Bill Foster

William Hendrick Foster was the half-brother of Rube Foster, who founded the Negro National League and built the Chicago American Giants into the most important franchise in Black baseball. Rube wanted Bill to stay in school and stay out of the game. Bill pitched for the American Giants anyway, won 110 games in Negro Leagues competition, won 26 consecutive games in 1926, threw doubleheader shutouts of Bullet Joe Rogan and the Kansas City Monarchs to clinch that year's pennant, led the league in ERA four consecutive seasons from ages 20 through 23, and became the greatest left-handed pitcher the Negro Leagues produced. Dave Malarcher, who managed him through the peak years, said, "Bill Foster was my star pitcher, the greatest pitcher of our time, not even barring Satchel." Charlie Gehringer of the Detroit Tigers, who faced Foster in exhibitions, told him, "If I could paint you white I could get $150,000 for you right now." The Veterans Committee elected Foster posthumously to the Hall of Fame in 1996, 18 years after he died.

Calvert

Foster was born on June 12, 1904, in Calvert, Texas. His father Andrew was a reverend, and Bill's biological mother died when he was four. He was raised by his maternal grandparents in Rodney, Mississippi, and met his half-brother Rube, who was 25 years older, around the age of 15. Rube actively discouraged Bill from playing baseball and pushed him toward education, but when Rube learned that Bill was pitching successfully for the Memphis Red Sox, he sent a train ticket and $50 and summoned the younger brother to Chicago. Bill resented the forced transfer at first, feeling loyalty to the Memphis manager who gave him his chance. The resentment faded over time. "The more I think of it, the older I get, I can see Rube's point of view in a lot of things," Foster said. "And whatever he told me, stuck."

Foster threw five distinct pitches from the same arm motion, a fastball that sank, an overhand curveball he called a drop ball, a sidearm curveball delivered palm down, an early version of the slider he called an "outshoot," and a changeup. Jocko Conlan, the major league umpire, said Foster had "the same perfect delivery of Herb Pennock, but was faster by far, with a sharp curve, and had what all great pitchers have, control."

Chicago

Foster's peak seasons came in rapid succession. In 1926 he won 26 consecutive games across league and exhibition play, and on September 29 he pitched shutouts in both ends of a doubleheader against Rogan's Monarchs, winning the first 1-0 in nine innings and the second 5-0 in five (called for darkness), to clinch the Negro National League playoff. He posted a 1.27 ERA in the World Series that followed and won the deciding games. In 1927 he went 21-3 in league play and 32-3 overall, led the league in strikeouts with 106, and the American Giants won the championship again. Cum Posey, the Homestead Grays owner who watched pitchers for three decades, called Foster "the greatest left-handed Negro League pitcher" and "the hardest man in baseball to beat."

Foster received 40,637 fan votes, second only to Oscar Charleston, for the inaugural East-West All-Star Game in 1933 at Comiskey Park and pitched the complete game for the West despite a sore arm that lingered for two weeks, allowing seven hits in an 11-7 victory. In the 1934 All-Star Game, he faced Satchel Paige and lost 1-0 when Jud Wilson, with two strikes and two outs in the eighth, singled to score Cool Papa Bell. Foster claimed a slight career edge over Paige across their head-to-head matchups. "If Satchel got one run first, he would beat you," Foster said. "If I got one run first, he was beat."

Rube Foster died on December 9, 1930, during Bill's prime, and Bill served briefly as player-manager of the American Giants before concluding that he could not pitch and manage at the same time. He spent a season with the Homestead Grays in 1931 (going 23-5 overall), joined the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1936 alongside five other future Hall of Famers (Paige, Josh Gibson, Bell, Judy Johnson, and Oscar Charleston), and retired after the 1937 season.

Lorman

Foster earned his bachelor's degree from Alcorn A&M College (now Alcorn State University) in 1933, the same year he dominated the All-Star Game, and after selling insurance and playing semipro ball in North Carolina during the 1940s, he returned to Alcorn as dean of men and baseball coach, positions he held for nearly two decades until his death. "I've had a wonderful life," Foster said late in life. "I don't regret anything at all that I can remember. It just wasn't time then for Negroes in the major leagues. Oh, I could have made it all right, but it wasn't time." Foster died on September 16, 1978, in Lorman, Mississippi, at 74. His son William Douglass Foster accepted the Hall of Fame plaque on his behalf in 1996.