Alternate Destinies (Napoleon's World)

This page explores the fates and destinies of real-life people who we know in our world, and how their lives were different in the timeline shaped by Napoleon's victory in 1815 over England. In many cases, figures who went into politics in OTL never entered that arena and people who are in the entertainment or sporting industries did. The timeline assumes some real-life persons never existed, and that some existed who never would have. The following list is alphabetical.

John Adams
(1735-1824) Adams, following a term as the 2nd President of the United States, spent the latter half of the Canadian War grooming his son John Quincy Adams to one day ascend to the Presidency. As his age caught up to him, Adams wrote stern warnings of the coming centuries of tension with France; he, like most educated Americans at the time, recognized a frightening new world order emerging with the victory of Napoleonic France.

John Quincy Adams
(1767-1846) The younger Adams made his name in politics as a diplomat before, during and after the Canadian War; in 1816, William Crawford asked Adams to be his Secretary of State, seeing a need to have a skilled diplomat with a dangerous, powerful France occupying a colony (Quebec) on the nation's doorstep. Adams ran in the 1820 election as Crawford's health suffered for the Presidency only to be upset in a stunning and narrow electoral loss to William Clark. Adams returned to native Massachusetts and served on the Senate, establishing himself early on as an enemy of William Clark and part of the quickly forming National Party's conservative faction.

George H. W. Bush
(1924-2008) George Bush was born in 1924 to Prescott Bush, the patriarch of the Bush family, in 1924. Growing up priveleged in Connecticut, Bush took an interest in politics and business at a young age, looking up to his powerful father who served in the state government and as a banker, one of the richest men in New England. He attended Yale University starting in 1941, and graduated shortly after his father was elected President in one of the most bizarre elections in history. Bush worked for his father's government intermittently

George W. Bush
(1946-) The grandson of a President and son of a Vice President, George W. Bush is one of the most successful and richest men in the world, with a fortune tied up in a variety of fields from oil in Texas to banks on Wall Street. Having attended Yale in the 1960's, Bush rode his family's inherent wealth into the economic prosperity of the early and mid 1970's. Insulated somewhat from the lengthy depression of the 1980's, Bush used the weakness of companies around the nation to purchase those companies and consolidate them under Bush Ventures, his national conglomerate. With his father's ascension to the Vice Presidency in 1989, Bush served on several economic advisory boards for the Redford administration, at one point in consideration for Chairman of the National Bank.

During the 1990's, as the economy improved to a level of mediocre stagnation, the Bush Foundation worked to improve the lives of impoverished Americans in Texas and New Mexico, and Bush Ventures spent billions of dollars on employee benefits that few other companies could afford. Bush rode this goodwill through the brutal Romney Recession, and contributed to the 2000 Mitt Romney reelection campaign when the economy swung back in force.

Following his retirement from active business ventures in 2004 but remaining involved in Bush Ventures, Bush appeared on a reality television program called where he gave advice to aspiring businesspeople, finally picking one to work on a project for Bush Ventures as his high-level employee. Beating Bush enjoys high ratings through five seasons, and will be renewed for a sixth season in 2010.

Prescott Bush
(1895-1970) Prescott Bush served as the 30th President of the United States and is remembered as one of the best of the 20th century. His son George served as Vice President from 1989 to 1993, his other son Jonathon was Governor of Connecticut in the 1980's and his grandson Jeb ran for President against Jay Leno in 2004. Bush is seen as the patriarch of the extremely successful Bush family, which is a counterpart to the Kennedys of Massachusetts.

Bush attended Yale where he earned a business degree and quickly went to work for Richard Claiborne, one of the most successful bankers in New England at the time. The 1920's were meager times for the Bushes - Prescott found himself at the mercy of the Smith Slump that threatened his comfortable Connecticut lifestyle. He took an interest in politics and was successfully elected as a state senator in 1928, serving until 1934.

During the Thirties, Bush found that his old bank, the Central Bank of Connecticut, was booming. He retired from politics to return to the business world, becoming one of the richest men in New England by 1938. Despite the unprecedented economic boom, Bush had difficulty remaining in his leadership position in the bank, still eyeing a potential political position. His Hartford-based bank had a known rivalry with the powerful Democratic Party boss Joe Kennedy in Boston, who somehow won the Presidency in 1940 in what was heralded as a Democratic coup.

Bush began allying himself with major Nationalist Party leaders in the early 1940's, especially as the French Civil War began to truly pick up steam and it was clear that Kennedy's support of Emperor Edmond was in vain. Bush submitted his candidacy for the Presidency as a party-boss favorite, but even he himself considered the campaign a formality, not believing he had much chance of winning.

In the 1944 Nationalist Convention in New York, the winner of most primaries, Christian Norris, inexplicably backed out on the eve of accepting his nomination after evidence came forward that he had accepted bribes from union heads while governor of Ohio. This put Bush in the unique position, having received the third-most primary votes, of being the presumptive Vice President (at the time, the Nationalist Party uniformly handed the ticket to the first and second-place votegetters). The new presumptive nominee, Samuel Denver, entered conference with party leaders and Bush to discuss the new steps forward. Norris was seen as a big-ticket national candidate; Denver's appeal had been his ability to stir the West, due to his Oregon roots. Bush was seen as far more able to take on Kennedy in the general election and Denver agreed to back out of the race entirely for the sake of the Party, being promised chairmanship in a few years time.

This "Backroom Election," as it was called, came under fierce criticism from the media and Kennedy's campaign. Nevertheless, the "New England Faceoff" in November 1944, with France flexing its military muscles to threaten war and the economy tanking after a brief gasp of fresh air in the early days of the Kennedy administration, became one of the most bizarre and contentious elections in American history. At first, it appeared that Kennedy had won after early returns from the East Coast were broadcast via radio. However, it soon became clear that the early returns had been announced by Democrats seeking to sway Western voters, and had little credibility. Immediately, the Nationalists launched a campaign in the afternoon to slam the attempted manipulation of voters. Kennedy realized that he was not going to earn enough electoral votes after Democrats unconnected to his campaign had lied to the country, so he prepared a concession speech. Bush won a narrow electoral victory and became the 30th President of the United States.

Bush was seen as a sweeping agent of reform and goodwill that defined the 1940's and early 50's. While never at the booming level it had seen in the 30's, the economy was healthy and stable during the 1940's, and the era was defined by an increasing interconnectivity among different businesses and cities. Air travel boomed and America began to shift towards the suburbs. Bush's domestic program included extending aid to the elderly from federal funds, an unprecedented measure, when it became clear that pensioners were some of the poorest people in America. He also reworked military policy on race; he forbid the use of Negro Divisions, as they were called, and integrated the military. The United Aid and Dove Brigade organizations were founded under his administration, and he is is thus heralded as one of the great social workers of the 20th century.

Bush was also a noted foreign relations expert. Despite having little political experience prior to his Presidency, Bush had dealt with foreign companies during his time in the banking industry. He invested heavily in repairing relations with Sebastienite France, and entertained Phillippe Montre, the Emperor's right-hand man, at the White House in 1947. Nevertheless, Bush understood that Sebastien viewed France as world power economically and militarily, and he quickly established the National Intelligence Cabinet (NIC), which would serve a precursor to the CIA, in 1948.

He was reelected in a landslide in 1948 and continued his work in foreign relations as his priority for his second term, considering his social programs largely successful. He delivered the first TV address by a US President in 1950 and in 1951 sent American soldiers to South Africa to fight a brief war to ward off the Boer Republic's assault on American-owned property. In 1952, he began sending aid to the devastated Republic of England and in that summer, prior to the election, he sent a military expedition to help ease the Anarchy. Many Americans wanted Bush to run for a third term, for which he was eligible, but he chose to retire, and in 1954 an amendment was passed forbidding the election of a President to a third term once Democrats seized power again, fearing a lengthy Nationalist leader.

Bush lived out his retirement in comfort in Connecticut until his death in 1970.

Fidel Castro
(1926-2009) Fidel Castro is widely regarded as one of the best baseball players in Major League history, and is held in high regard due to his groundbreaking play for the New York Americans in the 1940's and his later work in expanding the recruitment of Cuban players into what was previously a largely white sport. Castro is seen as a reason for the integration of the game in 1953.

Castro grew up in Cuba, the son of a wealthy family, and took up a love for the game of baseball. While in secondary school, at the age of 17, recruiters from the Havana Cubanos, one of two teams in the Major Leagues which recruited native Cuban players, saw Castro playing at infield and offered him a contract, which would be legitimate upon his 18th birthday. After turning 18, Castro left school to play the rest of the 1944 season with the Cubanos.

His play surprised many in the league - famous Long Island Sounders commentator Lou Camp commented, "I've never seen a kid bat like this Cuban boy, Castro. He's got a bright future ahead of him down in Havana."

Havana qualified for the National League Series, but they were blown out in the championship round by Philadelphia. Castro returned to school following the playoff loss, although he attended the World Series in New York to see the Americans win yet another title. While in New York, he met infamous Americans owner Bill Osternecker, whose Americans had, with the World Series title in '44, won six championships since Osternecker bought the team in 1928. Osternecker had heard from his scouts about Castro's play in the American League series against Philadelphia, and offered him a contract worth twice what Havana was paying him. The move was revolutionary: no major baseball power on the East Coast, especially not New York, had ever offered a contract to a non-white player.

Castro signed on for the last half of the 1945 season, wanting to finish secondary school first and train in New York for a few months. His batting helped the Americans win another title that fall, and his first full MLB season, in 1946, he was the leading batter in the country, leading the Americans to their second threepeat (the first being 1932-34).

The Americans lost to the Chargers two consecutive years during the fabled Nicky Mularkey years in Covenant, but Castro led the Majors in runs and had the best batting average two additional years. While he was not the leading batter in 1949, Castro did lead them to another World Series title, which they won in a "cakewalk" over the Brooklyn Dodgers.

In the 1950 World Series, the Dodgers took the Americans to seven games - in the eighth inning, Castro caught an infield out in a spectacular catch that saved the Americans' title hopes and gave New York their second straight title, their sixth since 1942 and their 15th all-time. New York would never again win a World Series, and has not qualified for the World Series since their humiliating thrashing at the hands of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1988.

Castro, now with four championships under his belt, played in New York for four more years, enduring a World Series loss in 1954 to Cincinnati after the Americans were knocked out in the ALCS the three previous years. In 1955, Castro announced that he would not return to New York due to his increasing difficulties with Osternecker's new manager, Pete Uwell, and that he was looking for a new team and desired to win another World Series.

In the first-ever case of a free agent scramble in baseball, Castro visited several teams to see where he wanted to play. He finally decided to return to the Cubanos, whom he had shunned ten years prior for the money and opportunity of New York. Havana at this point had a new manager in Oscar Cristan, a talented homegrown team, and was luring native born Cubans back to the island in the late 1950's for a run at a World Series. They won in 1959 in a stunning upset of the highly favored Yorktown Indians, and soon thereafter signed Chris Walken, who was considered the best young catcher coming into the league, and soon emerged as the best batting catcher in major league history. With Walken and Castro paired up, the Cubanos won the 1961 and 1964 titles as well.

Castro retired in 1964 at the age of 38, and accepted a position as coach in San Diego in 1965. He led the Padres to a lone World Series appearance in 1975 before retiring from his position in 1982, having headed the successful Padres for seventeen seasons. In 1984 he returned to managing when Tacoma fired their coach, Tom Witten, when it became clear they could get Castro with a large contract. Castro succeeded where he had failed with the Padres and led the Rainiers to the 1986 World Series title. He stayed in Tacoma until 1991, having become the whipping post of former player Chris Walken, who had taken over as the coach of the Vancouver Pioneers and had earned revenge for Castro's unbeaten record against the Cardinals, the team Walken had formerly coached, during the 1980's.

Castro briefly returned to coaching in 1997, when he accepted a position as interim manager for the Chicago Cubs after the death of coach Tim Stark. He became the official manager in Chicago for the 1998 season, before he took over in the front office in 1999 and 2000. After the 2000 season, Castro retired permanently and lived in Cuba until his death in 2009 from cancer.

Castro is considered a state hero in Cuba, and one of the greatest batters in baseball history. The Havana Cubanos new ballpark, opened in 1998, was built on Fidel Castro Way in Havana. Castro has had statues and murals dedicated to him in Havana, New York, San Diego and Tacoma.

Dick Cheney
(1941-2009) Cheney grew up in Clark, Apachia, and from a young age had an intense love of football. He played football for Clark Hills High School, playing both offensive line, linebacker and special teams. In 1959 he was awarded a scholarship to play at the University of Apachia as a linebacker. From 1959-63, Cheney was one of the country's most gifted defensive players, winning the Sarrelli Award given out to the best linebacker twice, the first and last time that has happened. In his senior season, Apachia was one loss away from playing for the national title.

Cheney played for the American Football League's San Diego Bulldogs until 1970, when he was cut during one of the small professional league's numerous financial shakeups. He accepted the head coaching position at Foster High School in Aurora, AP. The Foster Vikings won three state championships and were considered one of the top teams in the country between 1970-77. Cheney was named National High School Coach of the Year after Foster completed their first-ever undefeated season in 1976 to win their third title.

In 1977, Apachia head coach Vernon Gilly called one of the Buffaloes' most decorated alumni and offered him a position as linebackers coach. Cheney served on the Apachia staff until 1983, when Gilly was fired after two consecutive losing seasons. Cheney was considered an odds-on favorite to win the job, but it was given instead to David Josephs, former head coach of a very successful Rutgers program.

Cheney was removed from the Josephs staff, although he said later that he would have quit regardless. "It was obvious I was no longer needed at the University of Apachia, otherwise I would have been promoted to head coach or at least coordinator. They had to make their decision, and Mr. Josephs is a great coach and a great recruiter."

With a still-young and obviously talented potential coordinator on the market, Huron head coach Robert Edison offered Cheney a position as defensive coordinator. The job proved to be a major stepping stone; not only did Cheney now coordinate for one of the best programs in the country, he got national exposure with top-tier recruits. After the 1990 season he was offered the head coaching position at the University of Virginia, which had suffered through many dark years of mediocrity since their glory days of the late 1970's. While confident he could win a national title at Huron with a team that had barely missed the big game, Cheney accepted. The next year, Huron would win the national championship, just as he had suspected, and he did not earn the ring he dreamed of.

At Virginia, Cheney suffered through four years of terrible play and poor recruiting. The first winning season under Cheney was 1995, when the Cavaliers went 7-5. Hardly the result the shcool had dreamed of when hiring the sought-after Cheney, they told him he had two more years to get to a nine-win season. Cheney did it in one year, getting the Cavs ten wins in 1996 and a berth in the Sugar Bowl, which they wound up losing.

Virginia became a defensive powerhouse in the late 90's, but time and time again the elusive title escaped Cheney. In 2000, he was once again a loss away from contention.

In 2002, the chips fell in his favor at last. Virginia ran the table and, in a twist of fate, their opponent was the Apachia Buffaloes. Cheney blasted the Buffs in the championship game, punishing them for passing on him all those years ago. Beating his alma mater and winning a national title in the same game enshrined Cheney as the only head coach in history to accomplish that feat. After the game, he was quoted, "I may have played as a Buffalo, but I will always have won as a Cavalier."

The Cavs were a missed field-goal against Maryland away from playing in the 2004 title game and receiver Reggie Oliver dropped an endzone pass that would have pitted them against 'Bama in 2006. That dropped pass against North Carolina would be the lasting legacy for the Cheney coaching regime; he suffered a major heart attack a few days before Virginia's Texas Bowl appearance. Virginia went on to win, but Cheney retired that offseason. He worked in a somewhat advisory role until his death in March of 2009. Virginia dedicated their season to their deceased and beloved former head coach, and named their new training complex after him. There are plans underway for his statue to be erected near the football stadium.

Bill Cosby
(1937-1991) Cosby was born in Philadelphia to a working-class mother and a father serving in the United States Navy. He grew up in one of the larger black neighborhoods in Philadelphia and went to an almost all-black school up until high school. When he was eleven, he met Prescott Bush, then President of the United States, while campaigning for reelection. He would be the first of many Presidents to meet Cosby. In the 1950's, Cosby attended Temple University in Philadelphia, but in 1959 a race riot occurred on campus and all African-Americans were immediately expelled, even though Cosby was not a participant.

Cosby would finish his degree at Temple in 1961 after working as a gas station attendant for two years, but he was denied several positions in the insurance industry with multiple firms because he was black. "The racism was unbelievable," Cosby said in an interview shortly before his death. "You'd go in for an interview having talked to these fellas on the phone, and the second they see you were black, they said, 'Job's taken.' I had a bachelor of arts from Temple University, I was an intellectual person. But I sure as hell wasn't white, and that was the prerequisite for getting a real job."

Cosby worked as a bartender in Philadelphia until 1966, when he finally bought his own restaurant in a richer part of the city and moved himself and his young family in. Managing a restaurant made Cosby a great deal of money and his place, West Philly Ribs, made him one of the richest and most well-known African-Americans in Philadelphia. In 1970, during the Philly race riots, Cosby famously grabbed a megaphone from Chief of Police Earl Snooker and tried to get the mob to calm down. Finally, after his famous words "Fighting whites ain't gonna get us their respect," Cosby used his connections in the community to help the police and then-Mayor Adam Eisler, who was preparing for his gubernatorial race, call a ceasefire in the most destructive race riot in American history up to that point.

Cosby's work as a mediator won him great praise, and throughout the Seventies he became a well-known figure in the burgeoning civil rights movement inspiring by the writings of Martin Luther King. King and Cosby met in 1974, when King passed the proverbial torch on to the younger civil rights leader, telling him, "I have written about what we must do for twenty years, now it's time for you to do it." After that point, Cosby was effectively the national leader of the civil rights movement, once he had the admired King's movement.

Cosby continously campaigned, rose funds, and used his charm to build a powerful black coalition that peacefully, but firmly, demanded action. When his friend Adam Eisler was elected on the Democratic ticket in 1976, Cosby seemed guaranteed of honest results in the coming years. Eisler, however, still had to appeal to the powerful Southern Democrats who wanted the progress being made during the previous two Nationalist presidents to be stymied, and Eisler's priority was social welfare and health care - and anyways, he was assassinated in 1978. The new President Neill Wallace met with Cosby on several occasions to encourage him to continue his work, but implied that he would receive little or no help from the federal government.

The Brazilian War and slumping economy caused even more strife in America, and the progress Cosby had made seemed all but lost. In 1982 Cosby arranged a march in Philadelphia, followed soon thereafter by marches in Nashville, Atlanta and Baltimore. President Elizabeth Shannon advised Cosby to organize a protest in Washington to help convince a stubborn Congress to look into civil rights issues, which she harbored public sympathies for. Cosby's rally near the Capitol in Washington was met with fanfare around the nation.

Three months later, in January, 1983, the Covenant Race Riots broke out in Covenant, Arkansas. The violence claimed nearly 1,500 lives as the National Guard fought for two weeks to control the bloodshed and racial violence. Cosby's leadership during the Philly Race Riots couldn't help here; the confusion and mayhem of that riot in 1970 was nothing compared to the war-like conditions of 1983. Despite televised appeals for peace and an attempt to travel to Covenant, Cosby was helpless to prevent the horrors of Covenant, a city which even today feels the scars of the Riot.

The Race Riots were a massive step back for Cosby's movement and racial tolerance as a whole across America. Race fear permeated the South and major cities of the East. To go along with growing discontent over the Shannon administration's withdrawal from Brazil in late 1983, which was met with embarassing debacles and unnecessary loss of life, the hardships of the early 1980's created a darkened mood in the United States. With the last American soldiers removed from Brazil in May 1984, the Nationalist Party made racial equality their priority and brought Cosby back into the fold. Several state governors went so far as to publicly endorse Cosby.

Even with Nationalists in power, however, Cosby was charged in January of 1986 with treason when it was found that a militant group with ties to members of his inner circle had been responsible for the murder of several city council members in Richmond, Virginia. He went on trial in a highly publicized and hyped television spectacle in which there was little to no evidence to incriminate him, and he was eventually acquitted by a jury of all charges. Nevertheless, teh incident stained his record, and Cosby removed himself from public eye for the rest of the 1980's, especially while the economy improved and the Equality Amendment went into consideration after years stagnating in a reluctant Congress.

When noted black author Martin Luther King died in 1990, Cosby was delivered the keynote eulogy at his funeral. He appeared shortly thereafter on Tonight with Ronald Reagan to announce the publication of his autobiography and also his critical book on the works of MLK. He went on a massive speaking tour across the country in late 1990 and early 1991, decrying that race relations were only improving slightly and that the true struggle was in the minds of people, not in the laws of a nation. He gave one final interview on national television on Bill Clinton Tonight to promote his two books and speaking tour on June 6th, 1991. On June 19th, he was shot to death outside of the Apachia State Capitol in Aurora while leaving a function with Governor John Seagley. He was on his way to a peace demonstration to protest Japanese brutality in the Philippines. The assassin, Guy Daton, was connected to the White Army, a militant white supremacist group operating in Apachia at the time.

Bill Cosby was, for twenty years, the seminal leader in civil rights in America. He was inspired by Martin Luther King's works before the 1970's and all the way up until the famed author's death. In Philadelphia, he is noted as one of the greatest children of that city in history, having a high school, library, street, bridge and hospital named after him, and multiple universities have dedicated buildings in his name. The William H. Cosby Center is based out of his final home in Trenton, New Jersey, and the William Cosby Foundation is one of the largest charities in the nation.

"Equality isn't who can vote and who gets a job over who; equality is looking another man in the eye and neither looking away in shame." - Bill Cosby

Bill Clinton
(1946-) Born in Arkansas in the middle of a sagging economy and with tensions with Sebastienite France at an all-time high, Clinton grew up with an interest in politics. As he grew up, he found his likability and knack for communicating a bonus, leading him to write a political commentary for his high school's monthly newspaper publication. Clinton graduated from the University of Arkansas with a degree in political science with a minor in journalism, and looked for a foray into the political scene. In 1965 he met then-President Dick van Dyke at a function in Chicago, where Clinton had moved at that time. Clinton managed to get a job writing an editorial for a Chicago magazine which picked up steam as it went along. Clinton's views were that of a centrist Democrat, and he often criticized the Ronald Reagan Show's more conservative approaches, feeling that the popular TV personality should take a more moderate stance.

Clinton returned to Arkansas during the 1970's to run the Southern Republic, a Democratic circulation in the South that focused on the ideals of the party with a heavy dose of commentary. Clinton wrote as a decided moderate, giving light criticism to the Nationalist government and hesitantly welcoming the Eisler presidency. In 1977, Clinton was selected by ABC to be on their political weekend talk show American Forum, which was designed to compete with the titanic Ronald Reagan Show on archrival NBC. Clinton's time on Forum as the centrist Southerner earned him national recognition, especially due to his youth and charm, as well as his ability to hold his ground with guests as well as his fellow forum members. In 1981, Forum aired its final episode, but Clinton was renewed by ABC for a two-man forum-style show where he and liberal personality Gary Hart debated issues from a two-pronged Democratic front called Political Review, which was also meant to attempt to compete with NBC's new Tonight with Ronald Reagan, the overhauled version of the old show. Clinton and Hart's partnership would eventually end in 1986 after Hart chose to run for political office in the Senate, and Clinton took over ABC's Bill Clinton Tonight, a position he has held ever since. With the retirement of Reagan in 1993, after thirty years on NBC, Clinton became the effective heir to the mantle of primary American political commentator on primetime weekend television.

In 2006, Clinton finally retired at the age of sixty from television work, having been on ABC on several different programs since 1977. Bill Clinton Tonight was overhauled into, which features Will Dean, a considerably more liberal commentator than Clinton, as the host. Clinton has since involved himself in charity work and campaigned vigorously for Jay Leno in the 2008 presidential election.

Important moments in the history of Clinton's tenure were Neill Wallace's first formal interview since declining reelection in 1980 (the interview was conducted in 1981), an interview with Robert Redford during the violent 1983 Covenant Race Riot in which the Vice President was nearly brought to tears, two important interviews with Bill Cosby - one immediately after his acquittal in 1986, and one only two weeks before his assassination in 1991. Clinton also hosted Bruce Springsteen's announcement that he would run for President in 2004 (he would wind up on the Vice Presidential ticket), as well as Jack Kennedy Jr., Wade Phillips and Chris Rock's announcements to seek political office

Harrison Ford
(1942-) Harrison Ford is one of college football's most successful coaches, having accumulated five national championships during his thirty-two year tenure at the University of Massachusetts in Boston (1983, 1986, 1988, 1995, 2008). He has only experienced three losing seasons since becoming head coach of the Minutemen in 1977 (1978, 1992, 2002) and has made U-Mass one of the most prolific and perennial powerhouses in the college game.

Ford was born in Chicago in 1942, where he was raised - he attended Radcliffe Academy, where he starred as a runningback, safety and punter. In 1960 he was offered a scholarship to play at the University of Chicago, and he started at runningback all four years during his career for the Maroons, and was integral in their Rose Bowl win in 1962 as a junior. He attempted a stint with the Sequoyah City Wranglers in the upstart Major League Football, which collapsed in 1967 along with Ford's unimpressive professional career.

Ford took over as Chicago's offensive coordinator between 1968 and 1973, a time when the Maroons sported one of the most bruising rushing attacks in the NCAA behind Stewie Jackson and Morgan Emmert. Chicago was a pioneering school in the respect that few other colleges allowed black men to play on their teams - Ford, however, recruited the black communities of Chicago and nearby Indiana heavily, and the Maroons offense clicked as a result of premier talent. In 1972, Chicago finished ranked No. 4 in the nation, their highest-ever ranking.

Ford was eventually lured away from Chicago by lucrative big-school money, finally settling in at the University of North Carolina as the offensive coordinator. In 1975, North Carolina won its first and to date only college football national championship behind the running of Terrance Clark, who won the Bosch Trophy that year.

In 1977, longtime Massachusetts Minutemen head coach Bill Mooney retired after eleven years as the head coach of the Northeastern Conference's good, but never great team. While a signature hockey program, U-Mass had only recorded two winning seasons since 1970 and had not won a bowl game since 1965. Ford was offered the head coaching position, and he left North Carolina after the 1977 season - which ended with an Orange Bowl victory to earn a No. 4 ranking - to take over at Massachusetts.

1978 was a dismal season for the Minutemen, who would only win three games. The next year, however, behind the running of Trent Williams and the throwing of Tim Hooper, they posted a 6-win season and would go on to play in the Texas Bowl, losing to Louisiana.

Ford would not win his first bowl game as U-Mass's coach until 1981, when the No. 20 Minutemen went to the Paradise Bowl in La Paz and beat the then-10th ranked New Mexico Coyotes 34-30. Ford's team would end with a No. 12 ranking after their impressive victory.

In 1983, the Minutemen ran the table in the Northeastern Conference to set up a massive showdown with their two hated rivals at the end of the season - the Aroostook Golden Eagles and Nova Scotia Sea Lions. Massachusetts faced off against the Golden Eagles and defeated them 46-14 at home to earn them a No. 2 ranking and an outright Northeastern Conference championship. They went on the road to Nova Scotia the next week and defeated the No. 7 Sea Lions 24-14 to earn their spot in the Philadelphia Bowl, that year's selected site for the national championship game; the first time Massachusetts had ever competed for the national title.

They were facing off against Chuck Noll's amazingly successful Texas Longhorns, who had been winning national titles every few years since the 1960's and were one of the best teams in the nation at the time. Ford upset Texas in one of the most surprising games ever; "The Upset of the Century" ended Texas's national dominance, the Longhorns would not win another title until 1998.

In 1984, the Minutemen were the hot team in the country, winning seven games to open the season before their home showdown against Nova Scotia - the No. 1 Minutemen lost by a last-second field goal to the No. 5 Sea Lions, who eventually won the national championship. The next week, Ford's U-Mass squad headed to Rutgers, where they were upset by another last-second field goal. In their final game of the season, they went north to face Aroostook and lost in a massive blowout.

In 1985, Ford reinsituted the tradition that had ended ten years prior of wearing red jerseys at every homecoming game - he also returned to the tradition of wearing a suit and red-and-blue striped tie on the sidelines for homecoming and for senior night. That season, the Minutemen lost three games before they faced off against No. 2 Aroostook at home in the final game. In what is now considered one of the greatest games in Massachusetts and maybe even college football history, No. 23 U-Mass beat Aroostook with a ninety-two yard drive in six minutes in the fourth quarter to throw a touchdown pass from true freshman Kirk Fletcher to stud receiver Luke Preston in heavy traffic in the corner of the endzone with only seven seconds remaining to win 35-34. The "Victory March", as it was known, was the first time in U-Mass history that fans rushed onto the field and tore down the goalposts - such an epic end, on senior night with the Pilgrim's Cup at stake and to stick it to their archrival which otherwise had the easy way into the national title game.

In 1986, Fletcher and Preston returned, along with running back Jim Spencer, who would win the Bosch trophy that year as a senior leading the Minutemen to their second national title in four years. In 1987, with the graduation of Spencer and Preston, the Minutemen started the season slowly, falling to 2-4 before peeling off six straight wins to put them in the Philly Bowl, where they won a wild matchup against the Dakota Fighting Sioux.

Adolf Hitler
(1889-1950) Adolf Hitler is considered one of the seminal artists of the early and mid-20th century, although his literary work later in life is largely disregarded as heavily racist and uninspiring. Hitler grew up in Austria and attended a German-speaking boarding school in Vienna. At the age of twenty he moved to Berlin, which was at that time becoming a vibrant center for French and German cultural immersion. During the 1910's he was a relative unknown on the art scene in Berlin, until his epic portraits of Imperial structures in the German regional capital captured the attention of audiences. Hitler's work with cityscapes and the people within his monstrous, ominous canvas worlds became famous during the 1920's and 30's. In 1931 he was arrested by the Churat, at the height of his fame, for suspected subversion against the Empire. Hitler and his family managed to escape to America after being released by the Churat temporarily, where he settled in New York.

His American work, especially during the economic boom of the 1930's in New York, captured the spirit of the new century and the coming promises of the 1940's. In 1939 he was commissioned by President Robert Taft to do a portrait of the Cabinet.

Hitler wrote several literary fiction pieces in the late 30's and early 40's to complement his painted work, much of which was heavily anti-Semitic and racist. In the very Jewish city of New York, his writing failed to catch on in the way his paintings did. As the attention of the world was captured by the French Civil War in the early 1940's, Hitler produced less work and developed a heart condition. He returned to Berlin in 1946 to write an autobiography about his life and his controversial philosophy, retiring to a Bavarian estate intending to do so. He submitted his autobiography for publication in 1949 in New York - he would not live to see it published. In January of 1950, the Churat came for Hitler again, and this time he did not escape. The exact date of his disappearance and death is unknown due to his isolation in the Bavarian mountains. Documents surfaced in the early 1980's suggesting that he was killed by being shot in the head and burnt on a pyre along with other German 'dissidents'.

With the publication of his autobiography and the riches left by him to his daughter Elsa (b. 1928), the Adolf Hitler Foundation for the Arts was established in 1950 to celebrate the freedom of art and the use of art to protest tyranny. The Hitler Award is given out every year since 1959 to an outstanding artist by the Foundation, and in 1975 the art department's building at Huron State university was named after him.

Hitler is also the patriarch of a successful German-American immigrant family; while his eldest son Otto Hitler (b. 1926), who returned to the Empire in 1951 to work for a Berlin bank, would be killed by the Churat in 1958, his other three children survived. Elsa never married but became the head of the Hitler Foundation in the late 1960's and ran it until her sudden death in 1997. Carl Hitler (b. 1933) became an extremely successful businessman in New York, attending Columbia University and eventually running the Scripps-Edison insurance company, one of the largest in America. His own son, Mark Hitler (b. 1959), is the current chairman following his father's retirement in 1995. His younger daughter, Gerta (b. 1937), married Frank Broyles, one of the most influential newspaper owners of the 1960's, and the Broyles Group is now one of the most powerful media conglomerates in America, and is still largely privately owned.

John F. Kennedy, Sr.
(1917-1993) Jack Kennedy is the son of former President Joseph Kennedy, Sr., the younger brother of former Massachusetts Governor and 1964 Democratic Presidential nominee Joseph Kennedy, Jr., and the elder brother of longtime Boston Paddies owner and baseball commissioner Bobby Kennedy and Boston businessman Edward Kennedy. He is also the father of Jack Kennedy, Jr., who is currently the Democratic Senator representing New York and a frontrunner for the 2012 Democratic Presidential nomination.

Kennedy's family may be prolific politcally and in the business world, but Jack Kennedy's contribution to 20th century America was in his work in the film industry. During the 1940's and 50's, Kennedy was a household name and one of the biggest leading men in the film world. Kennedy helped resurrect the dying New York film industry in the 40's as the competition with Hollywood increased, and in the 1950's and 60's went off to California to continue his career.

Kennedy had shown a taste for theater since he was a young boy, but it wasn't until he transferred to Georgetown to help his father after Joe Kennedy Senior won the 1940 Presidential election that he actually seriously invested in the art. President Kennedy was so focused on training his son Joe Junior to follow in his footsteps that he barely noticed when Jack dropped out of Georgetown to join the Columbia Theater; however, Jack's talents were obvious, and when he moved to New York in 1943 his father did not complain.

Kennedy appeared in several plays in New York in the mid-1940's, but his big break came when he landed a role in the 1946 Hugh Simpson play A Fool's Errand, which became an overnight success and was critically acclaimed as one of the best pieces of American theater to have ever been produced. A film was made in 1947 with the original cast intact, and Kennedy's stardom only increased.

At the still-youthful age of thirty when A Fool's Errand was considered the crowning achievement of the New York arts scene, Kennedy quickly made a name for himself in a number of films. From 1948 to 1953, he appeared in fourteen feature films. As Kennedy said during an interview later in life, "I rarely slept, I rarely ate, and I made few friends. It was hell."

Kennedy showed that he had a talent for a variety of films; he could do comedy (Manhattan Love Story), crime/thrillers (the still-popular Protection) and even musicals (Sing!). In 1954, Kennedy married longtime girlfriend Jacqueline Bouvier, and while he enjoyed his time in New York, he was attached to the big-budget, color war movie Into the Yukon in Los Angeles, which, despite him being a celebrity at this point, would vault his career even higher.

Into the Yukon was the highest-grossing movie of 1955 and was nominated for four Academy Awards, including a Best Actor nod for Kennedy. The film failed to qualify for any of them. Kennedy was now a household name, however, having proven himself to be in the elite of the American film industry. Around this same time, his brother Joseph was becoming heavily involved in Massachusetts politics, and Kennedy used his fame to help his older brother politically through speaking engagements and media manipulation.

Kennedy was again nominated, this time for Best Supporting Actor, for his role as a corrupt, treacherous NIC agent in the dark, moody 1960 Cold War drama Modern Empires. Kennedy had never played a villanious or antagonistic role before, and while Modern Empires was the runaway Best Picture thanks to its expert directing, careful use of black-and-white cinematography to make shadows, and its strongly acted characters, Kennedy was one of the two of seven nominations the film did not win.

Shortly after Modern Empires entered post-production, Kennedy approached longtime Hollywood power broker Adam Shaw with United Pictures and showed him a script he and screenwriter Alan Flynn had worked on beginning in 1958. The late 50's were a time of over-the-top patriotic war movies about the American can-do spirit and the triumph of liberty, and sometimes even involved a great deal of camp. Into the Yukon had been enormously successful and part of the beginning trend, but had also been somewhat more subdued - the craft behind the movie about the Alaskan War was its appeal more to the growing Western genre and its epic, mighty themes of isolation in the North than its cheerfully optimistic successors about the Pacific War, English Adventure or numerous smaller or fictional conflicts.

Flynn's script was simply titled Oahu, and Shaw was stunned when he read it. Kennedy was asking him to fund a pet project of his that the world-famous actor described as "the war movie to end all war movies." United Pictures greenlit the project, and nearly yanked the plug a full year later when they realized that Kennedy was putting out a nearly four-hour epic that was rapidly approaching unheard-of costs. Kennedy kept the shooting sites in Hawaii, Peninsula and Cuba closed and secretive - he was an unusually controlling director, putting gag orders on the cast and crew.

When Oahu opened in spring of 1962 with a runtime of 214 minutes (excluding its ten-minute intermission), it zipped to the top of the box office, becoming one of the most universally praised films of all time and, until the release of Star Wars twenty years later, the highest-grossing film of all time. Theaters were selling out at a rate where the public had to buy tickets weeks in advance, and most theaters showed the film twenty-four hours a day. Oahu set an Academy Award record by sweeping all nine categories it was nominated in, including Best Picture and Best Director for Kennedy.

As one critic said, "Kennedy could retire now, never work in the movie business ever again and be considered one of the greatest contributors to the industry to have ever worked in Hollywood." But Kennedy had more to come - in a 1963 interview he described his vision of a trilogy of "American Masterpieces," of which Oahu was the first.

As his brother began gearing up for a 1964 Presidential run, Kennedy pushed production of his next "Masterpiece" with United, and aimed it for a spring 1964 release date. The production was rushed, the camera work haphazard, and the script was unfinished. Actors involved in the equally-secretive The American Congress complained about Kennedy's dictatorial methods and his poor temper. During this time, Kennedy developed alcoholism, trying to balance his hectic career with campaigning for elder brother Joseph and his family, which welcomed its third child with the birth of Patrick Kennedy in 1963.

The American Congress confused a lot of people when it came out in spring of '64 - many were expecting a political version of Oahu, and were severely disappointed by the somewhat disjointed, rushed film. Many critics felt that Kennedy was putting out Democratic propaganda in an election year where his brother was the favorite to win the Presidency - Kennedy's alcoholism only got worse as the film failed to reach the stratospheric expectations he had laid out for it and when his brother lost the election that fall.

Kennedy appeared in a handful of films in the mid-1960's all while hiding his familial issues - he was no longer on speaking terms with two of his four brothers (including Joseph), was involved in a series of extramarital affairs, and spent most of his time away from his home in Los Angeles. He also had severe alcoholism and depression, until he finally pursued psychatric help in 1967 and disappeared completely from public view.

In 1968, Kennedy starred in his much-anticipated return to a silver-screen epic like those he had been famous for in the 1950's with his appearance in the classic Cold War comedy Across the Atlantic, which was a camp comedy about rival spies trying to outmaneuver one another while stuck on a plane flying from New York to Paris. The movie's awkward, subdued humor and clever situational humor made it an instant success, and Kennedy's career was back, albeit through comedic means.

In 1970, Kennedy launched the Jack Kennedy Foundation to help involve poor youths become engaged in the theatrical arts, especially in the Los Angeles area. He became a regular on the comedy program The Wilson Family, which was, unusually for its time, about a dysfunctional family in middle America (as opposed to the other shows of this era presenting picture-perfect familes). Kennedy's role as the unquestionably unstable Mr. Simmons, the main character's boss and nemesis, jumpstarted his popularity. Some critics were amazed at his ability to go from directing one of the greatest films in history to playing a comedy role on a sit-com for two years.

Kennedy wasn't done with his contributions to American cinema, however, and delivered on his long-unfinished promise to direct the third piece of his "American Masterpiece" series. He once again secluded himself and his cast, and when An Average Man was released in 1973, it completely reestablished Kennedy at the top of the Hollywood pyramid. The film, revolving around the black gangs of Covenant and the gang war to fill the void left by Boss Bobby's death in 1931, was just under three hours long and earned critical praise. It won Best Picture that year and launched the careers of numerous black actors throughout the 1970's - Kennedy was hailed for his efforts to use unknown, unestablished and yet talented African-American actors to make a more realistic picture.

In 1975, Kennedy finally landed the role that would win him the Best Actor award he had sought so long - in a definite career comeback, he played the role of an aging cowboy in the Western epic Old Country, which concerns the death of the western way of life. It was by no means an adventure; it was a depressing, character-driven tragedy that, in some ways like Oahu, brought the campy and exciting Western adventures back down to earth.

Kennedy's career resurgence landed him numerous smaller but excellent roles until his surprise retirement in 1981. In 1985, he wrote an autobiography where he finally admitted to his long history with alcoholism and his infidelity. Surprisingly, Jackie Kennedy chose not to divorce her husbad despite these revelations. The Kennedy family was embarassed during the 1980's by the young son Patrick's numerous struggles with drugs and his arrests.

In 1989, Kennedy was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and he started the Kennedy Alzheimer's Research Foundation later that year to help fund the search for a cure. He removed himself completely from public view in 1990, choosing to live out his disease and retirement in peace.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Sr., died peacefully in his sleep on November 22nd, 1993, in New York. He was 76 years old.

Robert Kennedy
(1925-2002) Robert Kennedy is known as the "Savior of Boston," "Boston Bobby," "The Great Manager" and "Mr. Baseball" - few manager/owners have had as great of an influence on the sport as Kennedy has. Born in 1925 to Boston politician Joseph Kennedy, Sr., he lived eternally in the shadow of paternal favorite Joe Junior, and second brother John. At the age of fifteen at Central Catholic High School, Bobby Kennedy had a unique year - he led the Central Dodgers baseball team to a championship as a freshman pitcher, a feat he would accomplish the next three years, and his father won the Presidential election. Bobby continued to live in Boston with younger brother Edward while his father worked in Washington in the White House with Joe Junior and John, who eventually left his father's work and his education at Georgetown to enter the Columbia Theater, where his storied acting career began. Bobby's baseball exploits earned Central Catholic national attention due to their team captain's prolific father. After graduating, Bobby played baseball for Harvard, leading them to two national championships in his time there earning his business degree. Bobby soon thereafter signed on to play for the Long Island Sounders, but his once-promising baseball career fizzled and he was eventually cut in 1952 after three seasons where he contributed little of note to the team.

With brother Joe Junior's election to Massachusetts Governor in 1954, Bobby worked as a manager for his older brother's administration, using his business connections in Boston to help. He eventually moved to New York in 1961 when offered a position as co-owner of the Daily Journal, a large New York newspaper. However, Bobby eventually sold his ownership portion of the newspaper to return to Boston and work with brother Ted in the financial sector, where he didn't seem particularly happy either.

After the 1967 World Series, longtime Boston Paddies owner Johnnie Holly announced that he was going to sell the dismal team. At this time, the Paddies had failed to advance beyond the first round of the MLB playoffs for a whole two decades; their last World Series appearance was in 1940, and their last title was during their back-to-back runs in 1937 and '38. They had qualified in 1966 for the playoffs before being swept by the Santa Fe Wolves.

Kennedy was approached as a potential new owner, and he agree on one condition; that he be given management responsibilities as well. To smooth the deal over with a reluctant Holly, Kennedy agreed to sell two-thirds of his ownership share to Boston shipping tycoon Hamish Wallace and Connecticut realtor Bob Johnson.

"Two Bobs and Hammy" were the new owners of Boston's beloved baseball team, and because the team was sold to local ownership, it wasn't moved to Erieville or Milwaukee, as originally planned. The Paddies would stay where they belonged.

Kennedy's new team was top-heavy with talent; Willy Hanson was easily the best shortstop in the American League, and Dick Smuts was a phenomenal closer just reaching the swansong of his storied career. Smuts came into Kennedy's office towards the end of spring training in 1968 and asked the new manager to let him win just one World Series, which he had yet to do in his nearly fourteen years of play. Kennedy guaranteed him, "Dick, you'll have a ring or two before you retire. This team's going great places."

Kennedy was quick to find that his name may have been royalty in politics and business, but in the baseball world, he was a nobody. Santa Fe Wolves owner Billy Tate, who had now won two consecutive World Series in '66 and '67, told Kennedy at an owners meeting, "Son, I'm glad your daddy was President and your brothers are governors and movie stars and whatnot, but here, we only care about how many rings you have. I have two. You have zero. Don't think for a second being a Kennedy means a shit in the Major Leagues."

The 1968 season showed little improvement for the Paddies, who were left out of the playoffs despite adding Tom Egman, Brian O'Malley, and Dave Finley to the roster. Still, the strong-arm of Finley and the heroic closing by Smuts had brought the Paddies three games short of the playoffs. But there were still keys to a great team missing.

In 1969, Kennedy signed Arthur Jackson, one of the best black outfielders in the game, to a massive contract. He also managed to recruit veteran baseball players Mickey Tomlinson and Greg Marks, both in the twilight of their solid but unspectacular careers, to the team. The team quickly took the form of one with little star-power beyond the batting of Hanson and closing of Smuts; the success of the Paddies, who played the future World Series champion Detroit Tigers to an intense Game Five loss in the Divisional Series, was built around a team chemistry that relied highly on the talents of each player complementing those of others.

In 1970, superstar catcher Chris Walken retired suddenly after only nine years in the league to protest his displeasure with the Detroit Tigers organization. Kennedy was able to arrange a trade for the moody catcher who was portrayed by the sports media as one of the league's most egomaniacal players. This addition to the Paddies was questioned by some but hailed by others; having seen the difference the unreal talent Walken had brought to the Santa Fe Wolves and the Detroit Tigers, many believed he could be the key piece that finally sent the Paddies to the World Series. Kennedy watched the Paddies arrive in the Divisional Series again only to lose to the Halifax Whalers, who were en route to their own storybook season with a World Series pennant.

As it turned out, it would be Walken who eventually led the Paddies to their elusive pennant. Walken had the game-winning home run in the Paddies defeat of the Whalers in the American League championship, and in the World Series, Walken had three critical runs to set up the Paddies' 4-2 defeat of his first team, the Havana Cubanos.

In 1972 and '73, the Paddies did it again, and by this time they were an unstoppable force. Every year, the storied National League Dodgers-Rangers rivalry served only one question: who would be the fodder to be served to the Boston Paddies? By beating the Dodgers in '72 4-1 and the Rangers with a sweep in '73, Kennedy had resurrected the dismalest of franchises out of the depths of despair.

In 1974, seven Paddies were asked to play for the American baseball team at the Summer Olympics in San Diego. The result was a shocker; the Colombian team knocked out America to take gold. Kennedy was interviewed shortly afterward, and the question was asked of whether the Paddies were too used to winning. Kennedy responded, "If we were too used to winning, we'd have taken gold. We haven't won nearly enough."

That October, Boston took home yet another World Series title, making Boston the first franchise to ever win four consecutive pennants. "History is being made here," sports writer Gerald Ford commented. "Bobby Kennedy has built possibly the greatest baseball dynasty of all time."

In 1975, Boston missed the playoffs entirely, ending their remarkable run. Dick Smuts retired after twenty years in the league, Willy Hanson signed a monster contract with the Los Angeles Stars, and Arthur Jackson and Greg Marks both decided to return to their mutual hometown of St. Louis to play their careers out with the Cardinals. Kennedy had only Walken and Finley left, and they rode out the 1976 season with another playoff drought.

"The Dynasty is Over," declared the sports world. Yet Kennedy managed to pull together a roster of relative unknowns to make a surprising 1977 pennant run capped with a victory over reigning champion Chicago, a victory in which Boston was a clear underdog. That winter, Kennedy ran into Wolves owner Billy Tate once again, and said, "I have five rings, you have two. Being a Kennedy means half a shit in the Major Leagues now."

Boston would win titles in 1978 and 1980 to close out their dynasty, and in 1982 Kennedy sold his portion of the Paddies franchise to take over as baseball commissioner, a position he held for ten years. He retired permanently in 1992 and lived in Boston, making it a point to attend every Paddies game until his death in 2002. Like a true diehard, Kennedy died only three days after attending a Boston-Long Island game which the Paddies won.

Barry Obama
(1961-) Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 to a black, Zanzibari father and a white American mother. Growing up in the American expatriate community in the Kingdom of Hawaii, Obama experienced a worldview that he described as "unlike anything you'll find in America - Hawaii has whites, blacks, Japanese, Hawaiian Islanders, Indonesians, Colombians, Gangestani, the works. It is a melting pot in every sense of the word."

Obama attended George Washington Preparatory for high school after being denied admission to Punahou, the most prestigious academy in Hawaii. While at Washington Prep, he became heavily involved in theater, and after graduating in 1979 joined the Honolulu Thespian Group. In the early 1980's, Obama - going by the more American name Barry - made a name for himself on the stage, and briefly played small roles in Los Angeles staring in 1983 (even earning a credited role as Barry O), until he got into a drunken altercation in 1984. Due to his skin color, he was extradited to Hawaii, where he still had citizenship. "I was kicked out of the United States for what was basically a drunken barfight, and it was largely because I was black. You bet it pissed me off."

Obama stayed in Hawaii for the rest of the 1980's, where he became something of a local film star. Between appearing in locally-produced and filmed movies, Obama also became Hawaii's most recognizable actor in American projects filmed in the islands. "Whenever an American movie company was going to shoot something in Hawaii, and they filmed there a lot back then because there was a nasty economy and Oahu is cheap, my agent would come knock on my door and tell me they needed a black guy who likes to act and works for cheap."

From 1985 to 1992, Obama appeared in nearly twenty-five Hawaiian and American films, although he received mostly smaller roles in the latter. Finally, in 1992, his role in Hawaiian-made thriller Death Boat was noticed by American director Lee Wilkie and Obama was offered a two-film contract of smaller supporting roles in Los Angeles. With the 1984 incident a distant memory, Obama could safely come to the United States. In 2000, he became a citizen of the United States, and he jokingly said that it was so that "I can go beat up idiots in bars again and not get sent back to Hilo."

In the 1990's, Obama became one of the more recognizable black actors in Hollywood, although it was not until his role in 2001's The Watchers that he gained widespread national attention. He played the role of Lieutenant Thomas Keller one of the first black company leaders, appointed on the fly during the English Adventure of the 1950's, and he is given charge over a vehemently reluctant platoon comprised mostly of whites. The movie's unabashed portrayal of racism and tension earned Obama an Academy Award for Best Actor, although he was snubbed.

Obama built off of the success he enjoyed from The Watchers to establish himself as a serious character actor in ensuing years, and played a multitude of acclaimed roles. His role as a black Congressman suddenly appointed to the position in 1970's Alabama trying to gain the trust of his racist constituents in 2006's In Too Deep earned him another Best Actor nomination, and he was again declined the award. While some believed that racism played a factor, as both movies were about that still-controversial topic, Obama agreed with most critics and said, "I didn't lose because the Academy is racist, I lost because the winners gave better performances." He appeared in a few episodes of the acclaimed television show Dick as pioneering black journalist Freddie Ross, a man who Obama himself said is one of his heroes and inspirations.

In 2009, Obama appeared in Hearty, a movie about a struggling working-class father with a serious heroin addiction taking care of a diabetic daughter. He has been nominated for a third Academy Award, and this could be the one that he finally wins. Due to his inability to win awards for acclaimed performances, Obama has sometimes been referred to as the "Black Jack Kennedy."

Obama lives in Los Angeles with his wife Michelle and two daughters, and is apparently set to appear in two thriller films in 2010, a role in the next Martin Jones film and to play the part of Captain Gustav Bass in the upcoming, big-budget adaptation of the popular science fiction novel series Beyond in 2011.

Robert Redford
(1936-) Robert Redford has been one of the late 20th centuries most notable political figures, serving as Governor of California from 1972 to 1979, Vice President of the United States between 1981 to 1989, President of the United States from 1989 to 1993, and served as US Ambassador to England between 1998 and 2001, and then US Ambassador to China between 2001 and 2006. In 2009, Redford was the honorary speaker for Jay Leno's second inauguration, despite them being of different political parties.

Redford originally had no intention of getting into a political career - growing up, he was an athlete with an interest in theater. He attended Stanford in the 1950's and was eventually drawn to a Nationalist club on campus and got talked into pursuing a career as a lawyer. Redford finished law school in early 1960 and got work in one of San Francisco's largest law firms.

Throughout the early 60's, Redford was connected to politicians and policymakers and worked constantly in Monterey. He was eventually offered the position of assistant state attorney general at the age of 32, shortly before incumbent governor Ray Whitier was up for reelection in 1970. With Whitier's loss to Democrat Jay Boothe, California state law required that the Governor and Lieutenant Governor be of different parties. Boothe found Redford to be the perfect candidate to present to the State Legislature; he was charming, well-liked though somewhat inexperienced, and already considered an emerging member of the National Party. Redford had been out of law school for about eleven years at this point, and was now the second-most powerful man in the state of California.

Redford continued to develop his connections and alliances with major Nationalists in California as Boothe began to get drawn into a major corruption scandal in late 1971, that dated all the way back to his time as mayor of San Diego. Eventually, Boothe was recommended for impeachment by the California State Legislature. Boothe resigned in disgrace before the actual impeachment hearing in February of 1972, and Redford was suddenly governor.

The "Accidental Governor" was left with a huge mess to clean up left by both Whitier and Boothe. California had a major issue of budget mismanagement, a long history of corruption at the state and local authority levels, the city of Los Angeles was the most violent in America, and the economic slowdown across the country was affecting California the hardest. Also, the 1974 San Diego Olympics were looming and preparations were barely adequate for the planned compeition.

Redford, in his seven years as Governor, transformed California into the third-richest state in the Union, deregulated the film industry, successfully hosted an enormously profitable and heralded Olympics - albeit one that featured the Stunner in San Diego - and he pioneered the concept of in-state tuition. Redford was young upon the expiration of his term, only 43, but easily one of the leading young members of the National Party.

As Dean Warren, Redford's successor, was sworn in in 1979, Redford made the surprise announcement that he would seek the Nationalist nomination in 1980. The economy was souring in 1979 and America was beginning what would soon be apparent was a losing effort in the Brazilian War. Seen as a solid contender against Hugh Vienklasser and Roger Stampley, the two leading frontrunners, Redford found himself in a neck-in-neck race against Elizabeth Shannon, the former Governor of Michigan, for the nomination - a race the attractive, charming Californian lost to an older, "cold" woman.

Still, Redford was pleased when Shannon approached him shortly before the convention and asked him to be her running mate. The Shannon-Redford ticket won big that fall - Redford won the first Vice Presidential debate against Edward Johnson and the landslide that followed against the Carter-Johnson ticket propelled the Nationalist party to a position of power it had not held in nearly twenty years.

Following the tumultous transfer of power in France in the mid-1970's, the nuclear-aided war between China and Burma, the growth of alterior world powers and the ongoing war in Brazil, Shannon chose to focus her personal energy on foreign policy early on in her first term - a risky gamble, considering the financial collapse in 1979 of the US financial system following almost a decade of unfettered prosperity. A shallow depression had emerged in America, but the National Party managed to portray the troubles as inherited from the preceding Eisler-Wallace administrations, which was not completely false. Redford took point on economic recovery and tense social issues, becoming emotionally moved in a 1983 interview following the Covenant Race Riots. Redford was delegated more power as Vice President than any VP had before in American history, and siginificantly changed the expectations the public had for the second-in-command.

While deeply unpopular during the darkest hours of 1982 and '83, the SHannon-Redford team began to pick up steam again right in time for the 1984 election. Once thought to be in a fight for her life in the wake of a messy and prolonged withdrawal from Brazil, the Covenant riots and tense relations with France to go with the sour economy, Shannon won the 1984 election by a much smaller margin but a comfortable one. It was in the days following the reelection win that Redford was shot in the shoulder by deranged psychopath Martin Bloem after making a speech to a group of donors in Philadelphia.

Redford spent several months in 1985 recovering from his gunshot wound - the image of him in a sling became an iconic image of the 1980's. The economy began to improve notably in the late 80's, and despite several tense moments in the Cold War standoff with France, Redford retained his popularity to run for President in 1988 and win. Redford announced to the country, "We did it, as a country. We chose our future."

Whatever goodwill Redford had from the Shannon years evaporated shortly thereafter in 1989. In the aftermath of the destructive Persian Gulf War, a chemical weapon was released in Isfahan by Arabian agents, nearly prompting another war in the region. Redford was slow to react and the Persian navy seized an American battleship on the high seas, creating a tense diplomatic standoff with threats of nuclear reprisal.

Also in 1989, during a visit from Japanese shogun Jiro Hataka, Redford and Hataka were photographed and videotaped on the roof of the White House in the early morning hitting golf balls onto the lawn, in only dress shirts and boxers, both deeply intoxicated. The "Midnight Golfer" became the dark side of Redford's image; once portrayed as a heroic survivor, he was now a drunken buffoon. Few political cartoons or caricatures of Redford from then on included him wearing pants or not holding a golf club.

Redford managed to somewhat stir away memories of these two embarassing episodes in 1990, when he oversaw a burgeoning boom in the personal computer and satellite industries, as well as signing the long-awaited Free Trade Agreement with Colombia. He also helped support Arabia and Cyrene, two countries in need of financial and political assistance in the wake of the Gulf War.

However, the boom of 1990 was soon overshadowed by the John Lipcourt scandal, which revealed serious flaws in the Redford administration's practice of foreign aid - flaws that bordered on the illegal. The scandal eventually reached Redford, who delivered a somber apology on national television for his negligence in the oversight over the distribution methods of aid to needy countries. As the scandal continued well into late 1991, many realized that economic success was Redford's sole bragging point going into the election. In early 1992, as Democrats began to rally behind Sequoyah Governor John Burwin, the computer boom collapsed upon itself and Redford's death warrant was signed. He struggled his way through the summer campaign months and suffered a narrow but clear defeat to Burwin in the fall general election.

Redford retired from the public sphere, wrote an autobiography and began a lengthy humanitarian tour in Africa and Southeast Asia from 1995-96. In 1996, he returned to the United States to deliver a fiery keynote address at the 1996 Nationalist Convention in support of Mitt Romney. He then lived in Brazil for two years as a private humanitarian working to improve education, before receiving the ambassadorship to England. He was given a new ambassadorship to China in 2001.

In 2006, Redford gave up his post in China to write his second autobiography and begin a lengthy lecturing and speaking tour in the United States and Alaska. On January 20th, 2009, he was asked by Jay Leno, a Democrat, to introduce him at his second presidential inauguration.

Redford now lives in California with his wife and recently opened his Presidential library.

Christopher Rock
(1965-) Chris Rock grew up in Brooklyn, NY in a working-class African American family during some of New York's most tumultuous race periods. In 1980, his older brother Sam was brutally murdered outside of the Rock family home.

His brother's death inspired him to work hard in school in order to make a difference in his community. He attended Syracuse University, which gave him a chance to get out of Brooklyn. At Syracuse, Rock said his eyes were opened to a new way of life and method of thinking. He decided to invest his time in political science and an expansion of civil rights. His brother's death had never been properly investigated by the police.

In the late 1980's, after his time at Syracuse, Rock began doing work in the Bronx with poor families as a community organizer. Soon thereafter, he met with civil rights leader Bill Cosby only weeks before Cosby's 1991 assassination. Rock soon became involved in the Civil Front during its turbulent, corrupt Martin Morgan years. By the late 1990's, Rock had usurped Morgan as the critical figure in the Civil Front, moving the focus of the organization from Philadelphia and the Rust Belt to the poorer East Coast slums. Rock was nearly killed in a 1999 drive-by shooting, some say by Morgan's men.

Rock officially disbanded the corrupt, bloated Civil Front in 2001, to criticism and acclaim. Morgan was convicted of fraud and embezzlement, and racketeering, in 2002 and Rock used many of the illicit Civil Front funds to fund homeless shelters and charities helping the underpriveleged in New Jersey and New York. In 2004, upon the announcement of longtime Senator Bruce Springsteen that he would give up his seat to run for President, Rock put in his name for consideration within the Democratic Party.

Rock's old connections in the black community gave him succuess in the primaries, and he narrowly won a brutal general election against Jim Stalling. Rock's Senate term was deemed a huge success for most African Americans - he was considered a potential 2012 candidate for the Presidency and immediately the most noticeable black member of government. However, in 2009 corruption scandals dating back to the late 90's and early 2000's emerged, and Rock is currently expected to be in a fight for his life against former Nationalist anti-corruption governor, Tim Houlighan.

Nicolas Sarkozy
(1955-) Nicolas Sarkozy is the incumbent Chairman of the Grand Assembly in the French Empire, having held that position since 2004. His experience in the Imperial government stems largely from his background in provincial politics and dealing with the Grand Assembly, until his election in 1992 to the Grand Assembly itself from the 22nd Assembly District. He is generally seen as centrist, and his influence is seen by many as critical in the development of Emperor Maurice as a political entity following the sudden death of his young father in 2006. During the initial transition from Albert II to Maurice, Sarkozy ran day-to-day activities normally reserved for the Emperor. His influence has been noticed in increasing the relevance of the Grand Assembly from its point of stasis in the late 1990's and early 2000's.

Charlie Sheen
(1965-) Charlie Sheen, also known as "Clutch Chuck", is considered one of the greatest American football quarterbacks to ever play the game - and his troubled personal life and later comeback are considered one of the premier sports legends in America.

Sheen played high school football at Los Palos High School near Los Angeles, where he never lost a game in three years as a starter while leading the Bobcats to three straight high school championships. As one of the most heavily recruited football players in the control in the fall of 1983, Sheen decided that his best bet would be to go to Cal and play for the Bears, the team he had idolized as a child (two uncles were Berkeley alumni).

Sheen's first two seasons were spent largely on the bench and as a backup. In 1985, he came off the bench to lead the Bears to three straight wins to close out the season as their starter, and was given the starting job at the beginning of 1986. The Bears would go 8-0 and Sheen was considered a darkhorse Bosch candidate before the Bears closed the season 1-3, losing to archrival Stanford 45-0. Sheen was plagued by a hurt shoulder for the majority of this stretch.

In 1987, Sheen returned from shoulder surgery to lead the Bears to a 12-0 season and a then immediately afterwards a national championship in a wild game over the Florida Gators, in which Sheen would win on a last-second touchdown run from three yards out, barely getting the ball over the endzone. That season, Sheen won his deserved Bosch trophy.

In March of 1988, Sheen announced that he had been signed by the New York Metros football team of the National Football League, the East Coast based pro football league. The Metros were one of the worst clubs in the league in 1988, having suffered through five consecutive losing seasons, one of which they went winless (1986). With new head coach Ron Osborne and Sheen under the center, the Metros suddenly became the toast of the league - Sheen would lead them to championships in 1990, 1992, and 1993.

In 1995, with the Metros ranked second in the the NFL's North Division, Sheen was arrested after a domestic dispute with wife Caroline, in which he allegedly pushed her through a window in their Connecticut home. Without Sheen, the Metros imploded. A few months later, in 1996, Sheen was found after a suicide attempt due to his guilt over the Caroline incident and the ensuing public relations fallout. He had taken painkillers and cocaine and was near death.

Even after his release after a brief prison sentence in 1997, Sheen was largely considered damaged goods in the public eye. He became known as "Pro Football's Bad Boy," a new branding for one of the most decorated players (two MVP awards in '90 and '91) in football. Having long since been terminated by the Metros, Sheen went out west to attempt a comeback with the Vancouver Blazers of the Western Football Association, but the 1998 season was his worst-ever as a player and after another abysmal year in 1999, at the age of 34, he permanently retired from football, especially after tabloids exposed his fondness for strip clubs and two alcoholic altercations with police and bar patrons in early 2000.

For much of the early 2000's, Sheen left the public sphere, went to a rehab clinic and married his second wife, Diane. In 2004, Sheen announced that he had accepted the position of quarterbacks coach for the Massachusetts Minutemen, which seemed a strange move for the usually hard-discipline head coach Harrison Ford. However, Sheen excelled with quarterbacks Riley Dean, Michael Bradley and Jonathon White, watching the third protege win a national championship in 2008. In 2009, he was elevated to offensive coordinator, and Ford named Sheen his replacement when he retired in January 2010 after his Silver Bowl victory, his last bowl win as a head coach.

Since 2004, the influence of coaching seems to have paid off for Sheen, who is now a recognizable public figure in his charity work and for his tradition of contributing a third of his paycheck to Boston's homeless shelters. Sheen is reportedly working on his autobiography, which will most likely graphically detail his lifestyle in the mid and late 1990's.

Louis Suchet
(1770-1822) Louis Gabriel Suchet was one of the most brilliant generals of the Imperial Wars - his service in Spain during the Peninsular Wars was instrumental to the defeat of the British at Toledo and the later rout of the Allied forces at Burgos.

Having earned respect during the mid-1800's, his elevation to Marshal of France in 1811 made him a powerful military leader. Suchet was one of Napoleon I's more trusted generals and was dispatched to Spain in 1812 to do war at the behest of Joseph Bonaparte, the puppet King of Spain.

It was in the spring of 1813, while Napoleon was enjoying his successes in Russia, that Suchet delivered his own masterstroke at Toledo. At an elevated position, French soldiers collided with the British over a river near the city and doled out dreadful losses. Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, was killed by a stray bullet during the fighting and his body recovered by Imperial forces - his body was brought to Barcelona amid celebrations by the French.

With the fall of Wellesley, the British effort fell apart completely. Suchet routed a Portuguese army on May 20th and the defeat of the Allies at Burgos in late June sealed the fate of the Peninsular War. Suchet was given free reign over all Imperial forces in Iberia and made Duke of Madrid. With the forced abdication of Joseph Bonaparte in early 1814, Suchet became the effective ruler of occupied Spain.

Suchet was later recalled to armed service after several years pacifying the Spanish, largely due to the emergence of generals such as Savalier, Legrange, Murburrien and Gestot in the Forty Days Campaign. The rift between the "Old Guard" - Suchet, Michel Ney, Auguste de Marmont, Andre Massena and Nicolas Soult - who had slaved to subdue the continent and the "New Elite," the young generals who had emerged in the waning days of the Imperial Wars, especially in Italy and Britain while the Old Guard fought in Russia and Spain, threatened to cause significant infighting within the Grand Army. To appease the Old Guard, Napoleon set about the process of "land grants" in Russia and the East, which the Marshals of France were in charge of assimilating. In 1818, with the power of a few remaining noblemen in Novgorod growing and threatening a civil war in Russia akin to the chaos of 1814, Napoleon ordered Suchet to resolve the "Novgorod Problem," thus beginning the Second Purge.

While Marmont was the architect of the Purge, with his quotas and territorial plans drawn up in Moscow, Suchet was, along with Savalier, one of its primary agents. The violent assault against the noble and middle classes in northern Russia resulted in 15,000 deaths in two months alone - Suchet's indiscriminate allowance of a slaughter of unarmed noblemen on the banks of the Volga went unpunished when Russian courts demanded justice.

Between March of 1818 and November of 1819, nearly seven million Russians are estimated to have died of infighting, execution by French soldiers or starvation due to the collapse of law. Nearly twenty million Russians are believed to have fled to the Urals or across them to Novosibirsk, the symbol of a "Free Siberia," between 1818 and 1821.

The Purge itself slowed down in the early 1820's, when Marmont decided to focus on the restoration of "French law and culture" in Russia. The barbarism of many generals was finally punished, and Suchet himself stripped one of his most trusted commanders, Laurence Coliere, of his rank for the practice of burning churches with civilians inside.

Still, many Russians associated Suchet with the Purge, and three attempts were made to assassinate him as he set up headquarters in Kiev in 1821. He travelled to Petrograd in 1822 to visit Marmont for a conference on a reescalation of the Purge, even though the death toll of starvation and lawlessness in Russia had reached nearly twelve million since 1818. While in Petrograd, he was shot and killed by unidentified assailants on September 3rd as his carriage was cornered and his entire entourage killed in turn.

Historians remember Suchet as a heroic commander in Spain whose reputation suffered later due to the atrocities committed in Russia by the French. In Russia, Suchet is considered alongside Marmont as one of the greatest butchers in history. In the 20th century, French historians finally began to accept a less celebratory view of the man indirectly responsible for the deaths of nearly fifteen million people between 1818 and 1823.

Richard van Dyke
(1925-) Richard van Dyke served as President of the United States from 1965-1973, noteworthy due to his youth (38 years old when elected) and his popularity, and his later service in government in years following. Called "Tricky Dick" by his supporters and detractors, he was one of the most cunning politicians of the 20th century and one of the most successful.

Van Dyke grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of a lawyer. He showed an extreme gift of intelligence early on and graduated high school at the age of 16. In 1941 van Dyke enrolled at Yale, where he eventually completed a degree in political science and later earned a law degree by the age of 22.

Returning to Missouri to practice law, van Dyke was encouraged by his father's firm and Kansas City's mayor to run for public office. In 1952, at the age of 26, van Dyke was elected to represent Missouri in the U.S. House of Representatives.

While elected as a Nationalist, van Dyke agreed largely with the centrist-liberal ideals of incumbent President Prescott Bush. His four years in Congress were spent building allies in the Nationalist hierarchy. In 1956, he elected to not run for a third term and instead announced his intention, at the age of thirty, to run for Governor of Missouri.

The incumbent Governor of Missouri was John Brass, a powerful Democrat of the "old party" - the Southern bloc of the Democratic Party that refused to acknowledge the changing tides in race and class relations in America. The popularity of the former President Bush and the unpopularity of old party Democratic President Richard Russell led to the defeat of Russell in his own party primary by a former Secretary of State, Thomas Sullivan, who had also served as a Senator from Iowa between 1947 and 1955 before declining to run again.

With the victory of Sullivan over right-wing hawk George Cabot, the path of the country during the prosperous 1950's was clear - away from the confrontational stance that Russell took towards France, and focused more on the economy at home. The election bore dividends for centrist Democrats and Nationalists across the country, and among those reaping the benefits was the idealistic young van Dyke, who despite his youth suddenly had a surprising amount of political capital and the attention of notable Nationalist strategists, among them Edmund Dawes and Ian Sedgwick.

Van Dyke's first term as governor brought about sweeping reform in the Missouri legal, educational and infrastructural system. Kansas City boomed in the late 1950's and even though the country was mired in a steep, nasty recession right around the same time as the Bomb Scare, van Dyke managed to narrowly win reelection in Missouri and the state was one of the first to come out of the recession in the early 1960's. The jobs in the rapidly expanding defense industry found an ally in van Dyke, who signed legislation to allow for two new military bases to open in Missouri, as well as several munitions factories that were exempted certain state tax regulations.

In early 1963, National Party heavyweights began to mull a run in 1964. President Hoover was rapidly losing popularity over a series of defense contracting scandals and had already announced his intention to decline a second term as early as the 1960 election. The Democratic front-runners, Massachusetts Governor Joe Kennedy, Jr., and Cuba Senator Daniel Marks III, both from powerful Democratic political families, were seen as favorites to win the '64 election somewhat by default.

Fearing a heavy loss in both Congress and the Presidency, National Party leaders such as Sedgwick and Cabot floated the plan of running an "unelectable" candidate in order to save money and begin thinking long-term towards 1968, when the after-effects of Hooverism had blown over (and, as they were gambling, the Democrats would have made serious mistakes in defense policy and failed to appease the growing issue of blacks attending public universities in the South). With van Dyke still debating a run at a third term as Missouri's Governor, Sedgwick approached van Dyke in summer of 1963 and suggested he take a stab at the National Party ticket. It was a considerable gamble, since van Dyke was still in his thirties and an unknown outside of Nationalist inner circles and his home state.

Political theorist Anthony Nicci, one of the more respected Nationalists of his day, teamed up with van Dyke to build the "underdog strategy" towards winning the general election. Throughout 1963, Nicci allegedly used funds acquired from his friends in the Italian-American criminal community to begin campaigning for "Slick Dick" in traditional battleground states. Most Nationalists, fearing the foreseen loss in the '64 election, were staying away from early posturing and thus van Dyke built a small following that had him as an odd front-runner for the ticket by the beginning of 1964.

It proved to be his early campaigning, with Nicci creating a carefully planned strategy, that made van Dyke a sudden force when the spring of 1964 came around. The Democrats fought a vicious primary battle, with Kennedy not securing the nomination until the convention due to a resilient Marks. Kennedy chose Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey as his running mate and with his family's clout behin him, started the infamous campaign slogan, "Who is This Guy?" The Democrats rallied behind the slogan, and believed that the power of the Kennedys - with business connections and status within the Hollywood community - would carry them in an election they were favored to win regardless.

However, in the first televised debate, van Dyke clearly upstaged Kennedy, comparing the dynastic nature of the family to the Empire and iterating a hopeful message instead of the "gloom and doom" campaign run by the Democrats, who wanted to focus more on the flaws of Hoover. When questioned about his inexperience and age, van Dyke reminded Kennedy that they had both served as state governors for eight years and "our only difference in experience is who our father is."

Kennedy demanded a second televised debate, this one held a few days before the election. Van Dyke was climbing in the polls, especially after Kennedy, in a televised interview, made his infamous "I don't mind France" statement. Nicci and the Nationalist campaign pounced, portraying Kennedy as an appeaser. In the second debate, which was hastily thrown together, Kennedy entered as the underdog this time, and instead of explaining his points as he had failed to truly do the first time around, was on the defensive from a carefully scripted plan by Nicci.

Van Dyke narrowly defeated Kennedy a few days later without winning the popular vote and by only twenty electoral votes. The Kennedys had been beaten by a Nationalist dark horse again, twenty years after Prescott Bush won the New England Faceoff.

Christopher Walken
(1943-) Walken, born and raised in New York, is considered one of the greatest baseball players to ever play the game, and the greatest catcher. He has eleven World Series titles to his name as a player, six of which he won with the Boston Paddies during their runs in the 1970's, and four as a manager. He served for thirteen years as commissioner of Major League Baseball up until his retirement in 2005.

Walken graduated from St. Mark's Preparatory in 1961 and immediately signed a contract with the Havana Cubanos. As one of only four white men on the team, Walken spent most of his rookie season in the dugout as the Cubanos won their second World Series in three years over the Liberties in 1961. Walken started as a catcher the next three years, the last of which, 1964, the Cubanos would win another World Series. In 1965 Walken was traded midseason to the Sante Fe Wolves. In 1966 and 1967, the Wolves would win the World Series with Walken as catcher.

By this time, Walken was already recognizable as one of the most seminal players in Major League Baseball. He had helped lead a mediocre Wolves team in '65 to back-to-back titles the next two years, and had four World Series rings. In 1969, he signed the biggest contract in the history of baseball with the perennial contender Detroit Tigers, who celebrated a World Series championship of their own that year.

Walken and Tigers manager Jimmy Owens got into a public dispute in the winter of 1970, and broke the story of Walken threatening to retire from baseball unless he was traded from the Tigers. The move was seen as selfish and unsportsmanlike; few suitors came forward. Walken retired during spring training of 1970, opting to not collect his fat paycheck rather than play for Owens. After a month into the 1970 season, Boston Paddies co-owner and GM Bobby Kennedy traded for Walken.

Walken would catch for the Paddies through their remarkable run of four consecutive World Series championships between 1971-74, and was the catcher for the '77 and '78 teams as well. In 1978, having played in the league for nearly twenty years, Walken retired once again and got a job as manager for the St. Louis Cardinals, who won the World Series in 1983 and 1985. He was hired as manager for the Vancouver Pioneers in 1987, and the 'Neers wound up winning the 1990 World Series over Walken's former team, the Paddies. The 'Neers repeated in 1991 with a sweep of the Detroit Tigers.

In 1992 Walken resigned as Pioneers manager suddenly, and a week later was announced as Bobby Kennedy's successor as baseball commissioner. During his time as commissioner, Walken instituted a salary cap and helped modernize the league's method of business. He also cracked down harshly on abusers of anabolic steroids after scandals about the use of the drug became prevalent in 2003, and declared that the MLB would "rid itself of the taint of cheating" by 2008. He has announced that he will retire sometime between 2012 and 2014, after grooming a suitable replacement.