CHAPTER 11

Coach French

When Walter French stepped foot back on the campus of the United States Military Academy as the school’s new varsity baseball coach and coach of Army’s plebe football team, in early September of 1936, it marked almost 14 years to the day from when he was discharged by the Academic Board for deficiencies in his studies. It had to have been with more than a little satisfaction that he made his return. He was taking over a team that had been 4–9 in 1936 under “Moose” McCormick, including a painful 11–10 loss to Navy.

The Howitzer, the student yearbook, reported that “Walter French returned to the Academy, this time as the head coach of baseball.”¹ Shortly after arriving back on campus, Walter began to institute a number of changes aimed at improving the team’s fortunes in the upcoming season. In addition to making some changes to the team’s lineup, he had two batting cages installed in the gymnasium. Previously baseball practice had been held in Riding Hall in the winter months, but starting with the 1937 season, the new batting cages in the gymnasium were large enough to permit batting practice in the cold months before the season. The extra practice allowed the team to get off to a fast start.

Although the season started in early April, bad weather kept the team from playing a home game until May 1. The team’s first opponent was Yale and Army won the game easily by a score of 8–3. A week later the team traveled to New Jersey to take on a tough Princeton squad who they defeated in a pitcher’s duel by a score of 1–0. On the mound for West Point was a pitcher that Coach French would lean heavily on throughout the 1937 and 1938 seasons by the name of Andy Lipscomb. Lipscomb pitched a nine-inning, one-hitter to secure the win for Army.

The team followed up the Princeton win with a victory over Amherst by a score of 5–1. After losing to Penn State 7–3, they then ran off wins over Syracuse, Swarthmore, Bucknell, NYU before dropping their second game of the season against Fordham. Three days after defeating Union the team squared off against Navy in the biggest game of the year.

The Army–Navy rivalry in baseball was every bit as heated as it was in football. The two schools first began playing baseball against one another in 1901 and coming into the 1937 game Army led the series 17–12. No games were played in 1917 and 1918 due to World War I and after the series resumed in 1919, Navy had won nine of the last 14 games.

Nearly 14 years to the day from when he was expelled from West Point for academic reasons, Walter French returned to the school as its varsity baseball coach, May 15, 1939. (Courtesy of National Baseball Hall of Fame, and Museum)

Army jumped off to a quick 3–0 lead in Walter’s first Navy game as the Army coach behind the strong pitching of Tom Davis. Davis retired all nine men he faced in the first three innings. Davis held Navy scoreless until the sixth inning when Navy’s Ed Anderson hit a three-run home run to tie the score. Sensing that Davis was tiring Walter brought in Andy Lipscomb to pitch the seventh inning and he retired Navy easily in the top of the seventh inning. In the bottom of the seventh, led by Bob Griffin’s second home run of the game, Army pushed across three runs. They would tack on two more in the eighth inning while Lipscomb was closing out the game. The final score was 8–3. Lipscomb had only given up one hit in the final three innings.

In the annual report of the Army Athletic Association it was noted that “in reviewing the season, much credit must be given to Walter E. French (ex-1924) for his excellent coaching and handling of the team.”²

With his two star pitchers, Lipscomb and Davis, returning for the 1938 season, hopes for another good year were high. After being upset 4–2 by Williams in the first game of the season the team won nine of their next 11 games including a big win over Penn State to avenge their loss in 1937.

From the earliest days of their baseball programs, both Army and Navy tried to hire head coaches who had Major League experience and one story line leading up to the 1938 Army–Navy game involved the head coaches for the respective teams. After Navy baseball coach Marty Karow left the school to accept a position at Texas A&M, Navy hired Walter’s old teammate from the Philadelphia Athletics, second baseman Max Bishop. Bishop was the same age as Walter and was from Waynesboro, PA. The two men had played together for the better part of six seasons, including the championship run of 1929. Bishop had played his last big-league game for the Boston Red Sox in 1935. After a few stops in the minor leagues and a stint as a scout, the Red Sox made him the manager of their Pocomoke City team in the Eastern Shore League. He jumped at the chance to take the Navy job, a position that he would hold for the next 25 years.

One of the umpires for the game was Ed Rommel, who also had been a teammate of both Walter French and Max Bishop for six years while he pitched for the Philadelphia Athletics. His best years were from 1922 through 1925 in which he averaged 21 wins per season. He pitched in game four of the 1929 World Series in which the A’s came back from being down 8–0.

The three former teammates posed for a photograph together as the coaches presented their lineup cards.

The starting pitchers for the 1938 Army–Navy game were Jerry Bruckel for Navy and Tom Davis for Army. Army got off to a fast start when second baseman Jim Durbin led off the game with a single. In a very uncharacteristic mental error, Bruckel never looked over to first base to check on Durbin, who immediately broke for second and stole the base easily. Next up was centerfielder Al Weinnig, who hit a deep fly ball which advanced Durbin to third. Bob Kasper, the Army catcher, singled to centerfield scoring the game’s first run. Bruckel remained calm and got the next two batters out, limiting the damage. That would be Army’s only run of the game. Navy meanwhile recorded nine hits off of three different Army pitchers which when combined with six Army errors resulted in an easy 6–1 win for Navy.

The 1939 season was shaping up to be an exciting one for Army although the team was described as “inexperienced.” The biggest loss to graduation was Andy Lipscomb, the team’s best pitcher from the previous season. This left Tom Davis as the team ace.

The schedule had them playing 16 games, including their annual exhibition game against the New York Giants which took place on April 18 at West Point. Managing the Giants was future Hall of Famer Bill Terry. Terry played 14 seasons with the Giants and finished his career with a .341 lifetime batting average. In 1930 he hit .401. The New York Daily News reported that “Terry, fearful of the cold wind which whipped across the Plains, refused to take a chance with a regular hurler and permitted Jack Tansey, former Holy Cross moundsman, to pitch the complete game. He held the Cadets to five hits.”³

Tom Davis started the game for Army and gave up four hits but only one run in his three innings of work. In the bottom of the fifth inning however, the “hybrid team of first- and second-string Giant players” went to work. Led my “Mercury” Myatt’s double, the only extra base hit of the game, the Giants scored three runs to take a 4–2 lead. At this point the skies opened up and a steady rain began to fall and the game was called.⁴

The team’s first collegiate opponent was the University of Vermont, who fell to the Cadets by a score of 7–1. This was followed by a loss to Lafayette in a tight 4–3 game. From that point on the team defeated Princeton, Rutgers, Georgetown, Syracuse, and Williams. Their losses came to Columbia, Duke, Yale, Penn, and Fordham.

On May 27, Walter French participated in his third Army–Navy game as the head coach of baseball. Although Walter had only played in two Army–Navy games as a cadet he clearly understood the importance beating Navy represented at West Point. In his first two seasons as coach, his teams had one win and one loss. Like everyone who has ever coached any sport at Army before him or since, he did not want to have a losing record against Navy. As the Howitzer observed, a victory over Navy “always marks the season as a success—no matter what has gone before.”⁵

The game was played at West Point in front of 5,000 fans. Walter called on his ace Tom Davis to start the game for Army. The game was scoreless until the fourth inning when Navy scored one run but Davis, who gave up only six hits and one walk, shut the Middies out for the remainder of the game. In the meantime, Army scored two runs in their half of the fifth inning plus one in the seventh and eighth. In addition to being the pitching star of the game, Tom Davis, who was playing in his final game at West Point, had three hits in four trips to the plate, including a double which drove in one of Army’s four runs.

Before the curtain would fall on the 1939 season there was one more game to be played. A post-season game against Colgate, to be held at Cooperstown, New York to commemorate what was believed to be the 100th anniversary of baseball’s invention by Abner Doubleday, who was a West Point cadet when he supposedly “devised the game” on a farmer’s field in 1839.

In 1905, a commission was formed, headed up by National League President Abraham Mills to determine the origin of the game of baseball. Two years later the Mills Commission issued their findings which credited Doubleday with creating the game. Since that time many researchers have debunked the notion that Doubleday, who became an Army Officer and was second in command at Fort Sumter at the start of the Civil War, was the inventor of the national pastime. It has been noted that in all his writings and correspondence he never once mentioned baseball or any role he played in the game’s development. However, in 1939 the report of the Mills Commission was considered to be the definitive word on the subject.

Perfect weather and a holiday weekend brought a huge crowd to Doubleday Field in Cooperstown. The Binghamton Press reported that “some 7,500 persons … nearly filled the stadium surrounding the ‘dream diamond’ where baseball was first played 100 years ago.” It was said to be the largest crowd to ever see a game in that part of New York. Army won the game easily by a score of 5–1. In summing up the game, the Binghamton Press wrote: “Yesterday belonged to the soldiers no matter how you look at it. Besides actually being Army Day, as well as Memorial Day, West Point honored a distinguished graduate Major General Abner Doubleday, creator of baseball, while the Cadet nine paid its own tribute by shelling Colgate.”⁶

Before the game there was a ceremony and Major R. Ernest Dupuy, public relations officer at West Point, presented a painting of Doubleday to the National Museum and Hall of Fame scheduled to open in a few weeks. “Since Major General Doubleday was a cadet when he invented baseball, West Point is very proud to participate in this tribute,”⁷ Dupuy said.

Once again, the Howitzer praised the job done by Walter French: “It would be fitting to close with a word about our fine coach Wally French. Wally was, some years back, heralded as the finest athlete to ever wear the Cadet grey. Unfortunately, yearling math proved a bit too complex and mysterious and Wally found himself a rookie with the Athletics. Professional ball he gave up to return to West Point as head baseball coach and coach-of-all-trades for the A.A.A. Year-after-year French turns out a team of which Army can be proud, and it is to him more than anyone else that we should give our thanks for our fine baseball record.”⁸

In looking forward to the 1940 season Walter was unsure of what to expect from his team. They had been hit hard by graduation and would be a very inexperienced unit. On a positive note West Point teams, in all sports, had always given their utmost. It was true in Walter’s day when he played for Hans Lobert and it was the case with this group as well. Of this Walter was sure.

The team may have hustled but 1940 marked the only losing season that Walter had as the West Point coach, with the team going 5–7. To make matters worse was the fact that the team got off to such a promising start, with three straight wins over Harvard, Princeton, and Brown. But their old nemesis Lafyette handed them their first defeat. That was followed up by losses to Penn State, Duke, and NYU. They also lost to all of their principal rivals Notre Dame, Fordham, and worst of all Navy.

In summing up the 1941 season Howitzer described it as one of “ups and downs with a record of eight victories and six defeats.” The first win came against a team that, aside from Navy, might have been their most bitter baseball rival. Their 2–1 victory over Lafayette marked the first time that they had beaten the Leopards in 10 years. The game could have gone either way. Army scored the winning run following a walk, a passed ball and an error, but after a decade of futility Army was happy to finally get a win. Army then beat Harvard by a score of 7–2 and Amherst 11–5.

After the Amherst game the Army bats went to sleep as it seemed that every player was slumping at the same time. In the next three games against Pittsburg, Princeton, and Brown, all losses, the Cadets were outscored 31 to six. From there the Cadets went 5–3.

The game with Yale proved to be one of the best of the year. Pitching for West Point was Buck Tarver and he was opposed by Joe Wood, Jr. Although this game represented the best pitching performance that the Cadets had all season, Wood got the better of him in a 2–0 Yale victory. Wood struck out 10 batters in pitching a complete game shutout. Yale scored the only run they would need in the first inning and Tarver held them scoreless after that until the eighth inning when they scored an insurance run. Army’s best chance to win the game came in the bottom of the ninth inning when they loaded the bases with one out, but they were unable to push any runs across the plate against Wood.

The Hartford Courant wrote that in “limiting Army to five hits, Joe Wood, Jr., captain of the Yale nine and son of its famous coach blanked Army 2 to 0, here today for the most impressive victory of his collegiate career.”⁹ The famous father referred to was “Smoky” Joe Wood, the same Joe Wood who had been embroiled with Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker in the Dutch Leonard Affair in 1926.

As always, the final game of the season was against Navy. Sporting a record of 14–5, with impressive wins against teams like Notre Dame, Virginia, Penn State, and Duke, Navy was considered a heavy favorite to win this, the thirty-fourth meeting of the two teams, held on May 29. A record turnout for an Army–Navy baseball game, packed the stands at West Point and included Robert Patterson, Under Secretary of War.

Also, on the same day at West Point the track teams from Army and Navy were squaring off in their annual meet. Meanwhile at Annapolis, the two schools’ lacrosse, golf, and tennis teams were going head-to-head. To allow fans at each contest to follow the proceedings at the other events, a system was set up for spectators to be kept informed almost play-by-play. The Associated Press reported that “Periodic reports on the ‘away’ events will be broadcast to fans at the Army–Navy baseball game and track meet … The system will work both ways, since by means of a special direct telephone hookup, Annapolis fans also will be kept posted on what’s happening at West Point.”¹⁰

Cadet Eric De Jonckheere, pitching in his final game got off to a rough start when Navy touched him up for one run in the first inning and a pair in the second. However, he then settled down and shut out the Midshipmen the rest of the way. Meanwhile Army scored two runs in their half of the third inning to pull them to within one run. Navy clung to a 3–2 lead until the bottom of the sixth inning when centerfielder Bill Garland slammed a triple which drove in two runs. De Jonckheere, who finished the game having given up only five hits and striking out eight, held Navy at bay over the last three innings to give Army a 4–3 hard earned victory.

In summing up the season the Howitzer explained that “With a few breaks Wally French might have coached a consistent winner in 1941.The team exhibited power in flashes with some excellent pitching. Practically the same power will be available next year with the exception of Dick Polk, the outgoing captain.”¹¹

Over the summer of 1941 Army hired former Cadet Earl “Red” Blaik, West Point class of 1920, to coach its football team. For the last six years Blaik had been the head coach at Dartmouth. The team got off to a great start winning their first four games and then playing in a college football classic against Notre Dame at Yankee Stadium before a crowd of 76,000 fans. The game ended in a 0–0 tie and the effort moved Army to number 11 in the national rankings. However, in the next two weeks they were beaten by Harvard and then Penn before beating West Virginia to set up their showdown with Navy on November 29. Navy held a record of 6–1 coming into the game and had shutout five of their opponents. Their only loss came against Notre Dame. Even more impressive was the fact that Navy had outscored their opponents 178–28 through that point of the season. The game was played at Philadelphia’s Municipal Stadium in front of 98,924 fans. Although Army fought valiantly Navy came away with a 14–6 win.

At this time Walter French and his wife and two daughters were firmly established in the West Point community. After attending the Army–Navy game he returned home to Highland Falls, New York, a short distance from the West Point campus. He was looking forward to the 1942 baseball season and excited by the team’s prospects with the number of key players he was expecting to return. However, eight days later everything changed.

John S. D. Eisenhower, the son of General and future President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was a plebe at the United States Military Academy on the weekend of December 7, 1941. Reflecting on that time years later he recalled that he was expecting it to be a quiet weekend. Everyone was still “smarting” over the loss to Navy the week before. “We had settled into our rigorous routine, anticipating the Christmas holiday.”¹² On Sunday afternoons the Cadets, even the plebes, were able to enjoy some free time, and Eisenhower’s favorite way to use that time was to catch up on some much-needed sleep. In the middle of the afternoon one of his classmates started shaking him awake. “The Japs are bombing Pearl Harbor,” he shouted. Not believing that the Japanese would attack Hawaii, Eisenhower went back to sleep. “I finished my snooze in the late afternoon, about an hour before the Corps of Cadets was to march off to the evening meal. At that point, I came to realize that Toothman’s alarm had been true; the Japanese Imperial Fleet had actually ventured as far east as Hawaii and had bombed various military installations on Oahu. The naval base at Pearl Harbor and the Army Air Corps’ Hickman Field were the most mentioned.”¹³

He recalled that “every man was alone with his thoughts … This momentous event meant one primary thing to us all: Early Graduation.”¹⁴

On Monday morning, December 8, 1941, a visitor to West Point would not have noticed anything different. Eisenhower recalled that “no visible changes, in fact occurred for months following. The authorities, however, were busy, and as of the next summer, 1942, the four-year curriculum had been shortened to three. The nation gained the services of one additional West Point class.”

“In a way,” Eisenhower recalled “the early morning Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Hickman Field would affect West Point cadets less than it did average American citizens, because the cadets were already in the Army when it occurred; they would not, therefore, be wrenched from home and family. On the other hand they paid dearly in casualties. Five hundred West Pointers died in the Second World War, and a large portion of those who gave their lives came from the ranks of these young men, all of whom graduated in the period between 1942 and 1943.”

At some point in the next few months, feeling compelled to do his part for the war effort, Walter French made the decision that the 1942 season would be his last at West Point until after the war. At 43 years old, he would give up his dream job and re-enlist in the Army so that he could serve his country. He would eventually be commissioned a captain in the Army Air Corps in June but there was still one more baseball season to enjoy before he would be shipped off to his first post.

The 1942 Army baseball team turned out to be one of the school’s best in more than a decade. The team which had several players returning from the 1941 overachieving team, got off to a fast start winning their first four games. Even the annual beating in the exhibition game against the New York Giants gave the Cadets a reason to smile. Despite ultimately losing the game by a score of 12–2, ace Bob Whitlow held the major league team to two runs for the first five innings and “Goose” Guckeyson crushed a fastball “out on Callum balcony” for a home run.

The team ended up with a record of 10 wins against four losses. The game against Syracuse ended in a tie. The signature wins at the end of the season against Yale and Navy by scores of 6–4 and 10–3 respectively were particularly sweet. However, as sweet as those wins were, the war must have been like a cloud hanging over every activity which in normal times would have been celebrated. Due to wartime regulations no members of the public, for example, were allowed to attend the Army–Navy baseball game, which the previous season had attracted thousands of fans. It is not hard to imagine what that last game must have felt like. The Howitzer in its summation of the 1942 season wrote “This team, like all of Army’s will be hit hard by early graduation. Lost to the squad will be Stahle, Whitlow, Rebb, Benson, Prince, Glasgow, Frakes, Benedict, and Mazur. Therefore, the team will have to look to the plebes to fill the vacancies.”¹⁵ They also made note of Walter French’s departure: “Wally French, lost to Army baseball for the duration! It’s a blow to West Point to lose Wally, but our loss is the country’s gain. We know that no matter where he goes, he will look back on the 1942 edition of Army baseball with a glow of pride.”¹⁶

A few weeks after the final game against Navy, it was publicly announced that Walter French was leaving his position as Army baseball coach and joining the Army Air Corps. The Associated Press announced that “Walter E. French, baseball coach at West Point for the last six years, has been appointed captain in the Army Air Force and ordered to report as an instructor in the Officers Candidate School in Miami Beach, Fla.”¹⁷

Out of the view of the media, Walter had submitted a request to the Army Athletic Association for a leave of absence from his position as baseball coach for the duration of the war. His request was denied. The Board’s position was that given that his contract was set to expire on June 30, 1942, that there would be no need to approve his request.

Selected to replace Walter as the Army coach was Paul Amen. Amen had been a multisport star at the University of Nebraska. Like Walter, Amen was hired to be the head coach of the baseball team and as an assistant coach for football. At some point he enlisted in the Army and was made a lieutenant and was preparing to start the season as both the coach and the military officer in charge of baseball. For each team at West Point, where the head coach is a civilian, there is a military officer assigned to the team to, among other things, handle any disciplinary action from a military standpoint. With Amen now an Army officer he could perform both functions.

However, in January of 1943, the Army Athletic Association voted to accept the offer of Brooklyn Dodgers’ owner Branch Rickey which would allow them to use, free of charge, “Mr. Leo Durocher as Advisory Baseball Coach from March 1 to April 15.” A few days later Rickey accompanied by what the Associated Press described as an “expedition of newspapermen” arrived on the West Point campus to make the unexpected announcement. With Durocher on the job, Amen’s role would be that of the military officer in charge of the baseball team, while Durocher would coach the team. On April 15 or sooner if Durocher was drafted, Amen would once again assume both roles with the team.

After playing 17 years in the Major Leagues, Leo Durocher, nicknamed “the Lip” or “Lippy” because of his combative nature, was a successful manager with the Dodgers and Giants. When he finally retired at the age of 67, he ranked fifth, all-time, with 2,008 managerial victories. He was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994. Walter French had played against Durocher in the 1920s when he was a member of the Yankees.