The incomparable Jim Thorpe
Today in 1909 ultimately turns out to be a bad one for Jim Thorpe, the wunderkind athlete from the Carlisle Indian School who 115 years ago makes his pro baseball debut as a pitcher for the Rocky Mount Railroaders in the Class D Eastern Carolina League.
And here is the genesis of Thorpe’s eventual problems as Rocky Mount pays Thorpe $60 per month.
Thorpe reportedly receives the same pay in 1910 when he splits the ECL season between Rocky Mount and Fayetteville.
Thorpe posts a record of 19-20 over those two seasons before dropping out of baseball to concentrate on the 1912 Olympics in Sweden, where Thorpe gains lasting fame before meeting equally everlasting controversy.
There, in Stockholm, the 6-foot-1, 185-pound Thorpe dominates the Summer Games before later forfeiting his gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon after the International Olympic Committee learns of his time playing for pay at Rocky Mount and Fayetteville, and strips Thorpe of his amateur status.
Thorpe returns to baseball in 1913 with the New York Giants, who sign him to a then-quite generous $6,000 contract without ever seeing him play.
New York manager John McGraw reportedly says at the time that he does not know if Thorpe is left-handed or right-handed.
Despite still being the world’s greatest athlete despite losing his Olympic medals, Thorpe plays in only 19 games for the Giants in 1913 and just 30 more for them in 1914, putting together an underwhelming .167 batting average with a walk and 13 strikeouts in his 67 plate appearances.
After going 1-for-8 for the Giants in April 1915, Thorpe drifts back to the minor leagues, spending most of that summer with the Harrisburg Senators in the International League.
This time, Thorpe hits .303 in 96 games with 13 doubles, seven triples and two homers on his way back to the majors for the final month of the 1915 season and batting .250 in those September games.
Thorpe plays all of the 1916 season with Milwaukee in the American Association before returning to the majors and spending two seasons moving from the Giants to the Cincinnati Reds to the Boston Braves.
After six on-again, mostly off-again seasons in the majors, where he hits .252 over 289 games, Thorpe leaves the majors after the 1919 season at the age of 32 to join a new pro football league that eventually morphs into today’s NFL.
Thorpe eventually retires from playing to work fulltime running a bar near his home in Lomita, Calif., where he dies in 1953 at the age of 65.
His death certificate lists his occupation only as “athlete.”