MLB’s official historian was born in a DP camp

By Stephen Silver

NEW YORK — From Hank Greenberg to Sandy Koufax to Alex Bregman, Jews and baseball go way back to the 19th century. It’s not just players and fans — the participation even extends to the role of official baseball historian of Major League Baseball.

The first man to hold the title, the legendary Chicago sportswriter Jerome Holtzman, was Jewish, and an inductee to the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.

Holtzman died in 2008, and in early 2011, the official baseball historian role went to John Thorn, a prolific historian and author. Thorn, the son of Holocaust survivors who was born in a displaced persons camp, remains in the role today.

His works include Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, a study of the often controversial question of how and when, exactly, baseball was invented.

He also consulted on Chasing Dreams: Baseball and Becoming American, an exhibition on Jews and baseball that originated at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and is now available in “virtual” form.

This season, which started in July rather than April because of the pandemic, will be of particular interest to historians. There have been whole weeks of games postponed in the wake of infections and some players opted out of the season over COVID fears.

Among the wacky aspects, thousands of cardboard cutouts with fans’ faces have filled the stands.

Thorn, 73, spoke with JTA earlier this season about this most unusual of seasons, his work and the connection between the American game and American Jews.

JTA: Tell me a bit about the role Judaism has played in your life.

Thorn: Judaism has played a great part in my life, in terms of my birth, and childhood and circumstances. As I have written elsewhere, just when you think that maybe you’re not so Jewish, the world will remind you. As I’ve become older, it’s clear that Judaism is a central part of my life and my worldview, though I am no longer religious.

I went to an Orthodox Hebrew school, and since my Bar Mitzvah have scarcely been in a synagogue.

I will say that while Wikipedia has me as being born in Germany, this always irritates me because I was born in the American-occupied sector of Germany, in a displaced persons camp.

My parents are Holocaust survivors, and we had three visas we applied for — Australia, Argentina and the US — and were prepared to take whichever came first,. That turned to be the US. So I came here at age two-and-a-half.

How did you become Major League Baseball’s official historian?

At age 63 I guess I became this overnight sensation, courtesy of the commissioner, who appointed me to this post. But I had been writing baseball books since 1974 and had created the official encyclopedia for Major League Baseball, which was called Total Baseball. It went through eight editions, 1989-2004.

So I was not exactly an unknown quantity, either to the commissioner or to the baseball community.

But this position of baseball historian — and I’m now in my 10th year — has been well-suited to me. I enjoy it. I will be happy to continue with it for as long as I continue to show up.

What does the job entail?

Availability, and other duties as assigned, is the most important part. I respond not only to the Office of the Commissioner, but also to the promotions department, to the marketing department, to legal, to general services and an extraordinary level of contact with the media, sometimes on deadline, who need the answer to an historical question, or need me to provide historical perspective on a current controversy.

I also write a blog for Major League Baseball called Our Game, which has been going for 10 years now, and I contribute to that at least once a week and often more.

You’ve done a lot of work on the origins of baseball. I’ve been to Cooperstown, and I actually lived in Hoboken for a time [both have been mentioned as the birthplace of the game.] What’s the short answer as to who invented baseball, and where was it invented?

The short answer is no one invented baseball and it wasn’t invented anywhere. You may have [been to] Cooperstown, and you may have lived in Hoboken, and both of those places have laid claim to a bogus invention, and it’s thus a bogus claim.

Baseball was played in other places, including in New York City, prior to any record of its being played in Hoboken, or being played in Cooperstown. We have dated baseball in literature to at least 1791 in North America. In all likelihood it was played in New England in the 1730s.

There’s a large swath of Jewish baseball fans who pay close attention to Jewish baseball players and keep tabs on up-and-coming Jewish prospects. Have you had much of an interaction with this subculture?

Yes, some. There’s a set of Jewish Major League baseball cards, there are people who argue about who was the first Jew in Major League Baseball, who was the first Jew of the amateur era to play baseball. I’ve gotten caught up in such things, as I was the chief curatorial consultant to the National Museum for American Jewish History exhibition called “Chasing Dreams.”

The key to that exhibition, I believe, and its subsequent success and its touring success, has been to identify Jews as not unique as outsiders in baseball, and being brothers under the skin with African Americans and Latinos in particular, but earlier, Italians and Irish and other nationalities, [including] Native American.

When you were the curatorial consultant, what did that entail?

I was the baseball expert. I interacted with other consultants on behalf of the museum, helped secure artifacts, helped to position the exhibition and its companion book.

Turning to the current baseball season, obviously there’s a lot about it that’s completely unprecedented. What stands out to you most about this year? What do you think future historians will say about it?

That this was a year unlike any other. The [Spanish flu] pandemic of 1918-1919 barely affected baseball. They were able to get through two regular seasons, and didn’t miss a World Series, and no player at the Major League Baseball level died, although one umpire did.

The shortened season, the delayed season, the possibility of statistical anomalies — all of this must be viewed by subsequent generations with historical perspective. The mere placing of an asterisk alongside somebody’s record, how do you view it? Does the asterisk help you with anything? My view is that it doesn’t.

What’s something about baseball, or baseball history, that most fans think they know but is actually wrong?

Well, for starters, that it was invented anywhere, and at any particular time. [Early baseball reporter] Henry Chadwick had the right line, echoing Harriet Beecher Stowe: He said “baseball had no father — it was like Topsy, it just grew,” referring to the character Topsy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

For 100 years or so, the National Assn. of Professional Baseball Players was regarded as the first major league, even though it lasted only from 1871 through ’75.

When the MacMillan Baseball Encyclopedia of 1969 came out, there was the creation of a special baseball records committee to review the status of all of the variant or challenging major leagues, besides the two extant ones, the National League and the American. The National Assn., because of its erratic scheduling and procedures, and gambling, and drunkenness and a variety of moral and practical failings, was demoted as a major league. Major League Baseball was redefined as having begun on Feb. 2, 1876, with the founding of the National League in New York City.

What other leagues have there been that have been classified as major or considered as major? The American Assn., the Union Assn., the Players League, the Federal League, the American League, of course, which survives. But we have never given consideration to the Negro Leagues. This seems to me a possibly fruitful area for research.

I know you’re a historian, but let’s talk about baseball’s future. Do you think baseball’s going in a good direction? Is it as popular as it should be?

I think baseball is in a momentary period of crisis. That is true of all sports because we have to make do without spectators, we have to create cardboard cutouts in the stands and artificial noises, it’s very, very peculiar. So I think the future of baseball, and any other sports, ought not to be judged by the events of 2020.

The aging demographics of baseball fans is certainly a concern, and the shifting allegiances of younger fans is also a concern for me because allegiance is not so much to the team in your locality, but to a team of fantasy players, or players on whom you placed bets, and you have devised your own drafts and your own leagues and your own game. What you’re checking in the morning is not the box score of the Mets or the Yankees, but rather the box score of those players on your draft roster.