Carroll Adjunct Professor writes Ten Commandments of Baseball

Josh DeGrasse-Baumann
Staff Writer

Baseball is more then just  America’s pastime. At least, it certainly seems that way when a few basic baseball concepts are examined for what they’re really worth.

J.D. Thorne, who will be teaching a class on labor and employment law at Carroll University next semester, has taken ten simple baseball rules, originally created by legendary manager Joe McCarthy, and transformed them into a book titled The Ten Commandments of Baseball.

The idea for the book came about shortly after Thorne’s father passed away and the family discovered a card with McCarthy’s rules written on them. “I said, ‘I’m going to do something with this’,” Thorne reflected, noting a special importance of the cards from the start.

It was when Throne was asked to give a speech that the book started to take shape. Thorne was faced with choosing a topic, so he decided to go with The Ten Commandments of Baseball. It was after two standing ovations that Thorne fully realized the value and potential of his idea.

Since then, Thorne has published the book, but continues to give speeches at a variety of events, whether they are religious, business or simply community speeches. The concepts, he feels, are applicable to anything, and his successful speeches show that well.

While the book appears to be about baseball, Thorne describes it as a self-help book. Baseball is merely the example provided. Instead, the book, according to Thorne, is about finding personal value.

“What about ‘run ‘em all out’?” Throne explained, “It’s about fighting the temptation to stop.” The phrase ‘run ‘em all out’ is baseball terms essentially telling players to make every effort to make a play, even if it seems unlikely. In his book, Thorne says the same concept applies to every other aspect of life.

In that sense, Thorne described the book as a gift, a term he meant in two ways. The book has been a gift to him because of all of the pleasure that he got from writing it and getting feedback on it. However, he also meant it to say that the book should be given as a gift to both baseball fans and those in need of motivation.

“The book is meant for enjoyment, meant for stimulation,” Thorne said. Enjoyment and stimulation, not baseball, are the key purposes of the book. Baseball has it’s role in the book, but it is that of a similar role it has in America. It’s a symbol, a representation of what the other means.

The Ten Commandments of Baseball can be found in most bookstores, as well as the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.