Jim Thorpe

At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics Thorpe won the pentathlon and the decathlon. In 1913 the Amateur Athletic Union ruled that summer minor-league baseball had made him a professional, and his results were struck out; the IOC named him co-champion in 1982 and, in July 2022, the sole winner of both events.

Canton Bulldogs manager Jack Cusack signed Thorpe in 1915 for $250 a game, and he went on to play for and coach the team. According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the charter members of the league formed in 1920, the forerunner of the NFL, named him its president.

Thorpe played six seasons of major-league baseball between 1913 and 1919 with the New York Giants, Cincinnati Reds and Boston Braves, appearing in 289 games in all, according to the SABR Biography Project.

In his memoir, Canton manager Jack Cusack describes a 1917 game against Massillon as a personal duel between Thorpe and Stan Cofall, who kicked two field goals for a 6-0 Massillon win. Cusack writes that Thorpe lost his temper at rough play he thought uncalled for, was hurt in the second quarter but played on, and carried the ball more than anyone else.

The account is consistent with the profile's competitiveness score, though it comes from one insider who was also Thorpe's friend. Competitiveness

On the voyage to Stockholm in 1912, Sally Jenkins reports, a reporter found Thorpe resting in a deck chair and Thorpe said he was practising the long jump in his head. A photograph published by the National Museum of the American Indian shows him training on the ship's deck, which its historian cites against the story that he refused to train.

Read alongside coach Pop Warner's remark that Thorpe was always looking for a new motion that would help him, the episode offers one example of the deliberate technique work behind the profile's mastery-orientation score; other contemporaries described him as averse to training. Mastery Orientation

When the AAU charges became national news in late January 1913, Thorpe signed a letter admitting that he had played summer baseball for pay; a friend later told a congressional investigator that the letter had been drafted by coach Pop Warner and the school superintendent. Within weeks he signed a three-year contract with the New York Giants, and from 1915 he also played professional football with Canton.

The loss of his amateur status was decided by others, but what he did next, working in two professional sports at once, sits alongside the profile's cross-domain-range score. Cross-Domain Range