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

[1] Thorn was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in a displaced person's camp to which his Polish Jewish parents had come as refugees.

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

I began watching the game seriously when I was eight, in 1955, on my Admiral television, but I had already begun to follow their exploits in the daily newspapers my father brought home with him each night.

[2] His 2011 book, Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, published by Simon & Schuster, was an in-depth chronicle of the seminal development and pioneers of the sport.

"[9] In June 2006, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) bestowed on Thorn its highest accolade, the Bob Davids Award.

He claims to have been drawn to the town because of its "slow pace," which suits him because, as Thorn asserts, "I pride myself on being the world's most boring man.