Rube Foster in His Time: On the Field and in the Papers with Black Baseball's Greatest Visionary

Larry Lester

McFarland, Sep 18, 2012 - Sports & Recreation - 264 pages

Although Andrew "Rube" Foster (1879-1930) stands among the best African American pitchers of the 1900s, this baseball pioneer made his name as the founder and president of the Negro National League, the first all-black league to survive a full season. In addition to founding this groundbreaking black-owned and -operated business, Foster also founded and managed the Chicago American Giants, one of the most successful black baseball teams of the pre-integration era. This definitive biography combines period editorials and correspondence with insightful narrative to provide a comprehensive portrait of this innovative Hall of Famer. From the unstructured early days of black baseball, when Foster gained glory as a hard-throwing pitcher, through his struggles to establish the NNL and the Giants, to his tragic death from complications of syphilis, this work pays overdue tribute to an authentic American baseball icon.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - EMYeak - LibraryThing

This is a biography of a black baseball pitcher who was the founder and president of the Negro National League. I was interested in reading about Foster, but this was not the book for me to read about ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - SethAndrew - LibraryThing

This book is more collection of newspaper articles of the time, than an actual traditional biography. The author is a SABR researcher and that fact is very clear. The original sources he has come up ...

Contents

• Foreword by Former Commissioner Fay Vincent: 1
• Preface: 3
• Introduction: 5
• 1st Inning The Early Pro Days 19031906: 13
• The Leland Giants 19071909: 28
• Now There Are Two Lelands in Town? 19091910: 41
• The American Giants 19111914: 61
• The ABCs and the American Giants 19151916: 85
• 6th Inning The Pitfalls of Black Baseball 19171919: 102
• We Are the Ship All Else the Sea 19201921: 114
• 8th Inning Black and White Arbitration in the New Colored Leagues 19221925: 136
• 9th Inning The Vision Fades 19261930: 166
• Extra Innings Obituaries Honors Landmarks and Tributes 1930: 173

About the author

Noted Negro League historian Larry Lester is the author of eight books and contributor to more then 175 books, theses, and articles on black sports history. He is a Negro Leagues Baseball Museum co-founder and has long served as chairman of the SABR Negro Leagues Committee. Since 1998, he has organized the annual Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference, the only scholarly gathering devoted to the history of black baseball. Lester was a 2016 recipient of SABR’s Henry Chadwick Award, honoring baseball’s greatest researchers, and a year later received the Bob Davids Award, SABR’s highest honor. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Rube Foster in His Time: On the Field and in the Papers with Black Baseball's Greatest Visionary
• Author: Larry Lester
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: McFarland, 2012
• ISBN: 1476601445, 9781476601441
• Length: 264 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / General; Social Science / Ethnic Studies / American / African American & Black Studies; Sports & Recreation / Baseball / History