Larry Lester

Not a standard biography, but a documentary history like Dean Sullivan’s Early-Middle-Late-Extra Innings series, this portrait of the Negro National League’s founder is not an easy read. While material is presented in an orderly fashion and nicely tied together with clear narrative text, much of it still consists of stilted prose from over a hundred years ago—items transcribed as found in obscure newspapers, court documents, and the other historical source material from which biography show more is derived.

This approach, while not as easy to read as a pre-digested retelling of a life, has the advantage of showing the man as he was seen by his contemporaries—as a truly great pitcher, who threw seven no-hitters (a number equaled by only Nolan Ryan at the Major League level) and organizational genius who, during a period of intense racial inequality, built and controlled a nation-wide entertainment enterprise through sheer will and perseverance. Lester, editor of the scholarly Negro-Leagues journal Black Ball and CEO of NoirTech Research, has done both us and Foster a service by compiling this material and making possible a fuller understanding of this giant figure in baseball’s development. show less

This is a remarkable work of baseball scholarship, complete with Foster's complete career stats, as a player and a manager. A member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Rube Foster's contribution to the game, despite the many no-hitters he recorded and his wins as a manager, was as the founder of the Negro National League and the first commissioner of black baseball.

In that role, he provided opportunities to players who, because of bigotry alone, had been denied their right to play professional show more baseball. Foster's place in the annals of the game has, obviously, been long acknowledged.

What Larry Lester gives us is a thoroughly annotated biography, a context and a social history to understand Foster's life. Lester is an engaging writer and the book is well-illustrated with photos, ads and memorabilia. My only complaint, and this is not the fault of the author, is that the typeface in the review copy I received is unusually small, 8- or 10-point instead of the standard 12. Perhaps that will be corrected in the final proof. show less

This book likely contains the definitive research on and about Rube Foster. However, it would have greatly benefited from a strong editor and a placement of Foster within his times. it is so specifically focuses upon Foster that the reader, even one familiar with the history of black baseball, has trouble putting Foster in the context of the times - which is ironic given the title of the book. While there was clearly yeoman's work undertaken to piece together Rube Foster's life in baseball show more through his own words, significantly more summarization and molding into a story was necessary to turn this into a much ore readable, accessible book. Providing more history about early black baseball, the Chicago semi-pro city league scene, and the 1920's Negro National League would have been helpful in placing Foster into the context of his times. Much of the lengthy quotation of his writings (pages on end) would have been better placed within the book's already strong appendices. show less

There is a wealth of information in this book about Rube Foster, one of the most important figures in black American baseball. Larry Lester has assembled basic source material, much of it from contemporary Negro newspapers of the day, and presented it to chronicle Foster’s career as player, manager, and founder of the Negro National League. Many of Foster’s own writings, and those of his contemporaries, are presented verbatim.

Rube was unquestionably a dominant pitcher in the first show more decade of last century, but Negro baseball at the time was primarily between local teams or barnstorming squads, with understandable disparity in team ability, suitability of playing conditions, and impartiality of officiating. From the time he become player-manager of the Chicago American Giants in 1911, Foster fomented for change, a league of colored teams that would respect the contracts of one another, play a regular schedule, and have a crowned champion. In 1920, he was instrumental in the formation of the Negro National League of six Midwestern clubs which was built on those principles.

While Foster’s days as player and manager are chronicled in this book, with full statistics, a large portion of the book relates to the struggle to form the league and the wrangling between club owners.

After reading the book, you may feel, as I do, that Foster is still an enigma. Was he a man following a vision for a better quality of play for spectators or was he stacking the deck for his own financial advantage?

If you want a look behind the box scores and written record, you won’t find much here. Short shrift is given to Foster’s early life and home life until the end of the book, and you’ll have to read between the lines of Foster’s own newspaper columns and letters to learn much about his character. And, since they were written in the purple prose typical of the era, that can be tough going. My reading is that Foster was someone who was self-assured to the point of arrogance and obstinate in his vision. That’s not far from a description of many great men, is it? show less