The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-01-05
Fred Walker Was Also
 'SMysteriOus Mitchell''
Former New Haven Pitcher Known From Coast to Coast As Eccentric Character, Gained Fame By Play
 ng Under Assumed Name

who has hurled quite Ee!S games for the New Haven baseball club in the past few years. is 9 mighty popular man. Here in New Haven he was liked because of his personality, and most of all, because he could win ball
 .ames. Dave Walsh, in the New York
 Evening Post, has dug up another story regarding the bizarre Fred, as
 3 terms him Here it is:
 Some considerably largess Of agate pc has been squandered In an en- tvor to do justice to the rather hap ard but wholly glamorous career Fred Walker. coach of the New TX Aggies football team for the mo- ent, but it was not until several avs ago the real motive that inspired his mysterious Michen' activities in professional baseball was disclosed. 'fWk!ker's somewhat conspicuous personality came to us as a casual and incidental topic of conversation in an informal gathering of coaches and newspaper men at the Collegiate Association convention on Tuesday, and 1t was then that well known eastern college coach whose identity remains as x, the unknown quantity for reasons obvious and conventional
 unburdened himself of a new angle on | the Walker situation.
 | lit that Walker desire to keep his
 baseball and football activities sep arate and d1stinct by assuming the
 name of Mitchell on the diamond was | nothing more than a freak of fancy, a caprice or natural attempt to be different from the average This story was plausible enough, but that's as far as it went, according +~ +7'a conversa- tionally inclined party of the first part.
 His information in the matter which is said to be absolutely first hand is that Walker. while a member of the Giants, became involved in 8 ruction at a hotel, the upshot of which included various and sundry casual
 ties sustained by the manager and his
 immediate staff and suit for dam
 ages personal and otherwise. witt Walker named as the defendant
 Nothing ever came of the matter. ane
 the affair was soon forgotten b1
 everyone with the excepton of Wal
 ker, who hasn't forgotten it yet. Somewhere in his multitudinou' travels he has absorbed a wholesome respect for what is known as th' l majesty of the law, and for Ssar thereafter could not be persuaded b. } threat. promise or coercion to agail ! invade the limits of the particula state in which the informal catch-as catch-can occurred.
 s'Indeed, even after the Giants hal given him the well-defined tnpres l sion that he had overstayed his vel come, and a one-way ticket to tn l Coast league he still harbored an ab solute conviction that the unfortunat : hotel proprietor was somewhere on hi \ immediate trail.
 l 'eI.aiboring under this impression 3 Nhe Fred Walker the sporting worl r knew became lost in the unknow l somewhere along the route of tn ) trans continental journey; and whe | the limited. pulled up in San Fran ? cisco. an :nconspicuous MT. Mitchell ] stepped forth in all the glory of I = fetching check suit and a mind at res t for the first time in months. He i'm D mediately attached himself to the pay d roll of a .eam in the Coast leagu = and proceeded to stand that organlza
 ton on it's collective and hguratlV t head.
 "He won something like e1gf straight games at the outset an ', awoke one morning to find that | = had become something of a celet d rity But Mitchell or Walker, : you see fit, would have none of , Guarding his secret like a jealol f husband, he summed the society ;- his fellow players, and to furth' 1T protect his identity, travelled bae
 and forth from the grounds in u s impressive solitude of a tax1ca n This procedure. of course. was suft IS cient to arouse the curiosity Of k non-active housefly.
 l. Speculation was general as to Ju d what it all meant and Walker hin
 f1 he st aI e refusing to be photographed lest ,- picture finds its way into some eas h ern paper and thence to the pc g tiferous attention of the altogeth ii harmless hotel man. Jealous camel T men attempted ali varieties of su If reptitious advances toward the ell h sive object Of their misguided el " ergy. but Walker was always rea' I for them, either turning his bai a- or covering his face with his ar If just as the camera was snapped. f 'It was but natural that the u, d soIicted prefix, the Mysteriou S. should be applied to the assume ,5 name of Mitchell, but there is a lin ST to all things and in this case u to Announcement was not long delaye q Some one from the east recogniz' Ia Walker one dav and thenceforth Il
 man of mystery was no more.
 '"The adventure, however, was on
 one of many that came unsolicit'
 to this soldier of fortune of u
 sporting world. His was a disp
 sirion Of innumerable and none t i conceivab1e facts. The story . told that even after his identity W disclosed on the coast his most u
 usual personality persisted in a sorting itself at odd moments. On & eli +n n Y19 or one Tom Long, and, standing
 the middle of the diamond durfl ,v a game, announced his determin If tion to refrain from further pitc
 ing until the objectionable MT. Lol k should remove himself from sigf ss As his team was ahead at the tin n. and Walker was going well. Lo1