Mysterious Walker
Frederick Mitchell Walker, listed in the baseball encyclopedias as “Mysterious Walker” was the OAC coach for one year in 1911, following Fielder Jones. Until 2006, he was a near cypher, listed in OSU’s records merely as “Walker” with nothing else known about him.
In the spring of 1911, the OAC athletic board was madly scrambling to fill vacant coaching positions for the baseball and track teams. A.C. Steckle was named track coach, but it wasn’t until shortly before the season began that a baseball coach was finally hired. The team had been conducting practices under their well-respected catcher, Otto Moore. Moore was not inexperienced. In addition to his catching duties, he had also coached the team in 1909.
Walker pitched in one game for the Cincinnati Reds in 1910, and OAC student newspaper reported that he had “dazzled ‘em” pitching for San Francisco in the Pacific Coast League that same year, yet no one knew quite who he was, and he picked up the moniker “Mysterious Mitchell”.
How Walker got connected with OAC has not been discovered. It was at one point rumored that Fielder Jones would return to coach the team in 1911, so it’s possible he came at Jones’ recommendation. They could have easily become acquainted when Walker was playing baseball at the University of Chicago (he was a graduate of that prestigious institution) at the same time that Fielder Jones was managing the Chicago White Sox.
After leaving Corvallis, Walker pitched for four major league teams in four years starting in 1912. His one-year stay in Corvallis with the Beavers is mysterious indeed.
Paul Andresen: 2/12/2007