John Thorn
John Thorn (1947- ) is the Official Historian of Major League Baseball, an honor that reflects his incomparable contributions to baseball history. In partnership with Pete Palmer, he created The Hidden Game of Baseball and Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball, not only a complete record of the game’s statistical history, but one that included sabermetric analysis. Thorn served as senior creative consultant to Ken Burns’s Baseball, and in 2011, he published Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, tracing baseball’s American origins back to the 18th century.
Related link:
- Read Christina Kahrl’s profile of John Thorn in the Fall 2013 Baseball Research Journal
- John Thorn was the 2006 recipient of the Bob Davids Award, SABR’s highest honor
- Listen to John Thorn’s keynote speech at SABR 42 in Minneapolis (2012)
- John Thorn was named Official Historian of Major League Baseball in 2011
- Read John Thorn’s bios of Doc Adams and Jim Creighton for the SABR Baseball Biography Project