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
baseball player games
Donning a glove for a backyard toss, or watching a ball game, or just reflecting upon our baseball days, we are players again, forever young.
games play score
Keep score, which is what the Talmud recognizes as a distinction between work and play that renders a game unfit for the Sabbath.
games ties events
If I haven't made myself clear, this worrisome chain of events describes the game of the nineteenth century.
team player games
Do we settle on a regional team because we can go to its ballpark and see its games on television? Or do we choose a team as our favorite because it has an especially appealing player, a Barry Bonds or an Ichiro?
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.
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.
adult childhood enters last retire wonder
If this is how children's play enters the adult world, is it any wonder that adults long to retire so that they can at last get their childhood right?
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.
woe
There was much woe and lamentation in the seventies that the game was dying.
attempt born capital control exert following league national
The National League was born the following year, as an attempt to exert the control of capital over labor.
major teams
This illuminates not only fans' interest in major league teams but also the minors and even Little League.
running thinking youth
I think that much of this was running in background as I contemplated whether or not to attend the PS 99 reunion, although I certainly anticipated that I would not; it smelled like death, not youth.
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.
winning losing life-is
Life is more about losing than winning.