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Rube Foster Negro League Player/Manager,
League Executive
Born 1878
Died 1930
Perhaps no individual has had more to do with the success of Black baseball than Andrew Rube Foster, the Father of Black Baseball.After beginning his career as a superb pitcher, he became an exceedingly shrewd and talented manager and an executive whose powerful will created the first real organization for Black baseball.
Without the organization that Foster forced upon Black baseball, the Negro Leagues could never have prospered to become the initial source of players when the white majors integrated. Negro League historian John Holway put it this way: "White baseball has never seen anyone quite like Rube Foster. He was Christy Mathewson, John McGraw, Connie Mack, Al Spalding, and Kenesaw Mountain Landis, great pitcher, manager, owner, league organizer, czar, all rolled into one"
One of the most important contributions Foster made to baseball was to bring respectability to the Black leagues. As one sportswriter wrote, "Rube Foster was a creative personality. Way back in the darkest years he walked in and looked bankers in the eye and walked out with a $20,000 loan. That's quite an accomplishment."
The son of a minister in Calvert, Texas, Foster was an asthmatic child. He dropped out of school after the eighth grade. By age 18, though, he was a big, strong, successful pitcher for the semipro Yellow Jackets of Fort Worth. Foster was known for his pitching wiles, even at an early age. He wasn't afraid to throw a curve on a 3-2 count, and he knew how to doctor a ball.
It is said that John McGraw wanted to sign Foster and several other Black players for his New York Giants in the early 1900s. When McGraw was rebuffed, he allegedly asked Foster to instruct his team's pitchers, and the story goes that Foster taught Christy Mathewson the legendary fadeaway. (In yet another version, Mordecai "Three Finger"Brown was credited as Mathewson's teacher.)
Foster pitched for the semipro Chicago Union Giants and tossed a shutout in his first appearance, but he gradually lost his effectiveness. He returned to the integrated semipro Michigan State League, and by the time he returned to Black ball, he was transformed. In 1902 he won 44 games in a row for the Cuban Giants.
The next year he was easily the best pitcher in Black baseball. Playing for the Cuban X-Giants, he won four games in the seven-game series of the championship against Sol White's talented Philadelphia Giants. When he bested Rube Waddell of the Philadelphia Athletics in an exhibition that year, fans called him "The Black Rube",and the nickname stuck.
In 1905 he joined White's Athletics and posted an amazing 51-5 record. Foster would use any trick to win. He was a master of the psychological edge. "I have often smiled", he said, "with the bases full and two strikes and three balls on the hitter. This seems to unnerve them."
In one exhibition game against a white team Foster pulled one of his best-ever psych jobs on batting big leaguer Tully "Topsy" Hartsel. With the tying run on third and the winning run on second with two outs, Hartsel faced a 3-1 count. "Walk him!" the catcher shouted to Foster. Hartsel relaxed, and Foster slipped another strike over the plate. Then Foster shouted that Hartsel was out of the batter's box. As the batter looked down to check his feet, the third strike whizzed past.
After the 1906 season Foster was upset by the size of the players' cut of the team's postseason winnings, and he quit the Athletics, basically taking the whole team with him. In Chicago, after meeting with businessman Frank Leland, Foster managed and pitched for the new Leland Giants to a 110-10 record in 1907.
As a manager Foster built his team on speed and smarts. Every player had to be able to bunt and hit-and-run. Foster also invented the "bunt-and-run", whereby a runner on first takes off with the pitch while the batter bunts toward third. The runner keeps running to third, forcing the third baseman into an impossible situation: if he charges the ball the runner will easily make third; if he stays back to guard the base both batter and runner
could reach base safely.
Each player on a Foster team had a particular role to play on the field. As a result, Foster's defensive tactics routinely beat opponents who had much bigger slugging and batting averages. Foster also adhered to the modern credo of the big inning. He knew that the winning team will most often score more runs in one inning than the losing team scores in the entire game, and he played for the big inning, biding his time before unleashing his players' steals, bunts, and breakneck speed.
"You don't have to get three hits a day for me, or even two," he told his players. "I only want one at the right time." Foster taught his players how to intimidate opponents. Part of the Foster psychology involved big talk. When his team showed up in a town he glorified the talent of his team to anyone who would listen, and this showmanship helped draw crowds.
Arthur Hardy, a pitcher for Foster, once said, "Rube wasn't harsh but he was strict. His dictums were not unreasonable, but if you broke one he'd clamp down on you." When a player tripled after Foster had given him the bunt sign, the player got rapped over the head with Foster's pipe.
Foster's Giants won 64 of 86 games in 1908. The following season he challenged the Chicago Cubs to a series. The Giants lost to the white major leaguers in three tight games. After that season Foster broke off ties with Leland and took his players to form a new team. In the legal wrangles that ensued, Foster was allowed to use Leland's name.
On May 21, 1910, the Indianapolis Freeman carried this bold challenge from Foster: "Rube Foster's Leland Giants challenges any ball club in the world for a series of games to decide the championship, for a side bet of $500 or $3,000, or for 75 percent to winner and 25 percent to loser, or for all the gate receipts. The Lelands will play on the above terms any place in the United States. I offer this inducement to all so-called champions; I want the public to be convinced as to who is really the champion. . . . We are open to play any place or any club. Now watch them all crawl in their hole." Foster's Giants went 123-6 that year.
Before the 1911 season started, Foster formed a partnership with Chicago tavern-owner (and son-in-law of Charles Comiskey) John C. Schorling and created the Chicago American Giants, one of the greatest Black clubs of all time. They played their home games in old South Side Park, which Schorling had purchased and renovated to seat 9,000 fans.
The American Giants won Negro League Championships in 1914 and 1917. They shared the title with the New York Lincoln Stars in 1915. In 1916 Foster's imperious nature cost him a chance at the championship. Playing a best-of-nine "World Series" against the Indianapolis ABCs, the teams split the first two games, and Foster's team was down 1-0 in Game 3 when Rube, coaching at first, picked up his first baseman's mitt and put it on his hand.
Players routinely tossed their gloves on the field between innings, but the ABC manager shouted foul to Foster's move. The umpires told Foster to remove the glove. He refused. They ejected him, and when he left the field he took his team with him. The umpires awarded the game to Indianapolis. The forfeited game one-upped the ABCs, as each team won four of their next eight games.
In 1913 Foster wrote about the future of Black baseball in the Indianapolis Freeman: "Organization is its only hope." He began to formulate plans to build a true league, to control costs, to eliminate frequent player raiding and jumping, and most importantly, to gain respectability. In 1919, when his ongoing feuds with East Coast booking agent Nat Strong became more than he could stand, Foster joined a number of clubowners and started the Negro National League (NNL).
The first members of the league were Foster's American Giants, Joe Green's Chicago Giants, the Cuban Stars, Detroit Stars, St. Louis Stars, Indianapolis ABCs, Kansas City Monarchs, and Dayton Marcos. When the owners met to begin the discussion, Foster startled them by pulling out a charter that showed that the NNL was already registered as a legal entity in six states. Not surprisingly, Foster was elected president and secretary. The slogan on NNL letterhead read, "We are the ship, all else the sea."
One of Foster's first acts as president was to return his star player, Oscar Charleston, to Indianapolis, the team from which Charleston had jumped to the Giants. Throughout the NNL's history Foster often sent his players to other clubs to help balance the league. Foster put a lot of his own money behind the NNL; he virtually bankrolled the Dayton club by himself.
It took several years for the NNL to settle itself. Several franchises went bankrupt in the first two years and were replaced by others in other cities, and the number of games each team played varied widely. Foster continued as manager of the American Giants and his team won the Negro National League's first three pennants.
Foster had total control of the NNL. He handled all bookings, was responsible for settling all disputes, and hired the umpires. He took no salary but received 5 percent of all gate receipts off the top, which probably earned him considerably more than would a salary. His dictatorial style caused problems with some teams. Three times in 1921 he pulled his team off the field because of disputes. Opposing managers saw the futility of protesting. As one writer explained, "Each manager would have to file a complaint against Manager Foster, mail it to Secretary Foster, and then President Foster would have to decide." Foster's teams got away with more rule infractions than others because Foster paid the umpires.
It is indisputable that the formation of the Negro National League saved the Black game. Foster's players became the highest paid in Black baseball—by 1930 players earned an average salary of $2,000. The success of the Negro National League spawned imitators. A Southern Negro League was soon formed, as was the Eastern Colored League. The first real Negro World Series were held from 1924 through 1927.
The last official baseball meeting Foster attended was in 1926 with longtime associates Ban Johnson and McGraw, at which Foster was supposedly trying to schedule more games with white teams. But his behavior had taken a serious turn for the worse. As he became more and more bizarre and erratic, Rube Foster, the control freak who almost single-handedly built Black baseball, lost control. He was finally committed to the Kankakee State Hospital, where he died in 1930.
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