John Thorn
John Thorn
John Thornis a sports historian, author, publisher, and cultural commentator. Since March 1, 2011, he has been the Official Baseball Historian for Major League Baseball...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth17 April 1947
CountryUnited States of America
woe
There was much woe and lamentation in the seventies that the game was dying.
major teams
This illuminates not only fans' interest in major league teams but also the minors and even Little League.
continuity family gives left provided talk
For many of us, sport has provided the continuity in our lives, the alternative family to the one we left behind. It gives us something to talk about, to preen about, to care about.
cincinnati citizens rooted
But the citizens of Cincinnati loved their Reds because they won, no matter what their addresses had been the year before. They rooted for the Old-English 'C' on the players' shirts.
pain home greek
This was nostalgia in the literal Greek sense: the pain of not being able to return to one's home and family.
hands data tables
Except in expert hands, stats can get in the way of story; an array of data that might better be presented in a table instead clogs up sentences.
father son years
Better than anything else in our culture, it enables fathers and sons to speak on a level playing field while building up from within a personal history of shared experience - a group history - that may be tapped into at will in years to come.
anecdotes form
I am opposed, naturally, to regurgitating anecdote or any other form of received wisdom, unless it is characterized as such.
summer hero boys
The heroes of our youth grow old - 'the boys of summer in their ruin,' in Dylan Thomas's verse - yet we seem the same.
player awards pay
Award trophies, as opposed to letting the players define and claim their own. Ultimately, pay them to play so that their activity not only resembles work but is work.
failing egotistical concern
My egotistical concern was less that I would fail to relate to my classmates than that they would know nothing of my uniquely tortured life's course and, thus, me.
pride men bags
We know these men are professionals whose services are up for bid and whose bags are packed, and yet we call them our own and take personal, even civic pride in their accomplishments.
winning losing life-is
Life is more about losing than winning.
appeals fans local ourselves pleasure
We are fans because the game also appeals to our local pride, our pleasure in thinking of ourselves as, yes, Americans but nonetheless different from residents of other towns, other states, other regions.