Our very own, Marc Bona, wrote a book with Dan Murphy of the Cleveland Browns on Joe Thomas ahead of his HOF induction. We'll be sharing five excerpts, including this one, from the biography.
CLEVELAND, Ohio – On the surface, Thomas was a suburban kid who lived with his parents and two siblings. But he took to sports — all sports — early in life. That’s not to say he was a star out of the gate; he wasn’t. But sports — competition, athleticism — was in his blood. It was nourished, though not forced, by his parents. An innate desire, ability and willingness to work combined to help fuel Joe Thomas on fields and courts.
“We’re all kind of different in how we’re wired. But we were all wired to be really competitive,” Strickland said. Nick Hamel was one of the first people outside the Thomas family to see that competitive edge and energy. He lived across the street, and met Joe when they were both maybe 5, Hamel remembers.
But there was a tenderness lurking within the big kid who just wanted to play and win. In middle school Hamel and Thomas were at track practice when an accident happened that showed another side of Thomas. “In Wisconsin, you get to have three rods per person,” Eric Thomas said. “And all the person has to be able to do to be called a person is to hold a rod. And Joe was a big kid. At 2 or 3, he was able to hold a rod. So I’d bring him along, throw him in the bow of the boat, give him some Ninja Turtles to play with and a couple of blankets, because it’s always dark in the morning. And I mean he truly enjoyed it. And we truly enjoyed him enjoying it on the trips.
His feet, Sally said, were as big then, when he was in sixth or seventh grade, as they are now. It was when Thomas began playing football in seventh and eighth grade. “You could see some of the athleticism and the size were coming,” Eric said. “He was playing multiple positions, and nobody could tackle him and he could tackle anybody, could catch up to anybody on the field. It was then that I started to see that, you know, he had some potential certainly for high school.
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