Rube Foster's Chicago American Giants Win Their 11th Straight

By June 21, 1916, Rube Foster's Chicago American Giants had won eleven consecutive games in the independent Black baseball circuit that Foster was building into something permanent. The team barnstormed through the Midwest, playing before crowds in Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, and smaller towns where Black baseball was the only professional game available.

Andrew "Rube" Foster was 37 years old and still occasionally pitching, though he had shifted most of his energy to managing and running the business side of the American Giants. He booked the games, arranged the travel, negotiated with park owners, and set the lineups. The team played at Schorling Park on Chicago's South Side, a wooden ballpark at 39th and Wentworth that seated about 9,000. Foster had leased it from John Schorling, Charles Comiskey's son-in-law, and turned it into the center of Black baseball in the Midwest.

The American Giants of 1916 were loaded. Bruce Petway caught. John Henry Lloyd played shortstop for part of the season. Pete Hill patrolled the outfield. Foster's teams played an aggressive, speed-oriented style that emphasized bunting, baserunning, and defensive precision. They won consistently against both Black and white semipro opponents.

Foster's larger project was still four years away. In 1920, he would organize the Negro National League, the first stable professional league for Black players in America. He gathered team owners at the Paseo YMCA in Kansas City and convinced them that organized scheduling, gate revenue sharing, and league standings would bring stability and respectability to Black baseball.

The American Giants' 1916 winning streak was one small chapter in that longer story. Foster was proving, game by game and season by season, that Black baseball could draw crowds, sustain teams, and produce players whose talent matched anyone in the white major leagues. The institution he built lasted, in various forms, until Jackie Robinson made it unnecessary.