A biography of Walter French, a man who played for both a World Series winner and NFL Championship team.
Before Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders, there were only nineteen men, throughout history, who played in the Major Leagues of baseball and in the National Football League, in the same season. Only one man from that group, Walter French, can lay claim to having played for a World Series winner and an NFL Championship team. In 1925, he starred for the Pottsville (PA) Maroons in their win over the Chicago Cardinals, in what was believed to be the NFL championship game, only to see the title stripped by a league office decision, a controversial move still being argued about today. Then in 1929, he was on the Philadelphia Athletics when they beat the Chicago Cubs in five games to win the World Series.
Walter E. French was born in Moorestown, New Jersey in 1899 and he just might have been the best, but least known, all-around athlete to emerge from the decade of the 1920s, commonly referred to as the “Golden Age of Sports.” One analyst ranked him as the fastest man in football at the time, even placing him ahead of Red Grange. Although his exploits have dropped from the consciousness of all but the most ardent of sports fans in the last one hundred years, in his day, he was constantly in the news.
He played with and against the biggest stars the decade of the 1920s had to offer, including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Walter Johnson, Ty Cobb, and twenty-seven other ballplayers who would eventually wind up in the Baseball Hall of Fame. In football, he went up against the likes of Notre Dame’s George Gipp, the “Four Horsemen,” Curly Lambeau, Geoge Halas, Ira “Buck” Rogers and many more. The top sports writers of his day, from Grantland Rice to Ed Sullivan, made regular mention of him in their columns. Other well-known figures from the period such as Paul Robeson, Knute Rockne, Connie Mack, and General Douglas MacArthur are part of his journey as well, and make appearances in this book.
Prologue: Escape from Death in The Jungle
Chapter 1: The Golden Agen of Sports
Chapter 2: Football Education, Rutgers Years, Paul Robeson, and March Madness, 1917-1920
Chapter 3: The Big Game, Army Vs. Notre Dame, Knute Rockne, and George Gipp
Chapter Four: Hans Lobert and Army Baseball 1921-1922
Chapter 5: Connie Mack and the Philadelphia Athletics 1923-1925
Chapter Six: The Pottsville Maroons and the Stolen NFL Championship of 1925
Chapter Seven: 1926 and the Dutch Leonard Affair
Chapter Eight: 1929 and the Team That Time Forgot
Chapter Nine: The Stock Market Crash, Dizzy Dean and The Dixie Series
Chapter Ten: Outlaw Ballplayer
Chapter Eleven: Coach French
Chapter Twelve: Captain French and The War Years
Epilogue
