1880–1961 · American sportswriter · sports editor, The New York Sun
Walter Slater Trumbull was an American sportswriter who worked as sports editor of The New York Sun and wrote a nationally syndicated column. Quote Investigator describes the man credited with the 1925 epigram as a sports writer for the North American Newspaper Alliance who was known well enough to substitute for Grantland Rice — a description that matches the syndicated columnist of that name. He is the leading candidate for coiner rather than a proven author: the 1925 newspaper simply printed the line with his name attached, and he reused it in his own column in 1931.