Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 2-19-2013

Pittsburgh Press, February 19, 1913:

Lost: One Indian warrior belonging to the Giants. Jim Thorpe, who was baptized Drags-His-Root by his aboriginal daddy, has disappeared.
...
Jim was scheduled to join the main party of Giants in Harrisburg Sunday evening, but missed connections. The Olympic hero then was expected in St. Louis, but he was not there when the train pulled out last night. McGraw, who has not said so, seems very anxious to locate him.

They eventually found him, obviously. Even in 1913, it would have been difficult to actually lose the most famous athlete on the continent.

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 1-29-2013

El Paso Herald, January 29, 1913:

Effort is being made by the Chicago White Sox, the Cincinnati Reds and the St. Louis Browns to secure the services of [Jim] Thorpe.

Toledo News-Bee:

Garry Herrmann is almost sure that Jim Thorpe…will join the Cincinnati club. It is perfectly natural the Indian should go with the Reds.

Richmond Times Dispatch:

It was learned yesterday on what is believed to be reliable authority that James Thorpe…is under contract to the Pittsburgh National League baseball club to play first base the coming season. The contract was signed by Thorpe last fall, after which the Redskin continued to compete in amateur athletic contests.

Strike one, strike two, and strike three. Thorpe eventually signed with the Giants, where he served as an expensive benchwarmer/pinch runner.

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 1-28-2013

Jim Thorpe’s admission of having played professional baseball, Pittsburgh Gazette Times, January 27, 1913:

I played baseball at Rocky Mount and at Fayetteville, N.C. in the summer of 1909 and 1910 under my own name…I did not play for the money there was in it because my property brings me enough to live on, but because I liked to play ball. I was not very wise in the ways of the world and did not realize this was wrong…
...
I have always liked sport and only played or run races for the fun of the thing and never to earn money. I have received offers amounting to thousands of dollars since my victories last summer, but have turned them all down because I did not care to take money from my athletic skill.

Yes, Jim, that’s all well and good, but did you take EPO or have a fake dead girlfriend?

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 1-25-2013

Pittsburgh Gazette Times, January 25, 1913:

A charge that James Thorpe, the world’s greatest athlete, was a professional baseball player two years before he entered the Carlisle Indian school was laid before James E. Sullivan, secretary of the Amateur Athletic Union [yesterday].

The charge originated with Charles Clancy, manager of the Winston Salem club, Carolina Association, who told the sporting editor of the Worcester Daily Telegram that the Indian played for his team as a pitcher and first baseman in 1910.

Glenn Warner, coach of the Carlisle Indian school athletes, [yesterday] received a letter from Charles C.A. Clancy…in which Mr. Clancy denies making the statements attributed to him in a Worcester, Mass., newspaper and encloses a clipping from a Boston paper in which he makes a complete denial of the alleged interview. Mr. Clancy further states that Thorpe never played on his team in the Carolina association or on any other team in that league.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Clancy should have been a politician. Of course Thorpe never played on his team in the Carolina Association; Clancy was managing in the Eastern Carolina League when Thorpe played for him.

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 1-24-2013

Toledo News-Bee, January 24, 1913:

That Jim Thorpe, the Carlisle Indian athlete who won the title of world’s all-round champion athlete in the Olympic meet in Sweden last summer, is a professional, is charged by a Carolina league baseball man. Thorpe’s accuser claims he has proof Thorpe played professionally in the Carolina league.

Ruh roh.