13 Facts About John Thorn

John Abraham Thorn was born on April 17,1947 and is a German-born American sports historian, author, and publisher.

Less than two years after John Thorn was born, his family emigrated to the United States, and initially settled in The Bronx, New York.

John Thorn attended Beloit College, from which he graduated in 1968.

John Thorn is the co-author with Pete Palmer and Bob Carroll of The Hidden Game of Football and with them co-editors of Total Football.

John Thorn is a columnist for Voices, the publication of the New York Folklore Society.

John Thorn founded Total Sports Publishing and served as its publisher from 1998 to 2002.

John Thorn served as the senior creative consultant for the 1994 Ken Burns documentary Baseball.

In 2004, John Thorn discovered documentation tracing the origins of baseball in America to 1791 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

John Thorn has attempted to shed light on the contributions of 19th century pioneers of the game, while debunking common misconceptions.

On March 1,2011, John Thorn was named Official Baseball Historian for Major League Baseball, succeeding the late Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times baseball writer Jerome Holtzman, who served in the role from 1999 until his death in 2008.

John Thorn played an important role in the retroactive recategorization of the defunct Negro leagues, which existed during the segregation of baseball, as major leagues.

John Thorn is currently married to Erica Freudenberger, former director of the Red Hook Public Library in Red Hook, New York, and who is currently affiliated with the Southern Adirondack Library System.

John Thorn's great-grandfather was magician Ernest John Thorn; the two share their middle name "Abraham".