WHY JIM THORPE NOW

Why read a biography of Jim Thorpe now? Bunch of reasons, but let's start with a few cued to 2012.

     This year is the centennial of the Fifth Olympiad in Stockholm when Thorpe, the American Indian out of nowhere, won gold medals in the pentathlon AND the decathlon. No other Olympian has ever done that in these multi-sport events made up of elemental feats that have been the foundation of all athletics since the ancient Greeks. Thorpe also won both by huge margins. Nobody would match them, either. Thorpe's Olympic time in the decathlon 1,500-meter race would hold until 1972. That's 60 years. Incredible. 

      However, Thorpe's Olympic time and distance records are not official. They were stricken from the record in 1913 when it was revealed that he had played minor league baseball in 1909 and 1910. As doping is now, professionalism -- taking money for playing sports -- was the threshold issue back then, especially for the Olympics. Amateurism was pretty much bogus, but it ruled the day (read Native American Son to learn more). The Thorpe affair was the mother of all sports scandals, still rated at the top by the 2011 WORLD ALMANAC.

     Thorpe's records were never put back. Oh, yes, there was a sort of posthumous  "reinstatement" by the IOC in 1982. The supposed happy ending. Thorpe was re-entered by the IOC as a "competitor" in the 1912 Games and listed as a co-gold medal winner with the original second-place athletes who had been promoted to first place when Thorpe was erased. Duplicate medals were cast from the original mold and given to his children. But the "record" was not changed. 

     Result: two "official" gold medal winners of both complex, multi-sport events, an absurdity. Thorpe's individual performances in each event were kept off the record probably because if they were reinstated, the co-winner status would look even more bizarre. Sports Illustrated called the whole mess the ultimate asterisk in sports. The first international celebrity athlete, the first Olympic super-star, remains today, a century later, a phantom contender, there but not there. 

   Thorpe's demotion in 1913 reverberated around the world for months, years and decades. He was seen by just about everybody except the AAU and the IOC as the outsider made scapegoat to an elitist and exclusionary ideal.       

     But the Swedes had shown the world how to put on a proper Olympiad when the whole idea of an international multi-sports event was new. The four Olympiads prior to Stockholm had ranged from rudimentary to disastrous. It was by no means certain that this movement begun by Pierre de Coubertin in 1896 would survive (the 1916 Games were supposed to take place in Berlin). Without the beautifully organized and successful Stockholm Games 100 years ago, we might not be looking forward to London this summer. 

     Equally important to the survival of the modern Olympic movement in 1912 was Jim Thorpe. He glamorized the Games. He thrilled the world with a series of athletic performances that set a standard sports fans would anticipate every four years (except during World Wars) since. 

     2012 twist: Thorpe did those 15 events in Stockholm without the aid of any enhancement drug or even the level of training his competitors enjoyed. The machine of his own body, aided by his ability to observe and then mimic the best athletes around him, was enough. More than enough.

     

EXTRA, EXTRA, READ ALL ABOUT IT! NAS OUT IN PAPERBACK!

When the Knopf hardcover of NATIVE AMERICAN SON rolled off the printing press in October 2010 I thought of the Ford Assembly line in 1927. Was my book like the last Model T chugging out of the plant in Highland Park, Michigan exactly 83 years before? The last of the old-style books, lovingly designed by the ace team at Knopf, then edited, copy edited, proof read, sent to a printer, and so on? Would I show this artifact of the early 21st century to my grandchildren one day as proof of how really old their grandmother is?

     Well, rumors of the traditional book's death, so far, have turned out to be greatly exaggerated. Of course, at the same time, nobody knows anything. Which means it's pretty good news -- let's agree to call it that -- to have a paperback edition of your hardcover coming out in 2012. Made it just under the wire! 

     The new paperback looks great (see cover image at the top of the blog page). Bison Books at the University of Nebraska did a fine job. The (few) errors that inevitably popped up in the hardcover have been corrected (I know. Thorpe did not play in the 1913 World Series). Snippets from some of the great reviews are on the front page, probably the best thing, to its author, about any paperback. More review excerpts on the back cover. And so on. 

     So far, so good in this crazy book biz. We can still hold the thing we built, and that we hope will last, in our hands. Yay.

That Famous Letter to the AAU

On January 27, 1913, 101 years ago today, Glenn S. "Pop" Warner delivered a letter from Jim Thorpe to James E. Sullivan, the secretary-treasurer of the American Amateur Union (AAU) at his office in New York. In the letter Thorpe admitted to having played professional baseball in the minor leagues during the summers of 1909 and 1910. "Professional" meant that he had been paid to play.
     This was explosive information. Six months before, at the Fifth Olympiad in Stockholm, Thorpe had won gold medals by huge margins in both the pentathlon and decathlon, astonishing the world as the first super-athlete as the modern Olympic movement was struggling to survive. In order to qualify to compete, he had had to sign a form that stated he was an "amateur" -- meaning that he had never accepted money for any kind of athletic endeavor. 
     So, when a newspaper headline on January 22, 1913, six months later, revealed that Thorpe was no amateur, the result was what is still considered the biggest sports scandal ever. After congratulating itself for the American team's generally spectacular performance in Stockholm, the American sports establishment, humiliated, rushed to find its scapegoat.
     Actually, Warner wrote the letter to Sullivan and persuaded his star athlete at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to sign it. Warner also insisted he had no idea that Thorpe had played baseball those two summers. In fact, he knew exactly where Thorpe had been and what he'd been doing. But Warner, ambitious, often unscrupulous, was not going to take the fall for his athlete in the scandal that had quickly assumed international proportions. 
    Here is the full text of what soon became a famous letter, scrutinized and debated about for the rest of the century -- and beyond:


Carlisle, Pa. Jan. 26, 1913
James E. Sullivan
Dear Sir:
    When the interview with Mr. Clancy stating that I had played baseball on the Winston-Salem team was shown to me I told Mr. Warner that it was not true and in fact I did not play on that team. But so much as been said in the papers since then that I went to the school authorities this morning and told them just what there was in the stories.
     I played baseball at Rocky Mount and at Fayetteville, N.C. in the summer ofd 1909 and 1910 under my own name. On the same teams I played with were several college men from the north who were earning money by ball playing during their vacations and who were regarded as amateurs at home. IO did not play for the money there was in it because my property brings me in enough money to live on, but because I liked to play ball. I was not wise inthe ways of theworls and did not realize this was wrong, and that it would make me a professional in track sports, although I learned from the other payers that it would be better for me not to let anyone know that I was playing and for that reason I never told anyone at the school about it until today.
     In the fall of 1911 I applied for readmission to this school and came back to continue muy studies and take par tin the school sports and of course I wanted to get on the Olympic team and take that trip to Stockholm. I had Mr. Warner send in my application for registering in the A.A>U., after I had answered the questions and signed it and I received my card allowing me to compete on the winter meets and other track sports. I never realized until now what a big mistake I made by keeping it a secret about my ball playing and I am sorry I did so. I hope I would be partly excused because of the fact that I was simply as Indian school boy [Thorpe would turn 26 in 1913] and did not know all about such things. In fact, I did not know that I was doing wrong because I was doing what I knew several other college men  had one, except that they did not use their own names.
     I have always liked sports and only played or run races for the fun of the things and never to earn money. I have received offers amounting to thousands of dollars since my victories last summer, but I have turned them all down because I did not care to makes money from my athletic skill. I am very sorry, Mr. Sullivan, to have it all spoiled in this way and I hop the Amateur Athletic Union and the people will not be too hard in judging me.
Yours truly,
James Thorpe

Same Old., Same Old ...

Joe Nocera wrote a terrific piece in today's Sunday New York Times Magazine on college athletes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/lets-start-paying-college-athletes.html?_r=1&hpw.
They should be paid, he says, and thereby end "the hypocrisy that permeates big-money college sports."


He is totally right and the only thing missing from the piece, at least to me, was a paragraph that traced the current mess right back to the beginnings of college football about a century ago. For some of that backstory, read my biography of Jim Thorpe, NATIVE AMERICAN SON: THE LIFE AND SPORTING LEGEND OF JIM THORPE (Knopf, 2010). 


Thorpe stepped onto the gridiron just as the rules of football finally settled into the form we would recognize as the modern game. His coach, Glenn S. "Pop" Warner, was a master manipulator of those rules. He also set up a football machine at Thorpe's Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania that is a precursor of today's collegiate football enterprise.

Not that he was the only one. The coaches at Yale, Harvard and other top-level football schools turned a blind eye to alumni payments "under the table," not to mention to other perks that made the financial situation of top collegiate athletes very comfortable indeed. 

Fascinating stuff. Let's see if Nocera's tough thinking produces concrete results in the NCAA...

My Best of 2011

A handful of my very favorite personal highlights of a great year -- 
Professional: Taking NATIVE AMERICAN SON on the road

• Charlottesville, VA: Speaking at the terrific Ragged Mountain Running Shop during the Virginia Festival of the Book
• Los Angeles, CA: Appearing on the "Beyond the Icon" panel with Richard Schickel, Yunte Huang and Leslie Brody at the Los Angeles Times Festival of the Book at USC 
• Oklahoma City, OK: Being keynote speaker at the Jim Thorpe Association's Leadership Luncheon -- and selling LOTS of books
• New York City: Speaking to the Actors' Fund in the venerable Milton Berle Room of the Friar's Club 
• Atlantic City, NJ: Speaking at the annual Pop Lloyd Negro League Celebration and having the privilege of meeting several former Negro League players and hearing their wonderful stories
• Feedback: Hearing, all year, from discerning readers such as Douglas Brinkley, how much they enjoyed NATIVE AMERICAN SON.
• Awards: Winning the annual research awards from both SABR (baseball) and PFRA (pro football) - the stat guys who know EVERYTHING about their respective sports.

Personal: Friends, Family and Community

• Deepening old friendships
• Making many new ones 
• Being with my son, my daughter, and my two-year-old grandson
• Living in and loving NYC, Westchester County, NY and Rockbridge County, VA = perfect trio.

On to 2012...

50 Years Ago Today - Disastrous Berlin Premiere of JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG

Within sight of the Reichstag ruins and 700 yards from the brand-new Berlin Wall dividing the city, Stanley Kramer’s JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG had its world premiere a half-century ago on December 14, 1961 before a stunned, silent audience of prominent Germans – and 300 reporters from 26 countries. “No applause, no sobs, no tentative laughs to relieve the tension,” reported the New York Herald Tribune. Few showed up for the lavish post-party.

In a century marked with unprecedented conflict and a year, 1961, that often felt like the edge of Armageddon, JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG marks an important pivot after which popular feeling, at least in this country, began to face seriously the horrors of what would soon come to be generally called “the Holocaust.”

The sensational trial of Adolf Eichmann on 15 counts, including crimes against humanity, had concluded in Jerusalem a week before with a guilty verdict. The death sentence was read out the day after the movie’s premiere, December 15. By Christmas commentators were suggesting that the Nuremburg trials were the legal and moral precedent that “authorized brave little Israel” to hunt down and prosecute Eichmann. Hannah Arendt had reported on the trial for The New Yorker and the last four words of the subtitle of her subsequent book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, would become a catch phrase of history.

Preceding the film’s premiere had been a year of stunning Cold War brinksmanship. In April the Bay of Pigs debacle kicked off John Kennedy’s first year as U.S. president. Encouraged by this apparent incompetence of the American leader, Soviet leader Khrushchev bullied and harangued Kennedy at their June meeting in Vienna, threatening war if his demands to alter the status of Berlin were not met. All summer the world tensed itself for war. By August 17 the Berlin Wall was done, built in five days. September 1 U.S. seismographs discovered that the Soviets had resumed testing of major nuclear devices.

Meanwhile, director Kramer, screenwriter Abby Mann and United Artists were working on JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG. Shooting took place after two weeks in February of rehearsals at the Revue Studio in Hollywood and then moved to the site of the original trials in the Palace of Justice in Nuremburg and to the still-rubble-strewn streets of Berlin.

The meticulous Kramer was known for “message” pictures (THE DEFIANT ONES, ON THE BEACH, INHERIT THE WIND), but JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG was made with a particular passion and purpose. Since the end of World War II in 1945, a former U.S ally, the USSR, had become an enemy. And a former enemy, Germany – at least the Western part of the divided country -- was an essential Cold War ally in the fight against communism. As a result, it was considered "a breach of good manners in polite society,” as the film’s screenwriter Abby Mann recalled, to bring up the Nazi extermination of the Jews for fear of offending Germany.

The Nuremburg war crime trails had been a first in international jurisprudence, establishing the legal concept of crimes against humanity. The first and best known was the trial of key Nazi leaders, including Rudolf Hess and Albert Speer, from 1945 to 1946. JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG was based on the third trial, in 1947, that prosecuted 16 functionaries in the German judicial system (the script condensed the number down to four). When Mann discovered in the late 1950s that none of the jurists convicted (most of them were found guilty, some given life sentences) were still in prison, he wondered if the same attitude that allowed the Nazis to come to power was somehow related to their release (Arendt would speculate along similar lines during the Eichmann trial). That question inspired Mann’s original 1959 Playhouse 90 teleplay.

The show was a sensation. Mann claimed to be the first, both in the TV and film versions, to show documentary footage of concentration camps to a broad audience. “Nobody wanted to remember the camps,” he recalled at the time. The American Gas Company, a sponsor of the teleplay, insisted that the word “gas” be deleted from the script with the result, cracked one reviewer, that “Six million Jews died in . . . chambers.”

Kramer figured the only way the movie version would fly at the box office was to load it up with stars. The New Yorker would call it “a judicial GRAND HOTEL.” Marlene Dietrich was the “good German,” Spencer Tracy the crusty American judge, Maximilian Schell would win an Oscar for his portrayal of the defense attorney. Judy Garland, fragile, was in her first film in five years (on April 23, 1962, she would give her great Carnegie Hall concert). Montgomery Clift, drinking heavily, worked for free, his face wrecked by a car crash. Other stars: Richard Widmark, a very young William Shatner, and Burt Lancaster as Emil Janning, the Nazi judge who gives the final indictment of his own culture (‘Where were we? ... Were we deaf, dumb and blind?”).

The movie “opened and closed” that night in Berlin and would not be released in Germany until after the mini-series HOLOCAUST was a hit on German television 20 years later. Former United Artists executive and biographer Steven Bach would call JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG “one of the last of its sort before the movie industry’s capitulation to television made such subject matter impossible except on television.”

It wasn't a great movie, but it was an effective one. It was made to remind the world, as The New Yorker summed it up at the time, “of nothing less than the degree of our accountability as members of the human race, for the life and well-being of every other member of the race.” 

11-11-11: "Crippled Jimmy Thorpe" v. Harvard

One hundred years ago today Jim Thorpe was the star of one of collegiate football's most spectacular games: Carlisle Indian Industrial School v. Harvard. For the full story read my NATIVE AMERICAN SON: THE LIFE AND SPORTING LEGEND OF JIM THORPE (paperback due out in March 2012). 

     For a teaser, click on http://www.amazon.com/Native-American-Son-Sporting-Legend/dp/0375413243 and plug "Harvard" into the search box to read the section of the book that starts on page 101: 

The stage was now set, public interest “smoking hot,” for “the battle of the year," Carlisle versus Harvard. Harvard's coach, the tall, patrician, snobbish and belligerent Percy Haughton, wrote to Pop Warner [Carlisle's coach] before the game warning him that if Carlisle used a Warner trick -- sewing half-football patches on the front of the jerseys of the backs -- Harvard would cancel the game. Haughton told his second-string to suit up to start the game, conserving his varsity's strength for their next games against Dartmouth and Yale, and left for New Haven to scout the Yale-Brown game.  As one Carlisle player said,  “We pointed to this game because it meant more prestige than any other. On the other hand Harvard didn’t consider us much.” 

     At game time “Crippled Jimmy Thorpe,” as The Boston Sunday Globe described him, had his still-injured right leg heavily wrapped with “a basketweave of strapping adhesive plaster running almost from his toe to his knee.” The game would set him up as the enduring, punishing model of the iron man who plays on regardless of physical handicap. Injuries -- Jim suffered few of them -- only made him more focused. Revealing a superstitious side to his character, he pointed out that this was the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the new century and eleven was his lucky number. 

            The game was epic. “Probably,” claimed the Kansas Star, “the most spectacular playing ever witnessed.”