This is the first in a series profiling the 2003 inductees into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in a banquet on April 4 in Vicksburg. Friday: Warner Alford.

[3/27/03]When his playing days were over, it was easy for William “Bill” Foster to slip out of the spotlight.

A quiet man, Foster didn’t talk much about his playing days in the old Negro Leagues or brag about his many battles with some of the all-time greats. Instead, he sold insurance and became an administrator and baseball coach at Alcorn State.

It took nearly 25 years after his death for Foster’s legend to catch up to him, but he is finally getting his due. Foster, who was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996 and is considered by many baseball historians as one of the best left-handed pitchers of the early 20th century, will be inducted posthumously into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame on April 4 in Vicksburg.

“He is the best left-handed pitcher in the history of the Negro Leagues. He compares with the best white players of his era,” said baseball historian James Riley, author of “The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues.”

Like most former Negro League stars, it simply took time to document Foster’s greatness. Many records and statistics from that time were poorly kept, and the legend of stars such as Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, and Starkville native “Cool Papa” Bell lived on only through word of mouth.

Foster, whose heyday was in the 1920s and 30s, was overshadowed by some of the more charismatic stars of the Negro Leagues. On the diamond, however, he was in a league of his own.

“He had a great reputation. All of the older guys used to talk about him,” said Alcorn State basketball coach Davey Whitney, also a former Negro Leaguer who served as a baseball assistant to Foster in the 1960s and 70s.

Foster was born in Texas in 1904, and came to live with his grandparents in Rodney, Miss., when his mother died in 1908. His older half-brother, Andrew “Rube” Foster, was one of the founders of the Negro Leagues and Bill Foster went to Chicago at the age of 15 to join Rube’s team.

Rube refused to let him play, however, and the rejection caused a rift between the brothers.

“He wouldn’t let Bill pitch for him, and (Bill) resented the fact that Rube wouldn’t make room for him,” Riley said.

Foster returned to Mississippi and school at Alcorn College, but took another stab at the Negro Leagues in 1923. He pitched in one game for the Memphis Red Sox, and this time Rube Foster did make room for his younger brother.

Rube Foster used his power in the league to get Bill traded to his team in Chicago. Still mad at his older brother, Bill was angry about the trade, but he went 5-2 for the Chicago American Giants in his first season there.

Some of the wounds between the brothers eventually healed, and Bill Foster played his first full season for Chicago in 1926 after spending his first three seasons with Memphis, Birmingham, and Rube Foster’s Chicago team, the American Giants.

Unfortunately, Bill and Rube Foster’s reconciliation was brief. Just before Bill joined the Giants, Rube Foster suffered a mental breakdown. Rube turned control of the Chicago team over to Dave Malarcher and spent several years in an Illinois mental institution until his death in 1930.

“One of the older players told me he went to see Rube and he was just sitting on a swing. He didn’t even know where he was,” Riley said, adding that Bill’s success helped ease some of the tension between the brothers. “It wasn’t a major thing. Once Bill made it, it was easier for him to forget and forgive.”

After he joined the American Giants, Bill Foster’s career took off. The 6-foot-2, 215-pounder relied on his mental notebook of hitters, a variety of breaking pitches, and an incredible ability to change speeds to get batters out, and over the next decade he did it better than anyone.

He led the American Giants to pennants in 1926, 27, and 33, pitched in two Black World Series, and won more than 80 games in 1926 and 1927. The Negro Leagues played a 60-game season, although teams would often barnstorm against other leagues and white teams.

In 15 years on the mound, Foster compiled a record of 137-62 a better winning percentage than the legendary Paige.

Foster pitched in 265 games in all, recording 34 shutouts and going 6-1 against white major league all-star teams.

“On the all-time Negro Leagues team, usually they pick Satchel Paige as the right-handed pitcher and Bill Foster as the left-handed pitcher,” Riley said.

Foster’s career was winding down as Paige’s was just beginning, but the two did face each other on several occasions. More often than not, Foster came out on top.

Foster had an 11-10 advantage in their head-to-head matchups, although most were early in Paige’s career.

Still, one thing Foster did enjoy bragging about was getting the best of Paige.

“He was very proud of that. He would talk about that more than anything else,” Whitney said.

Foster retired from baseball in 1939 and spent the next 21 years as an insurance salesman in North Carolina.

He moved back to Mississippi in 1960 to become Dean of Men and baseball coach at Alcorn A&M, which later became Alcorn State.

“When he coached the baseball team, he was like a father to all of his players. He would give advice and they would listen to him,” said Audrey Foster, Bill’s widow.

When Bill Foster talked about his days in the Negro Leagues, he rarely spoke of his own exploits. It was that quiet demeanor that many of the people who knew him remember.

“He was a very congenial person, a down-to-earth person,” Whitney said, adding that he knew little about Foster’s career until he began researching it several years ago. “He’d talk about all the great baseball players, but he never included himself in that.”

Foster died in 1978, and it was 18 years before his dominance in the Negro Leagues was immortalized. In 1996, the Committee on Baseball Veterans elected him to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Now, nearly 25 years after his death, Foster will be enshrined in the state he called home.

“I kind of plugged that for years and years, because how can you have a guy in the Hall of Fame and he’s not even in the hall of fame for his own state?” Whitney said. “There’s no doubt about it. He is very deserving.”