John Thorn | |
|---|---|
 Thorn in August 2010 | |
| Born | April 17, 1947 Stuttgart, Germany |
| Occupation | Author, historian, publisher |
| Language | English |
| Alma mater | Beloit College |
| Genres | Sports, history, cultural affairs |
| Subjects | Baseball, football, basketball, New York, history |
| Spouse | Erica Freudenberger |
| Children | 3 |
John Abraham Thorn (born April 17, 1947) is a German-born American sports historian, author, and publisher. Since 2011, he has served as the Official Baseball Historian for Major League Baseball. [1]
Thorn was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in a displaced person's camp to which his Polish Jewish parents had come as refugees. Less than two years after Thorn was born, his family emigrated to the United States, and initially settled in The Bronx, New York. [2]
Of his love for baseball, Thorn said: "I fell in love with [baseball] cards before I loved the game, when I discovered that baseball was something that all the kids on my street corner cared about... I was an immigrant kid and was looking for a way into America. With my background I saw myself as an underdog, and so Brooklyn had to be my team. I began watching the game seriously when I was eight, in 1955, on my Admiral television, but I had already begun to follow their exploits in the daily newspapers my father brought home with him each night." [3]
As a teen, he played baseball and basketball at Richmond Hill High School. [4] However, at age 19 he suffered a stroke. "It was severe," he said, "knocking out my left-side function for months as well as patches of personal memory — though not the powerful visual memory I retain for images and facts and statistics." The stroke left him with a limp and precluded his further participation in athletic activities. [5]
Thorn attended Beloit College, from which he graduated in 1968. [2] [6]
Thorn is the author and editor of numerous books, including Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball , [2] Total Football: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Football, Treasures of the Baseball Hall of Fame, The Hidden Game of Baseball , [2] The Glory Days: New York Baseball 1947–1957, and The Armchair Book of Baseball. [2] His 2011 book, Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, published by Simon & Schuster, was an in-depth chronicle of the seminal development and pioneers of the sport. A New York Times review of the latter book referred to Thorn as "a researcher of colossal diligence." [7]
Thorn is also the co-author with Pete Palmer and Bob Carroll of The Hidden Game of Football and with them co-editors of Total Football . His book New York 400, a graphic history of the city timed for its quadricentennial, created with the Museum of the City of New York and Running Press, was published in September 2009. Thorn is a columnist for Voices, the publication of the New York Folklore Society.
He founded Total Sports Publishing and served as its publisher from 1998 to 2002. [8]
Thorn served as the senior creative consultant for the 1994 Ken Burns documentary Baseball . [6]
In 2004, Thorn discovered documentation tracing the origins of baseball in America to 1791 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. [9] He has also attempted to shed light on the contributions of 19th century pioneers of the game, while debunking common misconceptions. "I don't want anyone to think of me as a crusader on behalf of causes," he wrote. "I'm only interested in setting the story straight, and in recognizing other stories for what they are, some of which are legend." [10] Despite the claims of various localities to being the "birthplace of baseball," Thorn simply follows facts. "Abner Doubleday, Santa Claus, and Dracula," he notes, "are equally mythic figures." [9]
In June 2006, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) bestowed on Thorn its highest accolade, the Bob Davids Award. The award honors those whose contributions to SABR and baseball reflect the ingenuity, integrity, and self-sacrifice of the late founder and past president of SABR, L. Robert "Bob" Davids. [11]
On March 1, 2011, John Thorn was named Official Baseball Historian for Major League Baseball, [6] succeeding the late Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times baseball writer Jerome Holtzman, who served in the role from 1999 until his death in 2008. [1]
Thorn played an important role in the retroactive recategorization of the defunct Negro leagues, which existed during the segregation of baseball, as major leagues. [12] On May 28, 2024, Major League Baseball said that statistics from the Negro Leagues will officially become part of the MLB's historical record. [13]
Thorn has three sons from two previous marriages. [5] He is currently married to Erica Freudenberger, former director of the Red Hook Public Library in Red Hook, New York, and who is currently affiliated with the Southern Adirondack Library System. [14]
He and his wife live in Catskill, New York where they moved in 2010. He claims to have been drawn to the town because of its "slow pace," which suits him because, as Thorn asserts, "I pride myself on being the world's most boring man." [15]
Thorn's great-grandfather was magician Ernest Thorn; the two share their middle name "Abraham". [16]
The history of baseball in the United States dates to the 19th century, when boys and amateur enthusiasts played a baseball-like game by their own informal rules using homemade equipment. The popularity of the sport grew and amateur men's ball clubs were formed in the 1830–50s. Semi-professional baseball clubs followed in the 1860s, and the first professional leagues arrived in the post-American Civil War 1870s.
Alexander Joy Cartwright Jr. was a founding member of the New York Knickerbockers Base Ball Club in the 1840s. Although he was an inductee of the Baseball Hall of Fame and he was sometimes referred to as a "father of baseball", the importance of his role in the development of the game has been disputed.
Roy Campanella, nicknamed "Campy", was an American professional baseball player, primarily as a catcher. The Philadelphia native played in the Negro leagues and Mexican League for nine years before entering the minor leagues in 1946. He made his Major League Baseball (MLB) debut in 1948 for the Brooklyn Dodgers, for whom he played until 1957. His playing career ended when he was paralyzed in an automobile accident in January 1958. He is considered one of the greatest catchers in the history of the game.
The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is a membership organization dedicated to fostering the research and dissemination of the history and record of baseball, primarily through the use of statistics. The organization was founded in Cooperstown, New York, on August 10, 1971, at a meeting of 16 “statistorians” coordinated by sportswriter Bob Davids. The organization now reports a membership of over 7,500 and is based in Phoenix, Arizona.
Mark Henry Belanger, nicknamed "the Blade," was an American professional baseball player and coach. He played 18 seasons in Major League Baseball as a shortstop from 1965 through 1982, most notably as a member of the Baltimore Orioles dynasty that won six American League East division titles, five American League pennants, and two World Series championships between 1966 and 1979.
Joshua Gibson was an American baseball catcher primarily in the Negro leagues. In 1972, he became the second Negro league player to be inducted in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Monford Merrill "Monte" Irvin was an American left fielder and right fielder in the Negro leagues and Major League Baseball (MLB) who played with the Newark Eagles, New York Giants (1949–1955) and Chicago Cubs (1956). He grew up in New Jersey and was a standout football player at Lincoln University. Irvin left Lincoln to spend several seasons in Negro league baseball. His career was interrupted by military service from 1943 to 1945.
Hilton Lee Smith was an American right-handed pitcher in Negro league baseball. He pitched alongside Satchel Paige for the Kansas City Monarchs and Bismarck Churchills between 1932 and 1948. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001.
Willard Jessie Brown, nicknamed "Home Run" Brown, was an American baseball player who played outfielder in the Negro leagues for the Kansas City Monarchs and in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the St. Louis Browns. For the Monarchs, he led the Negro American League in hits for eight seasons and runs batted in (RBI) seven times during his career. His eight times leading a league in hits is tied with Ty Cobb for most in baseball history while his seven times leading in RBI for a league is tied for second-most in baseball history with Josh Gibson; Gibson and Brown also finished in the top two in batting average in five seasons each, most in Negro league history. He is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
A "cup of coffee" is a North American sports idiom for a short time spent by a minor league player at the major league level. The idea behind the term is that the player was only in the big leagues long enough to have a cup of coffee before being returned to the minors. The term originated in baseball and is extensively used in ice hockey, both of whose professional leagues utilize extensive farm systems; it is rarely used in basketball or American football since neither the NBA nor NFL have implemented a true farm system.
John Francis "Shano" Collins was an American right fielder and first baseman in Major League Baseball for the Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox.
John Wesley Covington was an American professional baseball left fielder, who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1956 through 1966 for the Milwaukee Braves, Chicago White Sox, Kansas City Athletics, Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs, and Los Angeles Dodgers. He stood 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m), weighing 205 pounds. Covington batted left-handed and threw right-handed.
David Pietrusza is an American author and historian.
Bud Fowler, born "John W. Jackson", was an American baseball player, manager, and club organizer. He is the earliest known African-American player in organized professional baseball. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022.
King Solomon "Sol" White was an American professional baseball infielder, manager and executive, and one of the pioneers of the Negro leagues. An active sportswriter for many years, he wrote the first definitive history of black baseball in 1907. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.
Saul Walter Rogovin was an American professional baseball player.
Jerome Holtzman was an American sportswriter known for his writings on baseball who served as the official historian for Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1999 until his death.
Gary Gillette is a baseball writer, author, and editor. He is co-editor of both the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia and the ESPN Football Encyclopedia. For both series of books, he partnered with noted statistician Pete Palmer, as well as writers Sean Lahman and Matt Silverman.
Peter C. Bjarkman was an American historian, freelance author, and commentator on the baseball played in Cuba after the 1959 Communist revolution. He provided regular internet commentary on Cuban League baseball as a contributing writer for LaVidaBaseball.com and as Senior Writer for the U.S.-based internet website BaseballdeCuba.com and appeared frequently on radio and television sports talk shows as an observer and analyst of the Cuban national sport. He also published more than three dozen books ranging in scope from Major League Baseball history and college and professional basketball history to sports biographies for young adult readers. In spring 2017 Bjarkman was honored with a SABR Henry Chadwick Award, the society's highest research recognition established in 2009, "to honor baseball's great researchers – historians, statisticians, annalists, and archivists – for their invaluable contributions to making baseball the game that links America's present with its past".
George Lawrence Lester is a Negro league baseball author, historian, statistical researcher, and lecturer.
I played in Madison Square Garden in the semifinal championships in nineteen sixty one from Richmond Hill High School.
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