Mar 05 2011 09:40 PM
Re: SABR
That could pretty much sum up too many bios of too many almost great folks who were born in the wrong time or wrong race or wrong family or wrong tax bracket.
He was exploited for strike one, unjustly treated for strike two, and the booze was strike three. Ugh.
Thorpe's college football career was almost a comic book joke. Beating the team's longjumpers sarcastically in street clothes, Warner sticks him on the track team and refuses to let the guy go out for football. When he reluctantly lets Thorpe practice with the team, thinking he'd quit after seeing how much less fun it is to run with guys hitting you, he grabs the ball runs through the defense like a hot knife through butter, turns around, runs back through them again, and flips the ball back to Warner.
He typically scored every point his team put on the board, running the ball, kicking the ball, returning the ball on defense. He once had a 92-yard touchdown run nullified by a teammate's penalty and he turned around and ran 97 yards for a score on the next play. His college career is filled with ridiculous Bugs Bunny scores like "Carlisle Indian Industrial School 44, Notre Dame 3."
Besides football and track, he did baseball (of course) and lacrosse, and was a champion ballroom dancer. Eat it, Bobby Valentine.
You look at some photos of famous jocks from the early 20th century, and you think, "Was that really their idea of an athletic frame back then?" but then you look at Thorpe and think, "Man, I'd start that guy in my lineup tomorrow."
Just a fantastic figure. To think he wound up as another Indian destroyed by alcohol. ugh.