In his work, author Lenny Wagner explores the life of French, a Moorestown native whose athletic career included four sports.
Lenny Wagner, president of the Historical Society of Moorestown, spoke about his recently released book “Playing With the Best: One Man’s Journey Through the Golden Age of Sports,” at the Moorestown library on Oct. 7. The event was part of the historical society’s “New Jersey History Speaks” lecture series.
“Everybody does ask me where I came up with the idea,” Wagner said. “One day – I think it was 2009 – Stephanie (Herz, trustee of the historical society) was working at the library at the historical society in her office and she held up this card and she said, ‘Hey Lenny, here’s something you might be interested in.’ And it was one of the great understatements of all time.
“It was a Walter French baseball card.”
French was born in Moorestown in 1899 and according to Wagner, he might have been the best but least known all-around athlete to emerge from the decade of the 1920s, referred to as the golden age of sports. He played against some of the great athletes of that time, including Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and others who would wind up in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
“I learned a lot about the history of sports that I thought I knew but didn’t,” Wagner acknowledged. “In the 50-some odd years they were in Philadelphia, the Athletics … never did they have the word Philadelphia on their uniforms.”
French played with the Athletics in 1929, when they beat the Chicago Cubs in five games to win the World Series. But before that, in 1925, French started for the Pottsville Maroons in their win over the Chicago Cardinals. Wagner’s work describes how that win – believed to be the only baseball championship title stripped by a league office decision – is still being argued about today.
“The other question I get all the time is, ‘Why were the 1920s called the golden age of sports?’” Wagner explained. “There were three primary reasons why the 1920s became the golden age of sports. Number one, the economy was doing well. World War I had just ended, and the economy was humming along …
“The second thing was that … prior to the 1920s, the two most popular sports were college football and baseball, but in the ’20s, every sport became popular,” he added. “In every sport, there was a star player that drove the popularity of that sport … Reason three is that as sports became more popular, the newspapers of the day that had previously assigned young reporters to cover sports were starting to have some of their more accomplished writers covering sports.”
But French wasn’t just a star baseball player. At Moorestown High School, he excelled in football, baseball, basketball and track. According to Wagner, he joined his older brother William to play for the Moorestown Collegians, a football team made up of local boys who had “performed in their own little way with school and town teams, mingled with those who were receiving the benefit of college coaching.”
French was also the star of the Army’s football team and was named All-American in 1920. With that, he went up against the likes of Notre Dame’s George “the Gipper” Gipp, Curly Lambeau and George Halas.
“One of the things that I learned about Walter French is that he was a very humble person,” Wagner noted. “He was not the kind of person who would spend time talking about what things were like … He didn’t do that, and that’s an indication of how he was …”
Wagner has curated several of the historical society’s exhibits, including Sports Legends of Moorestown. It was during preparation for that exhibit that Wagner first became acquainted with French. For more information on the author or “Playing With the Best: One Man’s Journey Through the Golden Age of Sports,” visit www.playingwiththebest.com.
