Sports fans love to disagree and debate over teams or individual athletes’ stats, records, and accomplishments. Watch a few minutes of any sports talk show, or listen to a post-game podcast, and you’ll get just a hint of what I’m talking about. Better yet, just hang out in a sports bar during a game. I touched on this topic a couple weeks ago in an article about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For years, I’ve listened to (and participated in) various versions of this age-old activity. As a former competitive swimmer, I was pretty awed by Mark Spitz in the early 70s. He was frequently referred to as the best Olympic swimmer of all time; several years later, Michael Phelps figuratively swam up and said, ‘Hold my beer…’.
While I enjoy the old, “Top 20 (insert position, team, or game) of all time” debates, there is one version of this I enjoy most:
The Greatest Athlete of All Time
James Francis Thorpe was born in the late 1880s, a member of the Sac and Fox Indian Nation in what would later become the state of Oklahoma. He was one of 11 kids. As often happened in those days, several didn’t survive to adulthood. His twin brother Charlie died at age 9. At 16, Jim went
Jim Thorpe joined the Canton Bulldogs football team in 1915. While with the team, they won three American Professional Football Association championships.
Historical Collection
to the Carlyle Indian School in Pennsylvania. There, he began working with his track (and later, football) coach, Glenn “Pop” Warner.
His athletic resume is so utterly impressive, I could not begin to do it justice. David Maraniss wrote “Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe.” It’s an excellent biography. It’s close to 700 pages long; it would be an insult to pretend that this little anecdote is a scholarly study of Thorpe’s accomplishments. However, I’m not above condensing it down to a paragraph or two.
Thorpe was a 3-time All American, and a 5-sport college athlete. He took Gold in the 1912 Olympic Games in both the Pentathlon and Decathlon. From 1915 to 1928, he played for 7 professional football teams. He also served as the newly formed NFL’s first president in 1920. From 1913 to 1919, he played professional baseball. And, in 1927 and 1928, he played professional basketball. (Yes, you read that timeline correctly – those professional careers overlap.) Oh, and by the way, he also COACHED.
There are a lot of stories and claims about him. While not entirely verifiable, they make for good conversation. When Gustaf V (King of Sweden) crowned him with a laurel wreath in the 1912 Olympic games, he said, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in all the world.” Jim purportedly replied, “Thanks, King.”
His life wasn’t especially easy, though. His Olympic status was challenged because he (along with other students at his school) had played “semi-professional baseball” for a couple summers. By today’s definitions, it would be considered a scholarship or a stipend, and he was encouraged to do so by his coaches. But it served as an opportunity for jealous rivals of the time to get one over on him. He also struggled with alcoholism later in life. And he was generous to a fault. Even when down on his own luck, he was known to give freely to others. He traveled a lot in his later years, going from town to town, making celebrity appearances, working as an extra in movies, and doing odd jobs.
It is during that period that his story becomes more personal to me. In 1945, he and his wife stayed for a couple of weeks at a property that my grandfather owned. Jim was a big, likable guy, and he made quite an impression on my dad (who was about 5 at the time.) My three brothers and I grew up hearing all about Jim Thorpe.
March 28th was the anniversary of Jim Thorpe’s passing in 1953. Jim was 65 years old.
So, who’s my pick of the most prolific athlete of all time? In case you haven’t guessed, I’m with old King Gustaf on this one.
-Toph
