Tommy John was trending on Twitter earlier this week, and it’s become a pretty typical occurrence. This man, a pretty good pitcher in his day who last threw a major league pitch in 1989, was once again a topic of conversation despite having largely retreated from the public eye following his retirement. The reason is that Miami Marlins closer Carter Capps made headlines for having to undergo Tommy John surgery, named for the former New York Yankee hurler. He is only the most recent major league player to do so, though there might well be another by the time you finish reading this sentence.
In 1974, this soft-tossing lefty for the Los Angeles Dodgers – his third organization – was in his twelfth season with a 124-106 record and a tidy 2.97 ERA. He was 31 years old when he damaged the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in his elbow, and no one would have blamed him for calling it a (very fine) career at that point. John refused, and instead opted for a revolutionary new surgery in which a tendon was essentially moved from one place or one arm to the other. The man who pioneered the procedure, the now-legendary Dr. Frank Jobe, predicted a 1% chance that John would have a full recovery. Well.
Tommy John sat out the entire 1975 season while he rehabbed his elbow with the help of his teammate Mike Marshall, who had a PhD in kinesiology and who had originally suggested he try the surgery (as an aside, how many other baseball players in history can boast about having a PhD in kinesiology?). Tommy John returned to the Dodgers a year later and pitched to a 10-10 record with a 3.09 ERA. This was a miraculous return, especially considering that he was now 33 years old and hadn’t pitched for more than a year. Marshall had also helped him tweak his delivery to alleviate pressure on his body, and by the following year he was literally better than ever on his way to his first twenty-win season.
From 1977 to 1980, John averaged twenty wins a season, with a crisp 3.12 ERA, while in his mid-thirties, an age span during which most pitchers start to wind down their careers. He moved on to the Yankees in 1979 and also pitched well in the postseason (excluding 1979, when the Yankees did not qualify) in those years with both the Dodgers and Yankees. He pitched nine more years after that until he retired in 1989. This pitcher, whose career was supposed to have ended in 1974, actually won more games (164) after his surgery than he did before it (124).
Tommy John’s 288 career wins are the most of any left-hander not in the Hall of Fame. In fact, only two non-Hall of Fame pitchers have more wins: Roger Clemens, whose reasons for exclusion have become pretty clear at this point, and Bobby Mathews, who last pitched in 1887 and is credited with being one of the creators of the spitball. By the time of his retirement, he had tied a record by pitching for twenty-six seasons (a record later broken when Nolan Ryan tossed his 27th season a few years later). A career 3.34 ERA and forty-six shutouts aren’t too shabby, either. All told, his career fell just short of Hall of Fame standards. His peak wasn’t all that long, and he didn’t hit the magical 300-win milestone that would have assured him entry. He spent the then-requisite fifteen years on the Hall of Fame ballot, and in his final year of eligibility he had just 31.7% of the votes when 75% was needed.
But there’s another part to his legacy, and it’s a big one: that revolutionary surgery. Eighty-four more players have had it since; careers that would previously have been unceremoniously cut short have instead been extended. Kids pitch more, and ever harder, at younger and younger ages now, and it’s believed that this increased stress on arms has contributed to more UCL injuries. It’s hardly a coincidence that this surgery has become more common in recent years. Weight lifting and year-round ballplaying are also seen as contributing factors. As it’s become more commonplace, it’s become so accepted that players sometimes want to have it even if they are not injured. Tommy John opened that door and because he did, the entire game of baseball changed for the better. Jose Canseco, Jose Fernandez, Chris Carpenter, Yu Darvish (assuming a full recovery), and John Lackey are just some of the many players who owe their careers to Tommy John and the trailblazing decision he made more than forty years ago.
Tommy John might have fallen just short of the Hall of Fame by conventional statistical measures, but his contribution to the game, on top of a very long and stellar career, should warrant Hall of Fame consideration by the Veterans Committee at some point. How often do you look at Twitter and see a really good 1970’s pitcher trending who isn’t Tommy John?
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