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Founder of Negro National League dies
On this day in 1930, Andrew "Rube" Foster, "father of the Negro Baseball
League," died in Illinois. He was born in Calvert, Texas, in 1879. He
began a barnstorming career at age seventeen pitching with the traveling
Waco Yellow Jackets. By 1902 his abilities enabled him to move north,
where he pitched for some of the foremost black teams of his era,
including the Chicago Union Giants and the Philadelphia Giants. In 1902 he
won the nickname Rube for defeating white Hall of Fame pitcher Rube
Waddell in an exhibition game. In 1903 he won four games of the first
Colored World Series. After an illustrious playing career Foster became a
baseball manager and businessman. He helped form the Chicago American
Giants, for whom he recruited fellow Texan Smokey Joe Williams, in 1911
and in February 1920 organized the Negro National League. At a time when
there were few opportunities for blacks, Foster and his team held
celebrity status in black America and were followed avidly through
nationally circulated black newspapers.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- FOSTER, ANDREW [RUBE]
- WILLIAMS, JOE
- SPORTS
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Juan de Ugalde is born in Spain (1729)
- Martín de Alarcón appointed governor of Texas (1716)
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