When Jim Thorpe becomes a Giant

Only a few months removed from his stunning, gold medal-winning performance at the 1912 Olympics, Jim Thorpe joins the major leagues and the New York Giants 111 years ago today.

The onetime Carlisle Indian School football and track star makes his major league debut on April 14, 1913 and spends parts of three seasons with the Giants before playing his way back to the minors and landing with Newark and Harrisburg in 1915.

Thorpe eventually returns to the majors in 1917, lasting three more years there with the Giants, Cincinnati Reds and Boston Braves to finish with a .252 career batting average in 289 games.

He 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.

“I have always liked sport and only played or run races for the fun of the thing,” Thorpe later says.

Others are more succinct when describing Thorpe’s enormous abilities.

“He was the greatest athlete who ever lived,” says Abel Kiviat, the silver medalist in the 1,500-meter run in the 1912 Olympics who also is Thorpe’s teammate and roommate at those Summer Games in Stockholm.

“What he had was natural ability,” Kiviat says. “There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. All he had to see is someone doing something and he tried it – and he’d do it better.”