Spring 2020 Premium Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/20/2020
Hall of Famer. An original scorecard from a long-ago event is presented. This unimaginably scarce paper relic recalls an exploit of one of the most versatile athletes in history, the legendary Jim Thorpe. The occasion was an exhibition contest in West Point, New York, where the New York Giants' "substitute team" faced off against Army's cadets. As recorded in script at the bottom margin of the neatly filled scorecard, Thorpe contributed a home run to generate the game's largest measure of excitement. A period newspaper account (which accompanies) states that the Army hurler, "pitched good ball but was poorly supported," and asserted that, "Thorpe's fast fielding and his home run hit into Cullum Memorial Hall in the ninth were features of the Giants' game." Thorpe joined the N.L. squad in 1913 and played sporadically with them as an outfielder for several seasons. Even so, the presence on the roster of two future Hall of Fame pitchers, a renowned Hall of Fame manager, and a gold medal Olympian (Thorpe) weren't enough to help the 1914 New York Giants avoid a second-place finish behind the Boston Braves. Thorpe was enshrined with the inaugural Football Hall of Fame class at Canton in 1963.