Bill Foster Marquee Hall of Fame 1996

He led in shutouts in 1924, 1926 and 1927, in strikeouts in 1930 with 132, and in wins in 1927 with 20. Across fourteen seasons from 1923 he went 109-56 in 240 recorded games with 928 strikeouts, working roughly 1,500 innings. He was left-handed and is generally rated the best left-hander the Negro Leagues had.

His half-brother was twenty-five years older and ran the Chicago American Giants, where Bill spent most of his career and was for a time reluctant to be sent. He was chosen for three East-West All-Star games. The figures are partial because these statistics were not kept with the resources the white major leagues had.

He worked at Alcorn State in Mississippi afterward, as baseball coach and dean of men, for more than twenty years. He appeared on four Hall of Fame ballots and the Veterans Committee elected him in 1996, eighteen years after he died.