorming teams that traveled around challenging various local nines. Amateur baseball could be found everywhere in America, from company teams to college teams. Though local teams, such as the Florence (Massachusetts) Eagles with their first baseman Luther Askin, were occasionally and quietly integrated shortly after the Civil War, amateur baseball was officially segregated in 1867. By 1887 there were approximately twenty black players on professional teams. But on 14 July 1887 the Chicago White Stockings player-manager Cap Anson demanded that the opposing club from Newark not play its two black players, George Stovey and Fleet Walker. This was the beginning of the gentleman's agreement that was to keep African Americans, indeed, all black- or dark-skinned men, from playing in any of the established professional leagues until 1945, when the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson. There were teams that tried to get around the custom by saying that a player was Hispanic or Indian, but this rarely worked and, in any case, any Hispanic or Indian who was as dark as the average African American couldn't play professional baseball on the same field as whites. Since many black men had a passion as strong as whites for playing this game as professionals, they were forced to form their own teams and eventually their own leagues.

By the turn of the century, black teams were barnstorming units. They traveled around the country playing other teams, sometimes white, sometimes black. There were many disadvantages to this in selling black baseball to the public. First, players jumped from team to team during the season, willing to leave one team for another if they could get more money. Roster instability made it impossible for a manager and team owner to rely on the players through a season. The second disadvantage was that teams were unable to claim the loyalty of fans in a particular location or to have a structured season of competition. The only answer to this confusion and disorganization was to form a league, but this was virtually impossible, although it was a dream of many of the early organizers of black baseball. The dreamers included, most notably, Sol White, whose 1907 book The History of Colored Base Ball is one of the most important accounts of black baseball before the formation of leagues.

Foster pitched for the Cuban X-Giants and the Philadelphia Giants. He also played in Cuba, a popular location for black ballplayers during the winter months. In 1907 Foster returned to Chicago to become the manager of the Chicago Leland Giants, establishing himself as a first-rate manager and transforming the Leland Giants into one of the most skilled black teams in the country. In 1911 Foster formed a partnership with John M. Schorling, the son-in-law of Charles Comiskey, owner of the Chicago White Sox. The team that Foster put together, the Chicago American Giants, became one of the powerhouse teams in black baseball history. Foster still pitched occasionally, but he concentrated on managing and general managing, and, although he was stern with his men, he was highly successful at putting together teams and getting the most out of his players. Foster was a master of “little ball”: bunting, the hit-and-run, the steal, the sacrifice. Of course, this was before the age of the home run, and most teams tended to play this way, but Foster's team did it better than most.

Foster's problems with booking agent Nat Strong regarding scheduling games in the East and his interest in stopping bidding wars for top players eventually led him to form his own league in 1920. The first Negro League was formed in February 1920 at the YMCA in Kansas City and was made up of the Chicago American Giants, the Chicago Giants, the Detroit Stars, the St. Louis Giants, the Kansas City Monarchs, the Taylor ABCs, and the Cuban Stars. Foster became both the president and the treasurer of the league, and he continued to manage the Chicago American Giants as well. The only white owner of a Negro League team was J. L. Wilkinson, who owned the Kansas City Monarchs and had previously owned the All-Nations, a team composed of African Americans, Mexicans, Indians, and whites. In 1923 Foster helped to form the Eastern Colored League, ensuring that the Negro Leagues would have the same structure as major league baseball. In 1924 the Negro World Series was introduced. With the league undercapitalized, still faced with having to play a great number of barnstorming games, and still facing booking obstacles, it was remarkable that Foster was able to establish a league and make it work. He thus became not just of one of the greatest baseball men around but also one of the most important black entrepreneurs in history.

Foster's autocratic rule created friction and enemies, and eventually he was forced to resign in 1925. He was also suffering from deteriorating mental health, partly induced by overwork, and by September 1926 he was in the state mental hospital at Kankakee, Illinois, where he died in 1930. His body lay in state for several days before his burial in Chicago, the city in which he had achieved his greatest fame.

Foster was not only one of the greatest figures in black baseball but one of the most important men involved in professional baseball in the United States. Few men have been involved in as many facets of the game as he. Although records are incomplete, Foster was certainly one of the great pitchers of his era. He was also one of the great managers of the game, introducing sophisticated tactics and strategies. Foster recognized talent and knew how to motivate players and teach them how to play. His men played hard and they played to win at a time when black ballplayers and teams were often employed to clown around and degrade themselves in minstrel-type routines, particularly for white fans. In organizing the league, Foster was also one of the game's great general managers. He was flamboyant, competitive, a “race man,” and a dreamer. Foster was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981.

See also Baseball in the United States.

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