Negro Leagues/Strat-O-Matic, cont.' - Rube Foster

By Ed Piper

Fueled by my playing Strat-O-Matic baseball earlier today (Jan. 25), I did some brush-up reading on the Negro Leagues. "Base ball" (two words), as it was written, became immensely popular during and after the Civil War, which ended in 1865. (Opposing armies threw balls back that flew over dividing lines between battles.)

African-Americans were part of this craze. The color line soon followed, with unwritten and spoken rules among white baseball club owners around 1886 banning blacks. As a result, black barnstorming teams flourished, sprouting up in New York, Baltimore, and other Eastern cities.

Andrew "Rube" Foster established the Negro National League in 1920. Foster, who had no compunction against employing unscrupulous practices to further his financial and personal interests, started out as a talented young right-hander who averaged 11 strikeouts per start in his breakout season for the Chicago Union Giants in 1902, then jumping to the Cuban X-Giants of Philadelphia and becoming their star pitcher.

"Cuban" was a common euphemism used for black players, to avoid the stigma amid racism in America against African-Americans: they weren't really black, they were dark-skinned Latins, was the way the thinking went.

"Cuban", after its first use as name of the Cuban Giants in New York, soon proliferated in the names of other "colored" (the common term for blacks until the 1920's), including the aforementioned X-Giants, the Ansonia Cuban Giants of black all-stars in an all-white league, the Cuban Stars (West and East--two separate squads), and the New York Cubans.

What is a little confusing is that actual Cuban teams did play, as well, since the island country, then friendly with the U.S., was a baseball hotbed. (Think dictator Fidel Castro from the "Revolution" from 1959 on--he was a baseball player and enthusiast.)

Rube Foster had baseball and business know-how. On his teams, he could accurately assess a pitcher's strengths and weaknesses, and coach the hurler on adjustments in mechanics and so forth to move him from being average to very effective. In addition, off the field, the ambitious and hard-working Foster, as head of the Negro National League, controlled which players played on which teams, the financial side, etc. He negotiated a business arrangement that gave him 40 percent of gate receipts, as opposed to the 10 percent his predecessor club owner had received.

Eventually, he experienced mental problems, was committed for treatment, and his league quickly shut down a short time thereafter. He was the driving force behind the league.

Major league players who faced the Negro League stars in off-season barnstorming encounters often testified to the major league quality of the banned players, including the great pitcher Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, a catcher who hit supersonic home runs and was nicknamed "the black Babe Ruth", and many others.

Unfortunately, due to the color line, these top stars weren't given an opportunity to play alongside and against the likes of Hall-of-Famers Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson, and all the others.

When Jackie Robinson broke the color line in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers due to Branch Rickey's recruitment and preparation of him, black fans migrated to watching Major League Baseball. The Negro Leagues had only a short time to live after that. There were about seven leagues of black ballplayers who were viable at one point or another from 1880-1950. The last teams ended their runs in the early 60's.

Buck O'Neil, a former star player for the Kansas City Monarchs, became a recognized name from being featured in interviews in Ken Burns' documentary "Baseball", which came out in 1994. O'Neil, who passed away in 2006, was a friendly storyteller who became the face of the Negro Leagues as a result.

Buck helped co-found the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, which opened as a single room in 1990, then in 1997 the NLBM moved to its present facility, a 10,000-square-foot structure. The museum sits two blocks from the historic Paseo YMCA, where Rube Foster held meetings to establish his Negro National League in 1920. I would enjoy visiting the NLBM at some time in the future.

Time to play more Strat-O-Matic, and study my cards of Negro League stars like O'Neil, Paige, Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Martin Dihigo (a two-way star like the Angels' Shohei Otani), and others.