This book, by David Maraniss, is subtitled, The Life of Jim Thorpe. It is the latest and probably the definitive biography of Jim Thorpe, likely the greatest athlete America has ever produced. I first read a biography of Thorpe when I was in grade school. Here I am decades later reading another biography or Jim Thorpe and I shall never feel the need to read another. By the way, Path Lit By Lightning is one translation of Thorpe’s Indian name.
For those unfamiliar with the story, Jim Thorpe was an American Indian from Oklahoma who won two Olympic gold medals at the summer games held in Stockholm in 1912. The medals were for the decathlon and pentathlon. Besides the two medals he received two spectacular trophies and was called the world’s greatest athlete by the King of Sweden, who presented the awards.
Back in America, he was not only the best track and field athlete in the world but also the best football player in the country and also played professional baseball. He was instrumental in the formation of what became the National Football League.
Unfortunately, he was stripped of his Olympic medals and awards after it was found that he had played a summer of professional baseball, thus he was not an amateur athlete. He would spend the rest of his life trying to right this injustice.
One of the other decathletes in Stockholm in 1912 was Avery Brundage, another American, who would be the primary figure in frustrating Thorpe’s attempts to get his medals reinstated. Brundage was a failed athlete but became the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee and later the chairman of the International Olympic Committee.
Another athlete in Stockholm was George Patton, Jr., who would become a prominent American general in World War 2. About the same time, Thorpe played football against Army, whose team included a starter named Dwight Eisenhower and a bench-sitter named Omar Bradley. Within a few months, Thorpe had encountered the three men who would become the most famous American generals of WW2. At the they were all unknowns while Thorpe was famous. Thorpe’s team, Carlisle, won the game against Army.
While Thorpe’s baseball career wasn’t as great as other sports, he did play in a world series and was friends with Babe Ruth. For one year, both played in Boston, Ruth for the Red Sox and Thorpe for the Boston Braves.
While all this sounds like a dream, his life was more of a nightmare. He tried to play sports professionally for as long as he could. After that, he struggled with alcohol, moved constantly while trying to make a living, held hundreds of jobs, each for a short time, was a bad husband to three wives, neglected his seven children and eventually died in a trailer park, dead broke. He was destitute, desperate, drinking cheap wine and far removed from his fields of glory.
Eventually, he had his medals returned, posthumously, 70 years later. The medals weren’t the real ones, and the trophies were never returned.
On February 11, 1950, the AP announced the results of a survey of sports writers and broadcasters for the best athletes of the first half of the 20th Century. The results were:
- Jim Thorpe
- Babe Ruth
- Jack Dempsey
- Ty Cobb
- Bobby Jones
- Joe Louis
- Red Grange
- Jesse Owens
- Lou Gehrig
- Bronco Nagurski
To give you an idea, Thorpe got 252 first-place votes and 875 total points. Second place Ruth got 86 first-place votes and 539 total points. The votes trailed off dramatically after Ruth. Thorpe was voted number one by a mile.
Jim Thorpe lived a tragic life. This biography is definitive and extremely well researched. There are all kinds of interesting asides about the characters who came in and out of Thorpe’s life. Some of the details of how sports have changed are really fascinating too. During Thorpe’s football career, the field was shortened from 110 yards to 100. The forward pass was introduced! Meanwhile, Thorpe could punt the ball from one end zone to the other!
Unfortunately, I can’t recommend this book to you. The first thing is, the book, at 574 pages of text, is too damn long. Maybe I wouldn’t have found it too long but for the second reason I can’t recommend it: it is too depressing to read. After his early athletic exploits, the rest of Thorpe’s life was a mess, much of it his own doing. I’d read a couple chapters and go to bed in a funk. It is a true story, but there is not a happy ending.
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