Who is rube foster

Meeting in Kansas City, owners of professional black baseball teams met to create the Negro National Baseball League and named Foster as the league's president. As president, Foster set the schedule of the league and even moved players around to promote competitiveness, understanding that teams with miserable records hurt attendance and everyone's revenue.

Foster significantly impacted black baseball in Texas by encouraging his league teams to conduct spring training and exhibition games in the state, which stimulated local excitement for the game. The matches also placed local talent on display for Negro League organizations, a significant economic opportunity for small town African Americans.

Between and Foster led the Negro National League, creating a tradition that would last through the s. Foster's leadership ended in with his involuntary commitment to the Kankakee Asylum after a mental breakdown. He would die in the institution four years later. Rube Foster's vision of Negro League baseball never centered on segregation, but on integration.

Foster's purpose in playing and leading the Negro League was to ensure that black players were competitive on the day that major league finally reopened its doors to African Americans. Foster would not live to see the integration of baseball, but his creation and cultivation of organized professional black baseball would ensure a home for greats like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson and a training ground for future major league greats like Ernie Banks and Willie Mays.

He left baseball due to mental illness in and died in an Illinois asylum on December 9, At his well-attended, highly emotional funeral, he was eulogized as the "father of Negro baseball. Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Foster split with Leland and decided to put together his own team for the season. By , Foster was pitching very little, and began to focus his efforts solely on the operation of the Giants.

Yet despite all his personal success, Foster noticed the distinct lack of a national black baseball championship and the lack of a national black baseball league. Seeking to unite African-American baseball, Foster began to put out feelers to other black owners, during the s, but found the owners were unable to come to any sort of agreement.

In , Chicago was in the midst of violent race riots that only further demonstrated to Foster the need for improvement in African-American life; Foster empathized with his fellow African-Americans who felt mistreated at the hands of white Americans. The race riots spurred Foster to finally push through the formation of a Negro National League. Elected the first president and treasurer of the league, Foster continued to manage the Chicago American Giants, leading to some complaints that he was tilting the rosters in his favor.

Yet Foster was a well-respected leader who turned black baseball into a successful enterprise; his devotion to the league was incredible, and he often helped teams in poor finances out by paying their payroll out of his own pocket. Teams such as the Chicago American Giants and Kansas City Monarchs often were more profitable than white baseball teams, which helped spawn black baseball leagues in the south and the east.

In , the stressful positions Foster held caught up to him. Trailing Foster were 11 other men: three sportswriters, Cary B. On his agenda was one item: Create a Negro baseball league with a national footprint equal to that of the white major leagues, on and off the field. Foster had been dreaming about it — and championing it — for years. The timing was right, said Negro Leagues historian Larry Lester. As Foster saw it, black players had already proven in barnstorming tours that they were as talented as white players.

So why not create a black league to parallel the white major leagues? Besides, maybe one day baseball would be integrated. Foster, a big personality in an even bigger body — he stood a few inches taller than 6 feet, and depending on the day, tilted the scale somewhere between and pounds — was an excellent salesman.

But he also knew of what he spoke. He had built the preeminent black team of the era, the Chicago American Giants, into perennial winners. So, on Friday, Feb. When Foster and the other owners left the YMCA, the league had a vision that was encapsulated in a slogan borrowed from the words of abolitionist Frederick Douglass :.

Rube Foster front row, center had built the preeminent black baseball team of the era, the Chicago American Giants, into perennial winners. Andrew Foster was born in in Calvert, Texas.

His parents, Andrew and Evaline, had been enslaved and, upon Emancipation, became sharecroppers. Young Andrew left school after the eighth grade, set on becoming a professional baseball player. He hooked up with a local barnstorming team, the Waco Yellow Jackets, and began to attract notice.