John Thorn
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John Thorn (born April 17, 1947) is a noted sports historian.
Thorn was born in Stuttgart, West Germany, and immigrated to the United States in 1949. He graduated from Beloit College in 1968.
Thorn is the author and editor of numerous books on baseball, including Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball, Total Football: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Football, Treasures of the Baseball Hall of Fame, The Hidden Game of Baseball, and The Armchair Book of Baseball. He founded Total Sports Publishing and served as its Publisher from 1998-2002.
Thorn served as the senior creative consultant for the Ken Burns documentary Baseball (documentary).
In 2004 Thorn discovered documentation that traced the origins of baseball to 1791 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
His next book, Baseball in the Garden of Eden, will be published with Simon and Schuster in Spring 2008. Thorn writes two columns for the Woodstock Times: "Play's the Thing" (largely sports) and "Wake the Echoes" (arts and letters). He is also a columnist for Voices, the publication of the New York Folklore Society.
Thorn is also the co-author with Pete Palmer and Bob Carroll of The Hidden Game of Football.
In June 2006 SABR awarded Thorn its highest award, the Bob Davids Award. The award honors those whose contributions to SABR and baseball reflect the ingenuity, integrity, and self-sacrifice of the founder and past president of SABR, L. Robert "Bob" Davids.
