CHAPTER 5

Connie Mack and the Philadelphia Athletics, 1923–1925

Although his dismissal from the United States Military Academy did not create the furor that resulted when Notre Dame temporarily expelled George Gipp, there was a great deal of interest expressed in Walter French. Shortly after his dismissal he was approached by former Rutgers football star Howard Parker Talman who was the athletic director at the University of Chattanooga. Talman had been an All-American football player for Rutgers in 1915 and 1916, once scoring six touchdowns in a game against RPI. Talman pushed hard to have Walter enroll at Chattanooga where he knew he would make an immediate impact on the school’s athletic program. So certain were the sportswriters that Walter would be accepting the offer that reports began to surface that he had made a final decision to attend Chattanooga as early as September 20, just one week from the date of his dismissal from West Point. However, Walter was also considering another option, enlisting in the Army. If he could not become an Army officer by graduating from West Point, then perhaps he could achieve this goal of becoming a second lieutenant by passing the civilian exam which was next scheduled to be administered on October 23.

The following week Walter joined a number of his former teammates at Rutgers when they gathered to help their old football coach Foster Sanford get his team ready for the upcoming season. Joining Walter for what the reporters were calling “alumni” day, was Frank Kelly, Mike Whitehall, and Paul Robeson. Robeson, who at the time was studying at Columbia Law School, was also signed to play for the Milwaukee Badgers in the new National Football League.

The reporters covering the event pressed Walter on his plans and he took the opportunity to announce that reports that he had decided to attend the University of Chattanooga were premature. Walter informed the assembled media covering the Rutgers practice that he, in fact, intended to take the civilian officers exam, and that he would not be attending Chattanooga as had been widely reported.

There were, however, a few hurdles that he would have to get past to make that dream a reality, not the least of which was the fact that the examinations for civilian officer candidates were extremely rigorous at that time and included sections on math and grammar, the very subjects he struggled with mightily and which led to his dismissal from West Point. In addition, given the fact that if he was able to pass the exam he would outrank his former West Point classmates, the members of the West Point graduating classes of 1924 and 1925 would have to waive their right to force him to wait until they had graduated before he could be commissioned as an officer. Finally his old nemesis, the West Point Academic Board, would also have to give their blessing to his plan. In the end it was the Academic Board that frustrated Walter’s ambition. While his fellow classmates waived their right to graduate before he could be commissioned, the Academic Board refused to allow him to take the examination.

While considering what his next career move should be in the fall of 1922, Walter was signed to play for the Washington Football Club, an independent professional team based in the Washington, D.C. area. On October 15 the team went up against the Akron Pros of the NFL at American League Park in the nation’s capital. Although Washington went down to defeat by a score of 7–0, Walter French, who was responsible for all the team’s offense, was the star of the game for Washington. His nifty 50-yard run was the game’s lone highlight.

His performance for Washington only added to the speculation on the part of the press as to what Walter French’s next move would be. One week after the game against Akron, a Baltimore Sun report predicted that French would be the Army’s secret weapon in the much-anticipated football showdown between the Army Third Corps team and that of the Marines stationed at Quantico, VA set for December 2. “Reports to the effect that Walter E. French, the former great halfback at Rutgers and West Point will be among those present in the game against the Marines persists,” wrote sportswriter Don Riley.¹ If Walter decided to continue to pursue a military career it was almost certain that he would be assigned to the Third Corps making him available for the game.

The first real indication that Walter initially had decided to pursue a military career came in early November, when for the first time his name appeared on the Third Army Corps football team’s roster, when they squared off against the University of Pennsylvania Junior Varsity team in Philadelphia. The Army won the game by a score of 19–0 with Walter scoring his team’s third and final touchdown. A few days later all of the newspapers were reporting that he had officially enlisted in the regular Army as a private and that he would be in the lineup in the game against the Marines.

The game between the Third Army Corps and the Marines from Quantico in 1922 was the second meeting between the two teams. The Marines had won the 1921 game, played at Johns Hopkins University by a score of 20–0. The 1922 game was played at the brand-new Municipal Stadium on 33rd Street in Baltimore. A crowd of over 43,000 people were on hand. It was the largest crowd at that point to ever witness a sporting event in the city’s history. There were over 100 congressmen in attendance and reporters came from all over the country to cover the game. Tickets were sold out a week prior to the game.

In addition to Walter French, the Army team was led by former West Point star Gene Vidal. Vidal, in addition to being a star football player, was a member of the 1920 US Olympic Team where he competed in the Decathlon.

The team captain for the Marines was Frank Goettge who was a World War I veteran who had played semi-professional football in Ohio. He turned down a contract with the New York Giants to stay with the Marines.

The Army took an early 6–0 lead on field goals by Gene Vidal but the Marines on the strength of two touchdowns by Frank Goettge, who the Baltimore Sun described as an “embodied tornado” came back to win the game by a score of 13–12. In their wrap up of the game the Pittsburgh Press noted that “Gene Vidal, Walter French, Johnny Greene and Van De Graff, all former West Point stars graced the lineup of the area corps with all of their brilliancy.”²

Just a few days after the game between the Army and the Marines, on December 6, the Rutgers football team held its end of the year banquet. Over the last few weeks the rift that had developed due to Walter’s departure from Rutgers for West Point was beginning to be smoothed over as a result of the assistance that Walter had given coach Sanford with the team back in the fall. However, in making his remarks that night, Coach Sanford sought to dispense with any animosity that might remain at Rutgers on the subject of Walter French. Sanford told the 200 people in attendance that although there was no changing the fact that Walter had abandoned the school at which he first became a star in favor of West Point, that recent events had proven that he did it with “an honest purpose.” Sanford went on to explain that Walter “wanted to be an officer and although he has flunked out at West Point, he has enlisted as a buck private, and many of us must change our estimation of him.”³

On December 11 the newspapers reported that Walter French had been hired to coach the Young Men’s Hebrew Association’s basketball team, which played in an amateur league in the Baltimore area. Although it was his first attempt at coaching, the Washington Times praised the hire writing “The YMHA authorities made a ten-strike when they secured the services of French. No better man could have been selected for the position.”⁴ The Baltimore area was a hotbed of basketball both amateur and professional. Everyone that coached the sport in the region was compared to Bill Schuerholz who was recognized as one the best coaches in the country. He coached both the Baltimore Orioles of the professional American Basketball League, and Loyola High School, the most dominant secondary school team in the section.

Walter worked the team hard during the month of December and despite a tough schedule that called for them to play mostly college teams they were undefeated going into early March. Pressure was building for a match between the YMHA team and the professional Baltimore Orioles prior to the YMHA team’s run at the annual Amateur Athletic Union tournament. Believing that a game against a professional team, while not something that the AAU encouraged, would not mean automatic sanctions, the managers of the YMHA informed Walter that they had agreed to play a three-game series with the professional team. However, after the first game, which was won easily by the Orioles, the local governing board of the AAU ruled that the YMHA team had violated the spirit of amateurism and they were banned from the AAU tournament that was scheduled to begin in the next few days. So ended Walter’s basketball coaching career.

Beginning as early as September of 1922, reports were circulating that Walter French was in discussions with the Philadelphia Athletics. Connie Mack’s chief scout Mike Drennan, who was instrumental in bringing such stars as Jimmy Dykes and future Hall of Famers Al Simmons and Jimmie Foxx to the A’s, had seen Walter play during his remarkable 1922 Army baseball season. The two first made each other’s acquaintance on the train ride back from that year’s Army–Navy baseball game. Drennan offered Walter a contract for the 1923 season making $500 per month. In an interview with sportswriter Frank Graham years later he recalled “I was so happy about it I didn’t even ask for a big bonus for signing … I discovered later I could have got as much for signing as I got for a whole year’s pay, but I was dumb then.” He went on to explain to Graham that he was not worried about his commitment to the Army. “I wasn’t worried about that. They had a rule that if you could show them you had a job waiting for you, you could be discharged. So, I knew that all I had to do was to prove that Connie had sent me a contract.”⁵

Walter was given furlough from the Army so that he could attend spring training with the Athletics in Montgomery, AL but in early April of 1923 it all became official when Walter received written confirmation that he had been given an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army.

When American League President Ban Johnson set out to have his league challenge the monopoly of the National League in 1901, he knew that to be successful he needed to establish teams in some of the same cities that already had National League franchises such as St. Louis, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Charles Somers, a Cleveland business executive who had made his fortune in the coal business, agreed to finance franchises in four cities including the one in Philadelphia which was nicknamed the Athletics after a team which played there in the late 1800s.

Before the first season was over however, Philadelphia businessman Ben Shibe put together a group that included A’s manager Connie Mack and two local sportswriters, Butch Jones, and Frank Huff, and bought out Charles Somers. Under the arrangement Shibe would own 50 percent of the team, Connie Mack would own 25 percent of the team, and the last 25 percent would go to Jones and Huff.

Connie Mack, whose real name was Cornelius McGillicuddy, was born in 1862 in East Brookfield, Massachusetts. He was the son of Irish immigrants Michael and Mary McKillop McGillicuddy. His father fought with the 51st Massachusetts infantry in the Civil War.

Mack got his first job in baseball in 1884 as a catcher for a professional team in Meriden, Connecticut. After a few stops with teams in the American Association he was eventually sold to the Washington Senators, then a team in the National League, in 1886. In his autobiography My 66 Years in the Big Leagues he wrote that “I was one of the first players to go south on a Spring Training trip in 1888. The manager in Washington was Old Ted Sullivan, and he conceived the idea that if he could get the jump on the other clubs by putting them in spring training, it would enhance his chances of winning the pennant. So, he took all of his players to Florida, a practice followed today.”⁶

After an ankle injury ended his playing career, Connie Mack caught on as the manager of a team in Milwaukee, where he met Ban Johnson who hired him to manage the American League franchise he was putting into Philadelphia to challenge the National League Phillies team.

When he arrived in Philadelphia, Mack had no team and no place to play. They finally settled on a plot of land located at Twenty-Ninth and Oxford Streets and broke ground on what was called Columbia Park. He then set about to build his team and the first place he looked was the rival Phillies and began negotiations with four of their players the crown jewel of which was future Hall of Famer Napoleon Lajoie. The signing of Lajoie eventually ended up in a court case that made its way up to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ruled that Lajoie could no longer play for the A’s. In order to keep the star player in the American League, Mack traded him to Cleveland.

Eventually Mack made the decision to start looking for prospects among college players. He found Chief Bender at Carlisle, Jack Coombs at Colby, Eddie Collins at Columbia, Jack Barry at Holy Cross, Mickey Cochrane at Boston University and now Walter French at Army. In speaking with Baltimore Sun reporter Don Riley, Connie Mack predicted that after a year or two of seasoning in the minor leagues, that Walter French would be a successful major league player. “He is very fast,” Mack told Riley “and his speed is a great asset. He has looked better at bat than in fielding, but he ought to improve, and I think he will.”⁷

Walter’s initial stay with the A’s in Montgomery was cut short when he received a telegram on March 20 from his family back in Moorestown with the sad news that his father, Walter S. French had died somewhat unexpectedly at the age of 57. Newspapers reported that “Walter Edward French, star athlete for West Point, and one of the most promising recruits in the Philadelphia spring training quarters at Montgomery, was called to his home at Moorestown, N.J. last night by the death of his father, Walter S. French.”⁸

After his father’s funeral, he returned to Montgomery and resumed his spring training. It was during that same time that he met his future wife, Elizabeth Bazemore. She was four years his junior and like his own mother, a native of Alabama. Elizabeth, or Beth as she was called, had grown up in Montgomery and attended Sydney Lanier High School, where she was a classmate of her first cousin Zelda Sayre, the future American novelist and wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Elizabeth had traveled from her home in Birmingham to stay with her sister who at the time was dating a member of the A’s front office staff and he brought Walter along on a visit to keep his girlfriend’s sister company. One newspaper described Beth as one of the most beautiful girls in all of Alabama. Their attraction to each other was immediate and the two began a long-distance courtship during which Walter wrote to her every day.

At the conclusion of the 1923 spring training, Walter was assigned to the Williamsport Billies of the newly created New York–Pennsylvania league. Mack believed that Walter would benefit most by being placed with a club where he had the best chance to play every day.

In its inaugural season the New York–Penn League consisted of six teams. In addition to Williamsport there were teams in York, Scranton, and Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania, and Binghamton and Elmira in New York. Walter quickly established himself as one of the A’s top prospects during his season with the Billies, who won the league championship by nine games over the second place York White Roses. He played in 112 of the teams 124 games and finished the season with 167 hits and a league high .360 batting average. He also recorded 43 stolen bases which was also tops in the league. He finished the season with a league best 13 triples and he hit 9 home runs.

Walter French met his future wife Elizabeth Bazemore during Spring Training in Montgomery, Alabama. (Courtesy of French Family)

His success with the Williamsport club earned him a call up to the Athletics in September. He appeared in 16 games with the big-league team, starting in 10 of them and playing the outfield. In addition to the starts, he made five appearances as a pinch hitter and one as a pinch runner. His first major league start came on September 15 when he started both games of a doubleheader against the St. Louis Browns. He started in centerfield and batted leadoff in both games. In the first game he had two hits in four at-bats, scored two runs and recorded his first RBI. He followed that up by going two for four in the second game. He played in five games of the team’s next series with the Detroit Tigers and while his hitting cooled off, he still managed to get four hits in the five games.

He made his first big splash in a game against the Chicago White Sox on September 20 in a 5 to 3 A’s victory. “The first local tally” the newspaper’s account of the game reported “was due to the hitting ability of Walter French, the new Mackian outfielder, whose single sent Dykes over the rubber in the third stanza. French had a fine day in the field and proved that he is right in line for a regular berth on the local nine for his work in center.”⁹ The writers also made mention of the comparison that fans were making between Walter and Maurice Archdeacon of the White Sox.

Like Walter, Archdeacon was a rookie and a late season call up from Rochester of the International League. Both men played centerfield, both batted left-handed, they were almost identical to one another in terms of their weight and height, and they both possessed blazing speed. The writers commented that “an interesting comparison was made by the fans in the speed of French, the local lad, and Archdeacon of the White Sox, who is reputed to be the fastest man to break into big league baseball this year. The visiting star was a sensation in the International League, and yesterday he showed flashes of his real speed by twice beating out bunts and once reaching first on a fielder’s choice when it seemed certain a double play would result. Even with his great speed Archdeacon did not look any better than French, and the fans were still divided in their opinions when they went out of the park discussing the latest victory of the awakened Mackmen.”¹⁰

One person who wasn’t divided about which man was faster was Athletics’ coach Danny Murphy. “That’s the fastest bird in the business” Murphy observed about Walter French, adding “Give that boy a couple of weeks more to get into condition and I’ll pick him to beat anybody in either league getting down to first base. He’s the fastest man on that stretch that I ever saw, and I’ve been looking them over for a quarter of a century.”¹¹ The Athletics’ 1923 season mercifully ended with a 9–7 victory over the New York Yankees on October 7. The A’s finished the season in sixth place, with a record of 69–81–01.

A few days later Walter signed on to play football for the first of three different professional teams for whom he would compete in 1923. At this point the National Football League was still in its infancy and most of the professional teams existed independent of the new league. Without a single authority to govern their actions, players would move from team to team, offering their services to the highest bidder, and Walter was no different.

On Sunday, October 14, Walter appeared in a game for the independent Wilkes-Barre (PA) Panthers against the Tacony Athletic Club. The Panthers won easily by a score of 21–0. Walter scored one touchdown and kicked two extra points. A few days later it was announced that he had also signed with the Frankford Yellow Jackets. The 1923 season would be the Yellow Jackets’ final one as an independent team. They would join the National Football League in 1924. Walter’s first game with the Yellow Jackets was against the New Haven Independents, the team billed as the New England Champions. In this game, won by the Yellowjackets by a score of 25–0, Walter scored two touchdowns and kicked two extra points. Teaming up with Walter on the Yellow Jackets were the Stein brothers Herb and Russ. Russ Stein had played his college football at Washington and Jefferson University in Pennsylvania, and Herb played for “Pop” Warner at the University of Pittsburgh. In 1921 the Steins became the first brothers to be named by Walter Camp as first team All-Americans.

A week later he appeared once again for the Yellow Jackets in a game that finished in a scoreless tie against the Gilberton Catamounts. Like many of the other small towns with professional football teams, Gilberton was located in the coal mining region of Pennsylvania, and was led by Fritz Pollard, who along with Paul Robeson, was one of only two Black men to have been named All-American to that point in time, for his work at Brown University.

On November 11 Walter played quarterback and threw for two touchdowns for Wilkes-Barre in a 26–0 win over Scranton. The next day he went up against Gilberton again, this time for Frankford and kicked the winning 40-yard field goal in a 3–0 victory.

Only six days after defeating Gilberton, he signed on to play for them against the Pottsville Maroons, another coal region team. This turn of events now teamed up Walter French with player-coach Fritz Pollard as the two former All-Americans shared the same backfield. Back in October the Maroons had defeated the Catamounts by a score of 27–0. With Pollard and French leading the way however, the Catamounts turned the tables on the Maroons and came away with a hard fought 16–7 victory. The following week he was back playing quarterback for Wilkes-Barre when they defeated the Avoca Buffaloes on Thanksgiving Day by a score of 20–0. It was while playing in this game for Wilkes-Barre that he first made the acquaintance of Tony Latone.

Born in the coal mining region, Latone left school to work in the coal mines at the age of 11 to support his mother and five siblings, after the death of his father. While working in the mines often destroyed men physically, the opposite seemed to be true for Tony. Years of pushing and pulling heavy coal cars had built him into an imposing physical specimen. In his playing days he was 5'11" tall and weighed 195 pounds and had the build of a quintessential fullback. In the game against Avoca he scored two touchdowns including a 50-yard return of an intercepted pass.

In January of 1924, Walter proposed to Beth and their engagement was announced. The two were married in Birmingham, Alabama on February 28, 1924, at the home of the bride’s parents. It was a small service which took place on a weekday afternoon. Only Walter’s mother and one of his aunts attended from his side of the family. After a brief honeymoon in Florida they rushed back to Alabama so Walter could join the Athletics at their spring training facility in Montgomery.

After a small wedding at the home of the bride’s parents on February 28, 1924, the couple spent a brief honeymoon in Florida before Walter had to rush back to Alabama for Spring Training. (Courtesy of French Family)

Walter played well during spring training and there was some speculation that he might make the major league roster. In December of 1923, Connie Mack had released one of the team’s regular outfielders, a player by the name of Clarence “Tilly” Walker, when it became evident that his best days were behind him. Sportswriters covering the A’s listed Walter French as a likely addition to the big-league roster if Mack decided to carry an additional outfielder. In the end Mack decided that Walter would benefit more from another season in the minors than by sitting on the bench behind Bill Lamar, Frank Welch, Bing Miller, and future Hall of Famer Al Simmons playing in his first major league season. Therefore, at the conclusion of spring training, Walter was assigned to the Shreveport Gassers of the Texas League, which not coincidently, was the team that Simmons had played for in 1923.

The promotion of Simmons to the Athletics was a big concern for the Shreveport fans and writers covering the team. According to the Houston Post “the big hole in the Gasser line-up will be in left field, the berth left vacant by Al Simmons, the $50,000 beauty, now with the Philadelphia Athletics. It is this loss that the Gassers must strive to overcome and many doubt they can do it. Walter French is being asked to fill that berth and he faces a hard task.”¹² Aside from the fact that both men hit with an unorthodox batting style they had very little in common. Simmons was a slugger who specialized in the long ball and driving in runs, while Walter’s strength was his speed and his ability to reach base by simply putting the ball in play, stealing bases and scoring, rather than driving in, runs.

Managing the Shreveport club was former A’s player and Connie Mack favorite, Ira Thomas. Like his mentor, Thomas not only managed the Gassers but he had an ownership interest in the team as well, so when they started the season with seven straight losses, he was not inclined to show much patience. By the end of April, Thomas was threatening wholesale changes to the team. If things didn’t improve quickly, Thomas was planning on bringing up players from the lower minors and demoting some of the team’s veteran players. The one exception was Walter French, whose play Thomas felt was getting better each game. By the end of the month of April and with their fortunes not improving many critics were echoing the sentiment expressed by the Houston Post writing “the Shreveport club, as it is at present constituted, is a hopeless tailender” adding that the team had a “trio of good outfielders and hitters in Walter French, Donaldson and Sullivan.”¹³

In May, instead of the promised shakeup to the team, changes were made to the management. Ira Thomas stepped down as the on the field manager to become the team’s president. He was replaced by the team’s shortstop Billy Orr. Orr worked the team hard and did everything in his power to reverse the team’s fortunes, but they continued to lose.

As happens when teams continue to lose, the players began to get on each other’s nerves and disputes between players began to surface. One such incident in July involved Walter French.

In the fifth inning, in a game against the Fort Worth Panthers, with Jack Calvo on second and Art Phelen on first, Panther Ziggy Sears lined a sharp single into right field and assuming that Phelan would stop at third base, Walter threw the ball to second. Phelan did not stop at third base however and came around and scored. When Walter got back to the dugout after the inning ended, he was confronted by Gassers catcher Ray “Peaches” Graham who told Walter to “keep your head up.” By his comment did Graham mean for Walter to not think twice about the play and that he would get them the next time or did he mean that Walter had made a poor decision in throwing to second instead of home? Whatever his meaning, Walter did not take the comment well.

He may have reacted differently if Graham had been a seasoned and proven professional ballplayer but he was a journeyman player at best, who had played 41 games over two seasons in the major leagues before joining the Gassers for the 1924 season. He had a lifetime batting average of .188. Words were passed between the two men and as some of their teammates tried to intervene Graham threw a punch at Walter and missed. He would not get a second chance. Walter threw one punch which landed flush on Graham’s face and drove his head against a post in the dugout. A cut was opened over Graham’s right eye that required stitches to close. Billy Orr, determining that Walter had been the aggressor in the dust up, suspended him indefinitely. However, given the fact that at this point in the season, Walter French was far and away the best player on the Gassers and near the top of the league in batting and base stealing, Orr, despite his displeasure, could not keep him out of the lineup for long and in a few days, he was back playing the outfield and hitting leadoff.

By August 24 Walter’s batting average, at .361, was tops in the league and he was the leading base stealer as well. He had received word that he would be joining the Athletics for the last few weeks of the season as he had in 1923 but in his last game with the Gassers before joining the big-league team, he tore a ligament in his leg attempting to steal home. He had to be carried from the field and was forced to use crutches to get around. That would be the end of his baseball season.

Walter had put together another great minor league season in 1924 playing for Shreveport. It was the Gassers last year of existence in the Texas League. The team set a Texas League record for the most losses in one season, finishing with a record of 54 wins and 100 losses. Walter French was the one bright spot on an otherwise disastrous season finishing with 184 hits including 34 doubles and 11 triples.

With his 1924 baseball season over, Walter and Beth decided to move back to Moorestown and take up residence. They were confident that after two very successful minor league seasons that he would be on the Athletics in 1925. He finally had the opportunity to bring his bride home to Moorestown to meet his friends and family. His brothers teased Beth about her southern accent until finally their mother Belzora, reminding them that she too was from Alabama, told them to knock it off.

Although back in the late summer he expressed an interest in playing football once again for Wilkes-Barre in the fall of 1924, that plan had to be abandoned when he was injured at the end of the baseball season. He began looking for employment opportunities near to where he and Beth had settled in Moorestown. On September 3 it was announced that he had been hired by the Riverside Athletic Association, in Riverside New Jersey to be the head coach of the Riverside “Big Green” professional football team. Riverside played in a loosely organized league that was made up of teams from the Southern part of New Jersey. Towns such as Collingswood, Millville, Camden, and Atlantic City, in addition to Riverside, all had entries in the league. They also scheduled games against other professional teams from Pennsylvania, New York, and the northern part of New Jersey. The scheduled for Riverside, according to one newspaper was “no basket of plums” and included games against teams such as the Thomas Athletic Club of Bethlehem, PA and Stapleton, Long Island, New York and “the best teams that can be induced to come to Riverside.”¹⁴ A rough and tumble style was played by the teams in the league and the games were usually low scoring. The game between the Riverside and the Thomas A.C. played on October 19, 1924, resulted in a 3–0 win for the “Big Green” with most of the yards gained by the winning team coming as the result of penalties leveled against the Thomas team for unnecessary roughness. One newspaper covering the game reported that the Thomas tactics “were bordering on deliberate attempts to injure the opposing players.”¹⁵

As the season progressed Walter French’s team was struggling. Injuries had hit the team hard and he was at a loss as to how to make them improve. He was even thinking about inserting himself into the lineup even though he was still recovering from the leg injury he sustained playing for Shreveport. Such a move would have been very risky for him.

During this period he was also earning a few extra dollars by refereeing high school and college football games in South Jersey and the Philadelphia area. One day, while refereeing a game involving Moorestown High School, for whom his younger brother Cooper was the star, Walter collided with a player and felt some pain in his injured leg. Although it did not result in a setback in his recovery, the close call made him abandon any plans to play football for the remainder of 1924.

Unable to ever get above .500, the season for Riverside mercifully came to an end on Thanksgiving Day with a loss to Collingswood by a score of 23–6.

The Athletics would have a new spring training home in 1925. Although he had been generally happy in Montgomery, Mack was concerned about the lack of major league opponents in the area which made it difficult to schedule practice games. He began looking around for a new location. It was about this time that the business leaders in Fort Myers, located on the west coast of Florida, began looking for a way to elevate the community’s profile. Connie Mack biographer Norman L. Macht wrote: “Led by energetic go-getter Richard Q. Richards, owner of the Royal Palm Pharmacy, the Kiwanis Club set out to put Fort Myers on the tourist map. If they could entice a major league team to train there, the writers’ dispatches would give them publicity to draw the sporting crowd.”¹⁶

Richards visited Connie Mack in Philadelphia late in 1923 to make his case. Mack told him that he was bound to Montgomery for one additional season but in January of 1924 he paid an unannounced visit to Fort Myers. After spending a few days in Fort Myers, and happy with what he saw, Mack met with the Kiwanis board of directors. “Mack expressed his pleasure at everything he had seen and set out his terms: a suitable field and grandstand, a cash guarantee for exhibition games, railroad fare for away games. All gate receipts, ads, scorecards would be handled by the city. The Athletics would pay their own hotel expenses.”¹⁷ Connie Mack signed a contract which committed the A’s to Fort Myers for the next 10 years and on February 22, 1925, Walter French, anxious to get back on the field, reported there for spring training, one week ahead of what was required of him.

As the sportswriters were submitting their annual “outlook” pieces for the 1925 season three teams were rated as the most likely to win the pennant by the prognosticators: the Washington Senators, having added depth to a pitching staff that was good enough in 1924 for them to win the World Series were considered the favorite, the New York Yankees, who also had strengthened their team from the previous season, and the Detroit Tigers who would benefit by having hard throwing pitcher Dutch Leonard as part of their rotation for the entire season. The Athletics were considered at best a “take a chance” bet in the American League.

Connie Mack, however, was more optimistic about his team’s chances. The biggest move made by the Athletics during the offseason was the acquisition of a 28-year-old catcher by the name of Mickey Cochrane. The Bridgewater, MA native, and Boston University star was playing for Portland in the Pacific Coast League and had been on Connie Mack’s radar for months. Cochrane, who was described as a “star performer in all departments” was both an outstanding hitter and defensive catcher. In exchange for Cochrane, Mack gave up five players and $50,000 in cash.

In addition to Cochrane, Connie Mack also purchased a hard throwing left-handed pitcher from the Baltimore Orioles, then a minor league team, by the name of Robert Moses Grove for $100,600. It was said that the extra $600 was to surpass the price the Yankees paid to the Red Sox for Babe Ruth. Although “Lefty” Grove would have an up and down season in 1925, like Cochrane, he would wind up in the baseball Hall of Fame and be considered one of the best pitchers of all time.

Although he left the door open to other trades and moves before the start of the season, Connie was confident that his team, with the additions of Cochrane and Grove was good enough to make a run at the American League pennant in 1925. Along with Lefty Grove, the pitching staff was anchored by lefthander Rube Walberg and righthander Eddie Rommel. On the infield he had three solid players returning in Max Bishop, Chip Galloway, and Jimmy Dykes. The regular outfielders looked to be Bill Lamar, Al Simmons, and Bing Miller, with Frank Welch, Bill Bagwell, and Walter French in reserve.

After the incident at the Moorestown High School football game, where he nearly re-injured his ailing leg, Walter took great care to “nurse” his injury with an eye toward being ready to compete for a spot on the A’s major league roster. The Philadelphia Inquirer observed that he “is to be seriously considered. The former all-around athlete of West Point, with enough minor league schooling, is here to make the grade … he looks the well-balanced ball player, fast, clever fielder, and timely hitter.” The Inquirer went on to compare him to future Hall of Famer Wee Willie Keeler, a comparison that Connie Mack would make from time to time as well. “He never knocked them a mile but he hit them ‘where they ain’t’. French may not be a Keeler but he has Willie’s style somewhat, and he pleases Mack.”¹⁸

The first action the players saw came on March 6 when an intrasquad game pitted the assumed first team against the second team, or the Yanigans as they were called. In the 1920s the term “Yanigans” was used throughout baseball to describe a team’s second string and rookies. The exact origin of the term is a matter of conjecture but some baseball historians believe that the name was borrowed from a player by the name of Coy Yanigan, who played first base for teams in the Hartford, CT area in the 1890s. He was an outstanding player even though he played with an artificial leg.

The Athletic “Yanigans” on this day beat the “regulars” by a score of 7 to 6. Cochrane was the big star of the game delivering a clutch triple in the sixth inning. Walter French had one hit and scored one run. Although his team won, Lefty Grove gave up five runs and nine hits in his first action of the season.

The next day the Athletics played a team made up of college players and sponsored by a company known as the Everglades Construction Co. As expected, the A’s easily won the game by a score of 36 to 0. The Athletics pounded out 31 hits, including a “flock of doubles and triples” but just one home run which was hit by Walter French.

A few days later the “Yanigans” and the “Regulars” squared off once more with the same result as the second team came away with an 8–2 win. In this game Walter had one hit, a double, in two official at-bats and scored one run. He was also singled out for his fine play in the field as he used his speed on three occasions to rob the first-string players of extra base hits. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that “three times he snipped off varsity bids for base hits with the ease of a champion.” Later adding that he had “speed and plenty of it.”¹⁹

On March 30, the first wave of nine players who had made the big league roster arrived at Shibe Park, under the watchful eye of the former Shreveport Gassers manager Ira Thomas, now a coach with the Athletics. By the end of 1925’s spring training, Walter had earned a spot on the big-league club and was one of the nine early arrivals. He was paid $3,000 for the season and was on the bench when the Athletics began their annual campaign for the American League pennant.

The Philadelphia Athletics, in 1925, were coming off another of a long line of rough seasons. The team finished the 1924 season with a record of 71–81 which landed them in fifth place some 20 games behind the pennant winning Washington Senators. To make matters worse it was their tenth consecutive losing season. The team’s poor performance also placed them at the bottom of the league in terms of attendance as well.

In 1909, the Athletics, having outgrown Columbia Park, moved to a new facility named after the team’s owner Ben Shibe. Shibe Park was the first baseball stadium built completely with concrete and steel and was considered the finest in all of baseball. Prior to the 1925 season alterations were made to Shibe Park. In his book Lost Ballparks, Lawrence Ritter wrote that the 1925 alterations gave “the stadium the basic appearance that would identify it for the rest of its days … all singled-decked stands were double-decked and covered, so that the ballpark now consisted of roof double-decked grandstand enclosing the entire playing field except for right field. After the renovations of 1925, the park’s dimensions shrank to 334 feet from home plate down the left field line, 468 feet to center field and 331 feet down the right-field line.”²⁰

The A’s opened the 1925 season at home against the Boston Red Sox with a 9–8 victory. Walter was inserted into the game as a pinch hitter and singled in his only at bat. The A’s won three of the four games with the Red Sox and split a two-game set with the Washington Senators. By the time he made his second plate appearance, again as a pinch hitter, on May 4, in a win over the New York Yankees, the A’s were riding high with a record of 11–4. The team then went on a run that saw them win 10 of their next 11 games. Not wanting to mess with his team during a hot streak, Connie Mack stuck with his set lineup for the next two weeks. Finally on May 21 Walter pinch hit and scored a run in a blowout 20–4 win over the St. Louis Browns. At this point in the season the A’s were 22–7 but only in first place by two games over the defending World Series champion Senators. A few days later Walter singled and scored a run in a loss to the Senators. On May 30, he was put into the game as a pinch runner and scored a run.

In the month of June, Walter was sent to the plate as a pinch hitter on eight occasions and he had three hits and came around and scored twice. He also appeared in five games as a pinch runner. One of those games, played on June 15th against the Cleveland Indians, he scored ahead of Al Simmons who had homered to bring the Athletics all the way back from a 15–4 deficit.

By the end of June, the American League pennant race was already down to two teams, the Athletics, and the Senators. The Chicago White Sox were sitting in third place 7.5 games behind the A’s, who had dropped back to second after losing three of four games to the Senators. The rest of the American League was playing under .500 as the first half of the season ended on June 30.

It was on this day that Walter French would be introduced to the great Senator pitcher Walter Johnson, when he came to bat against the man Grantland Rice nicknamed “The Big Train.”

Walter Johnson’s plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame reads: “Conceded to be the fastest ball pitcher in the history of the game. Won 414 games with a losing team behind him most years. Holder of strikeout and shutout records.” His 414 victories is third all-time after Cy Young and Pud Galin and his career earned run average of 2.17 is twelfth all-time. His 3,509 career strikeouts was a record that stood for more than 50 years. Once, on Labor Day weekend in 1908, his second year in the big leagues, Johnson started and completed all three games against the Yankees on consecutive days, shutting them out each time giving up six, four, and two hits respectively. The great Ty Cobb once said about Johnson that his fastball “looked about the size of a watermelon seed and it hissed at you as it passed.”

By 1925 Johnson was in his twentieth season with the Senators, but by no means over the hill. He finished the 1924 season with a record of 23–7, an earned run average of 2.72 and led his team to its first World Series title. By the time the 1925 season was complete he would post a record of 20–7 and an earned run average of 3.07.

Walter French came to bat against Johnson in the ninth inning as a pinch hitter. The Senators were winning the game by a score of 6–0. To that point in the game Johnson had only given up one hit. Johnson only had one no-hitter in his illustrious career. Earlier in the game the A’s Chip Galloway, got what was initially deemed to be a hit but the official scorer later admitted that upon further reflection he was prepared to change it to an error. Walter French made the scorer’s job easier for him when he lined a sharp grounder into the hole between shortstop and third base. Roger Peckinpaugh, the Senators’ shortstop went hard to his right but could not make a play on the ball and it scooted into left field for a clean single.

Walter French would come to bat 20 more times against “The Big Train” before Johnson retired at the end of the 1927 season. Most American League hitters were happy to see Johnson retire, but as we shall learn, Walter French was not one of them.

Following the series with the Senators the A’s went into a slump and lost six of their next nine games and in the process fell 3.5 games behind their chief rival. However, they followed that up by going 8–2 on a 10-game road trip. Throughout that period Walter French emerged as Connie Mack’s most reliable pinch hitter. He had six hits and two sacrifices in 10 pinch hit appearances in the month of July and entered the month of August hitting an even .500. Nationally syndicated sportswriter Billy Evans observed “in the difficult job of pinch-hitting French had a batting streak from June 30 to July 25 that was decidedly out of the ordinary. In that period he was used ten times. He responded with six hits and two sacrifices … thus he delivered the way Connie Mack would have him, with six hits and two sacrifices as per instructions. Average .750.”²¹

By August 8 the teams had each played 100 games of the season and still only 1.5 games separated the first place Athletics from the Senators. Still clinging to their slim lead on August 15, the bottom fell out of the A’s season when they lost 17 of their next 19 games. Suddenly, after holding on to first place for all but a few days of the summer, they found themselves a full eight games out of first place behind the Senators. Throughout the remainder of August and the first half of September, Walter continued to be used exclusively in the role of a pinch hitter, and although he cooled off from his hottest period he was still coming through on a regular basis and was the league’s leading pinch hitter, including two pinch hit plate appearances against Walter Johnson which resulted in a base on balls in a game on September 1 and a single in a game on September 7.

The month of August was special for Walter and his wife as Beth gave birth to their first daughter Mary Francis. To help celebrate, Walter’s friends from Moorestown, in attendance at a game at Shibe Park on September 14 against the Yankees, made a presentation before the game. The New York Times reported that “New Jersey friends of Walter French, Athletic utility outfielder and one-time West Point football star, presented him with a baby carriage and a chest of silver before the game. The vehicle will be pressed into service at once as conveyance for Walter’s month-old child.”²²

The A’s fall from contention provided Walter with an opportunity to prove to Connie Mack what he could do if used on a regular basis and so on September 16 he was inserted into the starting lineup in the first game of a double header against the Chicago White Sox. He was playing right field and batting fifth in the lineup behind Al Simmons.

On the mound for the White Sox that day was Ted Lyons. Lyons was a tough right-handed pitcher who had a 21-year major league career, all with the White Sox. He won 20 games on three different occasions. Lyons had come up to the White Sox in 1923 and in his first full season in 1924 he went 12–11. He would finish the 1925 season with a record of 21–11 and an earned run average of 3.26. Walter responded to this opportunity by getting three hits in four at bats in a 4–1 win for the Athletics. Connie Mack kept the same lineup in the second game of the double header and Walter once again responded with one hit in four at bats.

Mack continued to start Walter in right field in every game for the remainder of the season and he hit safely in 14 of the final 16 games of 1925. On September 17 he went one for four with two runs batted in, the following day he went one for three and knocked in two more runs in the first game of a double header. In the second game he went one for three again and knocked in his fifth run in two days. On and on he went. It must have seemed to him like he was back at West Point. He went three for five on September 21 with a run batted in and two runs scored. In the final two games of the season against the Yankees, Walter French collected five hits in seven official at bats and drove in five runs.

The Athletics finished the season in second place in the American League with a record of 88–63 and eight games behind the pennant winning Washington Senators. Although he was disappointed in not winning the pennant, Connie Mack had to be pleased with the fact that even in such an up and down season the Philadelphia fans had come out and supported the team. The Athletics drew over 800,000 fans in 1925 which was tops in the American League.

For Walter French the 1925 season must have seemed like a turning point in his big-league career. His streak at the end of the season raised his batting average to .370 and he was statistically the best pinch hitter in the American League. He was also able to demonstrate to his manager that he could be a major contributor if inserted into the lineup as one of the team’s regular outfielders.

Shortly after the season concluded, Billy Evans reported that “Connie Mack in summing up his plans for the coming season, has made a definite announcement that French is his choice for right field.”²³

Walter French in Spring Training with the Philadelphia Athletics. (ACME Wire Photo, March 12, 1928, courtesy of National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum)