Malamut Photography. He was born in Indian Territory in Lehigh, Oklahoma, on January 5, 1888.1 His father Jonathan Foster appears to have been a chair carver who had emigrated from England to the United States with his wife Mary and their four sons (Jonathan, Robert, John, and William.) Foster got off to a strong start in 1914, pitching the second game of the season, and struck out eight Senators while allowing just four singles and a walk, a 2-1 win played under cold and raw conditions. It was a four-team circuit and only played a 68-game schedule. The season in Bartlesville ended early for Foster, because the team tried to make him into a second baseman and he demurred and was fired. In 1923, Foster decided to give pitching another try, and he was signed by the Vernon Tigers of the Pacific Coast League. Tucson finished tied for last place, 30-38. His first start came on April 18, in Philadelphia, an 8-5 win but one in which Foster walked the first man on four pitches, then surrendered three hits, and was pulled before he even recorded an out. SABR 2020 - The Andrew Rube Foster Scholarship . On a classically hot and humid day to celebrate the summer solstice in Chicago, a small but fervent gathering of seamheads came together at the Lisle Library for an afternoon of baseball chatter. Thanks to Chris Woodman, who contributed valuable information improving an earlier version of this biography. ), The pennant was indeed Bostons, and manager Bill Carrigan asked Foster to pitch Game Two, after the Phillies Grover Cleveland Alexander took the first game against Shore, 3-1. Its hard to put full credence in the Washington Post article which suggested it might have been McAleer acting alone on the recommendation of Tris Speakers old side partner George Whiteman: [T]he officials of the club are in utter ignorance whether he won twenty and lost none or lost twenty and won none: only that, it is understood, he is the pick of that league.3, A story which appeared in the Washington Post in 1915 claimed that Foster had won the game clinching the Texas League pennant, with his hitting a three-run come-from-behind home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth against San Antonio. Sean Forman. 19 E-mail from Chris Woodman, March 20, 2016, citing the Springfield Leader, June 30, 1921. The Red Sox hoped hed return in 1918, but in April finally traded his contract to the Cincinnati Reds for Dave Shean. Worse, come late August, he refused to travel with the team to go to Salt Lake City and was released on August 25. 16 Numerous articles in the Arizona Republic (e.g., May 10, 1927) and El Paso Herald (e.g. On Feb. 13, 1920, Andrew Rube Foster established the Negro National League in a meeting held at the Paseo YMCA. The 1900 census found the family living in Pittsburg, Kansas, where the three eldest sons worked as coal miners. In 1934, Webb branched out into sportswriting with a weekly column for the St. Louis Argus, one of the city's two daily black newspapers (he also wrote for the St. Louis American for a couple of years in the mid-thirties). Administered by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) Below are instructions for the Rube Foster essay-writing contest. THE NEGRO LEAGUES COMMITTEE (NLC) of the SOCIETY FOR AMERICAN BASEBALL RESEARCH (SABR) is pleased to announce their 2016 essay-writing contest for He would have pitched more, but again wrenched his knee while fielding a ball on June 25 and missed nearly a month before his next start on July 22.