Rube Foster’s American Giants played the Indianapolis ABCs on May 2, 1920 in the first game of the new Negro National League founded by the baseball great from Texas.
“White baseball has never seen anyone quite like Rube Foster,” a sports historian once wrote. “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.”
Andrew Foster was born 14 years after the Civil War at the Central Texas community of Calvert. When the son of an African Methodist Episcopal elder was not in church, he was playing his favorite game on the local sandlots.
Foster quit school at 17 and took off with a bunch of black barnstormers, who called themselves the Waco Yellow Jackets. The stocky six-footer with the blazing fastball was a star right from the start. He also picked up a few extra bucks every spring by pitching batting practice for major-league teams that trained in Texas.
By 1902, Andy Foster was more than ready for the big time. The 22-year-old joined the Chicago Union Giants and won 51 games – including 44 in a row – his rookie season. He earned his nickname by beating Hall of Fame hurler Rube Waddell, a 25-game winner, in an exhibition with Connie Mack’s pennant-winning Philadelphia Athletics.
Foster changed uniforms in 1903 jumping to the New York-based Cuban X-Giants. He compiled a 54-1 regular season record and accounted for four of his new team’s five victories over the Philadelphia Giants in the first ever “world series.”
On the strength of Foster’s big bat and right arm, the X-Giants won the opener 3-1. After Philadelphia tied the series, he led the way in the third contest contributing three key hits in a 12-3 rout. Two more masterful mound performances by the talented Texan sewed up the series five games to two.
Legend has it 1903 was the year John McGraw, skipper of the New York Giants, paid Rube Foster to teach his screwball to Christy Mathewson and Iron Man McGinnity. Mathewson more than doubled his win count to 34 and McGinnity broke the 30-victory barrier, too, as the lowly Giants jumped from the National League cellar to second place.
Restless Rube moved again in 1904, this time to the very team he had vanquished the previous year. As the ace of the Philadelphia Giants staff, he turned the tables twice on the X-Giants in the best-of-three post-season play-off.
More than a strong arm, Foster also had a head on his shoulders. He often threw a curve on a 3-and-2 count because the hitter expected a fast ball. “Try and appear jolly and unconcerned,” was his bases-loaded philosophy. “I smile with the bases full, and this seems to unnerve the batter.”
After three seasons in the City of Brotherly Love, Foster went back to where he had begun – Chicago. Owner Frank Leland, who had changed the name of his team to the Leland Giants, put Rube in charge as player-manager.
Foster met the challenge by beating the living daylights out of the white competition in the city league. Under his stern but even-handed guidance, the Giants won 48 consecutive games en route to a 110-10 record.
The 1909 Cubs, runners-up in the NL race, accepted Foster’s invitation to a three-out-of-five showdown to decide who played the best baseball in town. With the Lelands down one game to none, Rube took the mound for the first time since breaking a leg in July. He had a three-run lead in the ninth inning, but the Cubs rallied to tie the score.
Foster called time and walked toward the dugout to fetch a fresh pitcher. When his back was turned, the runner on third base sprinted for home and the umpire called him safe. The Cubs went on to sweep the series and refused repeated requests for a rematch.
Foster parted company with Frank Leland in 1911 and formed the Chicago American Giants with the son-in-law of Charles Comiskey, owner of the White Sox. Nine years later, he created the Negro National League with the eight best black clubs in the Midwest.
As president, Foster did everything under the sun to keep the struggling league alive. Whenever the American Giants, who were in a class by themselves, threatened to run away with the pennant, he divided the season into two halves to keep the fans interested. If an opposing team ran out of money on the road, he personally paid for their return trip.
But Foster cracked in 1926 under the strain of his many responsibilities. Weeks of increasingly erratic and bizarre behavior culminated in a complete nervous breakdown from which he never recovered. He spent the last four years of his life in the state insane asylum, where he died in December 1930 “raving about winning one more pennant.”
Fifty-one years later, Andrew “Rube” Foster was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. There may have been better pitchers and managers, but no one in the history of the game wore as many hats as well as he did.
The “Houston Press” and “Houstonia” magazine recently interviewed Bartee about his new book “Texas Boomtowns: A History of Blood and Oil.” You can read both on his website barteehaile.com.
