Canzano: Who is this guy? And why does he matter?

A wild tale about Jim Thorpe.

Jim Thorpe was a hell of an athlete. He won two Olympic gold meals, played college and professional football, pro baseball and basketball.

But I want to talk about his bones today.

More on that wild controversy in a bit.

First, know that in 1912, King Gustav V of Sweden declared Thorpe the “the greatest athlete in the world” after he won the pentathlon and decathlon at the Stockholm Olympics. Thorpe was later stripped of the medals and his Olympic accomplishment scrubbed from the record books after he admitted he got paid $2 a game to play minor league baseball in the Eastern Carolina League in 1910 and 1911.

“I hope I will be partly excused by the fact that I was simply an Indian schoolboy and did not know all about such things,” Thorpe wrote to officials. “In fact, I did not know that I was doing wrong, because I was doing what I knew several other college men had done, except that they did not use their own names.”

I’ve always admired how candid and authentic Thorpe was in the face of that accusation. He played baseball for the Giants, Reds and Braves. He also, suited up for six different NFL teams and didn’t retire until he was 41. Essentially, Jim Thorpe was Bo Jackson long before Nike’s marketing arm made “Bo Knows” a thing.

This week, the International Olympic Committee reinstated Thorpe as the sole winner of the 1912 Olympic pentathlon and decathlon in Stockholm — 110 years after it stripped him of the accomplishment.

In August of 2001, I was a sports columnist working at The Fresno Bee when I was dispatched to Boulder, Colo. to cover the Fresno State vs. Colorado football game.

The contest was marketed as the inaugural “Jim Thorpe Classic.” The game aired on ESPN. I was delighted to cover it because I’d grown up reading about Thorpe’s amazing accomplishments.

I arrived at a media day event for both teams and walked Folsom Field, among the players. I asked more than a dozen of them, “Who is Jim Thorpe?”

They stared blankly at me.

A few of them surmised he must have been a football player because we happened to be having this conversation on a football field. The long snapper for one of the teams insisted Thorpe was a golfer on the PGA Tour. Almost none of the college players playing in the “Jim Thorpe Classic” knew much of anything about Jim Thorpe himself. I wrote a column about the absurdity of that.

But what I remember most about that day was what I learned about Thorpe’s death and his bones. He suffered a heart attack and died while eating dinner in his trailer at a park in Lomita, Calif. in 1953.

He was 64.

Everyone assumed Thorpe, who was Native American, would be buried in Oklahoma, where he was born in a single-room cabin in 1887. But his third wife, Patricia, struck a deal with two tiny Pennsylvania towns on the LeHigh River — Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk.

Those two towns agreed to merge and become Jim Thorpe, Pa. Nevermind that Thorpe himself had never even set foot in what is now that city. The marketing folks wanted his name on their new city. They even raised a granite tomb and memorial in his honor.

Thorpe’s children were irate. They claimed they weren’t consulted. They asked the city to return their father’s remains, then later, sued. Jack Thorpe, one of the children, said at the time, “It’s a great honor to have a town named after your father. We want them to succeed, but they don’t need my father’s bones to do it.”

The city leaders of Jim Thorpe, Pa. refused to return Thorpe’s body. They argued that a deal was, in fact, a deal. They believed that having Jim Thorpe’s remains as a tourist attraction turned two dying coal-mining towns into a popular bed-and-breakfast tourist spot, complete with antique shopping malls.

The Thorpe children were divided, too. One son argued, “Dad never had his tribal burial rites.” Another, his youngest daughter, said, “It would cause too much trouble to move the body now.”

Everyone lawyered up. And the case dragged on for decades. It eventually landed in the United States Supreme Court, which ruled in 2015 that Thorpe’s remains should stay in Pennsylvania.

They remain there today.

I’m glad the IOC restored Thorpe’s name and accomplishments to the record books. Amateurism is dead. Professional athletes were long ago allowed into the Olympics. College athletes are now leaning into a new world that features a line of collectives and agencies eager to help them land lucrative endorsement deals. It always felt silly to me that Thorpe was stripped of the medals for playing a sport — baseball — that had little to do with his track and field accomplishments.

His children are gone now. That youngest daughter was 79 when I wrote about the fierce battle over her father’s bones in 2001. The Supreme Court ruled and everyone went about their business. But I felt like sharing some of Jim Thorpe’s story with you today.

It sure would be nice if ESPN brought back the “Jim Thorpe Classic.” Use it to create scholarships for Native American college students. Celebrate the guy again. Maybe hearing his name on a football game would prompt some elementary school kid to want to know more about him.

It’s great that Jim Thorpe is finally recognized again as an Olympic champion in two events. He won the competitions. But the bigger victory would be everyone knowing the answer to the question I asked all those years ago.

You know, “Who is Jim Thorpe?”

---

Thank you for reading. I appreciate all who have supported, subscribed and shared my new independent endeavor with friends and family in recent months. If you haven’t already — please consider subscribing.

This is an independent reader-supported project, with both free and paid subscriptions. Those who opt for the paid edition are providing vital assistance to bolster my independent coverage. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to have full access to all of my posts.