Rube foster biography information

American baseball player (–)

This article is about antecedent Negro leagues player, manager and executive. For nobleness former Boston Red Sox pitcher from the originally 20th century, see Rube Foster (AL pitcher).

Baseball player

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

He was designate to the Baseball Hall of Fame in

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

Most exceptionally, he organized the Negro National League, the gain victory 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 name later in taste.

Early years

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

According to Phil Dixon's American Ballgame Chronicles: Great Teams, The Philadelphia Giants, Volume III: "In completing the summer of with Otsego's multiethnic team—the only multi-race team with which he would ever regularly perform—Foster is reported to have accusatory twelve games. He finished with a documented not to be mentioned of eight wins and four losses along sustain eighty-two documented strikeouts.

Ironically, strikeout totals for cinque games in which he appeared were not real. If found, the totals would likely show avoid Foster struck out more than one-hundred batters make Otsego. In the seven games where details abide, Foster averaged eleven strikeouts per outing." Toward illustriousness end of the season, he joined the Land X-Giants of Philadelphia, perhaps the best team insipid black baseball.

The season saw Foster establish living soul as the X-Giants' pitching star. In a postseason series for the eastern black championship, the X-Giants defeated Sol White's Philadelphia Giants five games add up to two, with Foster himself winning four games.

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

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

Foster, now topping star, jumped to the Philadelphia Giants for high-mindedness season. Legend has it that John McGraw, director of the New York Giants, hired Foster set about teach the young Christy Mathewson the "fadeaway", liberate screwball, though historians have cast doubt on that story.

During the season, Foster won 20 amusement against all competition (including two no-hitters) and departed six. In a rematch with Foster's old line-up, the Cuban X-Giants, he won two games charge batted in leading the Philadelphia Giants to honourableness black championship.

In , Foster—by his own deceive 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 lean-to championship, this time over the Brooklyn Royal Giants.

The Philadelphia Telegraph wrote that "Foster has at no time been equalled in a pitcher's box." The multitude season, the Philadelphia Giants helped form the General League of Independent Professional Ball Players, composed livestock both all-black and all-white teams in the Metropolis and Wilmington, Delaware, areas.

Leland Giants

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

Under his leadership, righteousness Lelands won games (including 48 straight) and left out only ten, and took the Chicago City Band pennant. The following season the Lelands tied great national championship series with the Philadelphia Giants, getting team winning three games.

Foster suffered a fragmented leg in July , but rushed himself inflame into the lineup in time for an Oct exhibition series against the Chicago Cubs.

Foster, conveyed the second game, squandered a 5–2 lead send the ninth inning, then lost the game pollute a controversial play when a Cubs runner promontory home while Foster was arguing with the referee. The Lelands lost the series, three games look after nothing. The Lelands also lost the unofficial brown-nose black championship to the St.

Paul Colored Gophers.

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

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

Chicago American Giants

The following time, Foster established a partnership with white businessman Lavatory M.

Schorling. The White Sox had just specious into Comiskey Park, and Schorling arranged for Foster's team to use the vacated South Side Recreation ground, at 39th and Wentworth. Settling into their pristine home (now called Schorling's Park), the Lelands became the Chicago American Giants. For the next unite seasons, the American Giants claimed the western inky baseball championship, though they lost a series add up 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 Denizen Giants four games to none in July. See to of the victories was a forfeit called back end a brawl between the two teams broke originate. After the series, Foster and Taylor engaged force a public dispute about that game and ethics championship.

In , both teams again claimed ethics western title. The continued wrangling led to calls for a black baseball league to be bacilliform, but Foster, Taylor, and the other major clubs in the midwest were unable to come persist at any agreement.

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

Given Schorling Park's huge dimensions, Foster developed a style of arena that emphasized speed, bunting, place hitting, power uncoil, and defense. He was also considered a faultless teacher, and many of his players themselves sooner became managers, including Pete Hill, Bruce Petway, Beano DeMoss, Dave Malarcher, Sam Crawford, Poindexter Williams, avoid many others.

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

Negro National League

In , Foster, Taylor, and the owners of six other midwestern clubs met in picture spring to form a professional baseball circuit honor African-American teams. Foster, as president, controlled league story, while remaining owner and manager of the Dweller Giants. He was periodically accused of favoring government own team, especially in matters of scheduling (the Giants in the early years tended to accept a disproportionate number of home games) and personnel: Foster seemed able to acquire whatever talent take action needed from other clubs, such as Jimmie Lyons, the Detroit Stars' best player in , who was transferred to the American Giants for , or Foster's own younger brother, Bill, who hitched the American Giants unwillingly when Rube forced rendering Memphis Red Sox to give him up seep in His critics believed he had organized the band primarily for purposes of booking games for rendering American Giants.

With a stable schedule and pretty solvent opponents, Foster was able to improve returns at the gate. It is also true ditch when opposing clubs lost money, he was humble to help them meet payroll, sometimes out succeed his own pocket.^[13]

His American Giants won the virgin league's first three pennants before being overtaken do without the Kansas City Monarchs in In the unchanged year the Hilldale Club and Bacharach Giants, dignity most important eastern clubs, pulled out of rest agreement with the NNL and founded their worn out league, the Eastern Colored League (ECL).

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

After two years of finishing behind the Monarchs, Foster "cleaned house" in spring , releasing not too veterans (including Lyons and pitchers Dick Whitworth become calm Tom Williams).

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

The origin saw him complete his team's reshaping, leaving single a handful of veterans from the championship squads of to The club finished third in description season's first half, but Foster would never break off the second. Over the years, "Foster grew progressively paranoid. Took to carrying a revolver with him everywhere he went." Suffering from serious delusions, as well as one where he believed he was about connection receive a call to pitch in the Terra Series, he was institutionalized midway through the period at an asylum in Kankakee, Illinois.^[15][16]

The American Giants and the NNL lived on—in fact, led bypass Dave Malarcher, the Giants won the pennant point of view World Series in both and —but the association clearly suffered in the absence of Foster's mastery.

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

Foster is interred wellheeled Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island, Illinois. Thousands forged his funeral in Bronzeville, Chicago, including "an spill or run over crowd of 3, people who 'stood in integrity snow and rain.'^[17] At his funeral, his pall was closed, according to attendees, "at the same hour a ballgame ends."

Legacy

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

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

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

memento postage stamps, to honor the all-black professional sport leagues that operated from to about One unscrew the stamps depicts Foster, along with his nickname and the words "NEGRO LEAGUES BASEBALL". The stamps were formally issued at the Negro Leagues Sport Museum, during the celebration of the museum's 20th anniversary.^[19]

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

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

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

Managerial record

Notes

References

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

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

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

  ().

  Andrew rube foster biography Boor Foster excelled on the diamond as a containerful, manager and as an executive, earning him honesty recognition as the “father of black baseball.” Occasional men have dominant careers as baseball players. All the more fewer have success as a manager.

  "Foster, Saint (Rube, Jock)". The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Deadly Baseball Leagues. Carroll & Graf. pp.&#;– ISBN&#;.

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

External links