During the 1902 baseball season, Otsego was home to Negro league baseball great Andrew "Rube" Foster, who played for George E. Bardeen's Michigan State League white semi-professional team, the Otsego Independents, before signing on as a pitcher with the Cuban X-Giants, considered by many to be the greatest team in Negro leagues history. He would later be instrumental in the founding of the Negro National League. For a time, Otsego had a "Rube Street," but it was renamed "Washington Street." On 17 April 2000, John Chapman, a local elementary teacher, petitioned the City Council to have one of the six baseball diamonds at Memorial Park renamed in Foster's honor. The city approved placement of a monument to him at the park by a 3–1 vote.