The Historical Society of Moorestown’s President, Lenny Wagner, will speak about his recently released book on the life and times of Walter French called “Playing With the Best: One Man’s Journey Through the Golden Age of Sports” as part of the Historical Society’s New Jersey History Speaks Lecture Series.

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, Moorestown’s own 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.

Born in Moorestown in 1899 Walter was a direct descendent of one of the town’s original founders, Thomas French. 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, George 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 all make appearances in Wagner’s book

The book is being published by Brookline Books, an imprint of Casemate Publishing, and will be available for purchase