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

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.

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.