Olympic hero Jim Thorpe's barnstorming life included one happy year playing baseball in Milwaukee
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While Olympic gold medalist and NFL Hall of Famer Jim Thorpe may have been the world's greatest athlete in his prime, he never completely conquered baseball.
But he enjoyed one of his best years in the game in Milwaukee: 1916, as a member of the minor-league Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association, playing at Borchert Field.
In a new biography, "Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe" (Simon & Schuster, publishing Aug. 9), David Maraniss tracks Thorpe's turbulent barnstorming through the chaotic world of early 20th century sports, from the height of Olympic glory to the depths of shaking hands at openings for a few bucks.
Maraniss will speak about his new book Aug. 17 during an event at Milwaukee Public Library's Centennial Hall. A Washington Post associate editor, Maraniss grew up in Madison and still spends time there. His previous books include "When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi," a definitive biography of the Packers coach; "Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero"; and "They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967."
In a case of remarkable timing, Maraniss' biography lands in the wake of the International Olympic Committee's recent action fully restoring Thorpe as gold medal winner of the decathlon and pentathlon in 1912.
Thorpe had been stripped of his Olympic victories after reporters revealed he played semi-pro baseball for small amounts of money a couple of prior summers, violating Olympic rules about amateur status.
Thorpe's quest to have his medals restored is a key thread in "Path Lit by Lightning," as Maraniss probes the hypocrisies and inanities of amateur status, apparent even back then to many level-headed observers. For example, Thorpe's American Olympic teammate, Lt. George S. Patton, was paid an Army salary to practice some of the skills he demonstrated in the modern pentathlon (a different event than the one Thorpe competed in).
Younger readers living in the name, image and likeness era, who will see a torrent of advertising featuring Olympic athletes as the 2024 Paris games draw nearer, may find Maraniss' detailed reporting of amateurism issues arcane, even bizarre. Which would be the biographer's point.
Maraniss sees Thorpe's American Indian identity as a major factor in how he was treated, characterized and exploited before, during and after the Stockholm Olympics. Thorpe and Hawaiian swimmer Duke Paoa Kahanamoku were the first indigenous Americans to win Olympic gold.
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Born in Oklahoma in 1887, Thorpe had Sac and Fox, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Menominee, French and English ancestors, the biographer reports. By tribal custom, he was considered Sac and Fox, after his father. His tribal name, Wa-tho-Huk, can be translated as the "Path Lit by Lightning" of the book's title.
Thorpe's mother Charlotte was a member of the Citizen Band Potawatomi. Her ancestors migrated from the Green Bay area south to Skunk Grove in what's now Racine County, before being later forced on to a reservation in Kansas, then later resettled in Oklahoma.
Thorpe "was one of the few Native Americans of the 20th century who people could cite and praise even if they knew little else about the indigenous experience," Maraniss writes.
He became a national figure as a football star at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a vocational institution whose assimilationist first superintendent professed the motto of "Kill the Indian, save the man." Despite not actually being a college, Carlisle battled Harvard, Army, Penn and other gridiron powers of the era, frequently beating them.
Thorpe played under coach Pop Warner, one of the villains of Maraniss' biography, who discretely compensated many Carlisle players, but threw Thorpe under the bus when the Olympic scandal broke.
The Olympic scandal did not diminish Thorpe as an attraction. He was the first true professional football star and the figurehead first president of the league that developed into the NFL. While he played parts of six seasons in major league baseball, he didn't dominate that sport. "Being a natural athlete did not translate into being a natural ballplayer," Maraniss writes, a lesson other great athletes, such as Michael Jordan, have also learned.
When the New York Giants sent him down to the minor-league Brewers, Thorpe "excelled, showing himself to be the best regular on a miserable club that lost a hundred games," Maraniss writes. Thorpe led the league by stealing 48 bases. He also swatted 10 homers and hit a respectable .274.
Thorpe must have liked Milwaukee's Borchert Field. When he returned there a few years later as a member of the Toledo Mud Hens, he hit three homers in a game against the Brewers.
Maraniss often quotes from contemporary newspaper coverage of Thorpe, which was frequently stereotypical, sometimes breathtakingly racist.
When his sports career petered out, Thorpe kept hustling to make an increasingly penurious living. He appeared in dozens of walk-on and bit parts in movies, sometimes in stereotypical roles. But he also worked hard to improve working conditions and roles for fellow Native Americans in Hollywood.
Thorpe hurt himself with alcohol abuse and other erratic behavior. Admired around the world, he was frequently treated like a second-class citizen at home. While Maraniss is frank about the man's troubles, his book does not have a gloomy tone.
He writes:
"Thorpe's life might be best understood not as tragic dissolution but as gritty perseverance. With all the obstacles the world and his own failings put in his way, from the duplicity of powerful men to his personal struggle with alcohol, Jim kept going."
Contact Jim Higgins at jim.higgins@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @jhiggy.
If you go
David Maraniss will talk about "Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe" at 6:30 p.m. Aug. 17 at Milwaukee Public Library's Centennial Hall, 733 N. 8th St. Admission is free, but advance registration is required: davidmaranissmpl.eventbrite.com.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Jim Thorpe's bio 'Path Lit by Lightning' includes Milwaukee year
