Rube Foster

Although it meant the end of the Negro leagues, integration was the ultimate goal of Rube Foster and his colleagues, and it was achieved. Nearly forty more black players had followed Robinson into the major leagues by 1949, among them, Roy Campanella, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Paige. Foster had devoted his energy and his life to black baseball and to the uplifting of the sport and of his fellow African-American athletes, whom he helped to gain a high level of respect. He served as a star pitcher until his late thirties, served for some fifteen years as a baseball manager, and served as commissioner of the NNL for five years. He has often been called the greatest baseball manager of any race. Foster was also a great teacher, who taught not only his pitching skills to some of the game's greatest pitchers but his managing skills to a second generation of black managers, including Oscar Charleston, Dave Malarcher, and Biz Mackey. His induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981 and the establishment of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City during the mid-1990s leave no doubt that Foster and the ideals for which he stood have achieved a national appreciation.