Recently finished a fascinating biography on Jim Thorpe by Madison-born author David Maraniss. His Path Lit By Lightning: The Life Of Jim Thorpe is not a quick read. The 500-plus pager seems to be painstakingly researched.
I Like Maraniss as an author. He takes his time and delves into his topics. He's done bios on baseball's Roberto Clemente, football's Vince Lombardi (When Pride Still Mattered should be required reading for Green Bay Packer fans!), as well as politicians Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. He's also gone deep on non-fiction topics such as the Vietnam War (They Marched Into Sunlight) and the Rome 1960 Olympics (Rome 1960).
Thorpe was an athletic force in the early 1900s in football, track and baseball, Thorpe was the gold medal winner of both the Pentathlon and Decathlon in the 1912 Olympics. Heralded at the time as the world's greatest athlete, that's a title that has seemed to withstand the test of time. As kids, many of us read short bios on Thorpe that pointed out his medals were later stripped from him because he had been paid to pay baseball while in college.
In those times, MANY college athletes were doing just that -- but unlike Thorpe, they were doing so under assumed names. (Read the Maraniss book; it goes into greater detail than I care to here)
In his prime, and often beyond, Thorpe was a featured attraction at the ticket window (as part of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in college) the marquee performer in the early days of the National Football League with the Canton Bulldogs (and, though a figurehead, the first president of the NFL) as well as major league and minor league baseball teams.
The look at his life by Maraniss is a deep dive into Thorpe, who was proud of his heritage as a Sac and Fox Native American, generous to a fault to friends as well as those he deemed "in worse shape than me" financially. The latter trait seemed to keep Thorpe always on the brink of, and often in, money troubles.
He was always chasing a better payday, be it with six difference NFL teams, his six years in Major League Baseball or his countless years traveling from town to town, playing football or basketball or baseball to earn a buck.
Perhaps that wanderlust is what brought him to play for the Milwaukee Brewers.
Yes, you read that right, the Milwaukee Brewers. Well, not the team we currently follow, but their minor league predecessor.
Thorpe played for the 1916 Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association. Based on the statistics, he was more than adequate as well, hitting .274 with 48 stolen bases, 10 home runs (in a deadball era when entire teams didn't hit that total) and driving in 85 runs.
With the regular season ending this week, Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees broke the American League record for most home runs in a single season, getting his 62nd in game 161. Rodger Maris of the Yankees had held the record of 61 for 61 years (how's that for irony?) When Maris was chasing Babe Ruth's record of 60 homers, the pressure was so great he was losing hair in clumps -- perhaps because the New York fans wanted their preferred choice, Mickey Mantle to get the mark. Mantel clubbed 54 homers that season.
Baseball fans are well-aware that the single season mark for the MLB, set in the steroid era and often going unacknowledged by fans, is 73 by Barry.
Judge finished the year just shy of winning baseball's triple crown as he led the AL in homers (62) and RBI (131) but finished second in batting average (.311) behind Minnesota's Luis Arraez (.316).
Kudos to Albert Pujols of the hated St. Louis Cardinals for passing the 700 home run barrier for his long and successful career. Only the afore-mentioned Bonds and Hammerin' Hank Aaron hit more in their careers. Aaron, still considered by many to be THE home run king, is also top of the heap in Runs Batted In, a category where Pujols ends his career in second.
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