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.
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One Man’s Journey through the Golden Age of Sports
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781955041362
Publisert
2024
Utgiver
Vendor
Brookline Books
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter