His Name is Spoken More Than Virtually Any Other in the History of Baseball

Other than perhaps Jackie Robinson this player’s name is spoken more than any other in the history of baseball.   Not a day goes by where you don’t read his name, or hear it spoken on TV or the radio.  He’s not in the Hall of Fame(though a strong argument can be made that he should be) and he’s not normally mentioned among the great players of his time or of all time.  And yet, not a day goes by without hearing his name: Tommy John.   As near as I can tell he, along with Lou Gehrig, are the only athletes (baseball players) to have a medical condition or procedure named after them.  Elbow ligament reconstructive surgery will forever be called Tommy John surgery.   ALS is called Lou Gehrig’s Disease.   Most everyone is familiar with Lou Gehrig and his Hall of Fame career.  Most fans even know the name of the player Lou Gehrig replaced, Wally Pipp.   But few recall that there was so much more to Tommy John’s career than an arm surgery.   He was, in fact, a very good pitcher.

Tommy John had a 26-year career.  Only 2 players in the history of the game played longer, Nolan Ryan and Cap Anson.   He won 288 games in that career.  That is the 3^rd highest win total of any player not in the Hall of fame, behind only Roger Clemens (354) and Bobby Mathews (297).   There are at least 8 pitchers in the Hall of Fame who have won fewer games than Tommy John.

Michael Fallon, in an article written for the Society for American Baseball Research, wrote this about John:  “Despite many career ups and downs, and though he rarely had his team managers’ and owners’ full and complete confidence, Tommy John possessed something crucial to sustaining his career. Call it heart, moxie, perseverance, or just plain guts: Whatever you call it, John had enough of it to get through sore arms and injuries, past bad contracts and contentious relations with management, and through two critical turning points that would have ruined just about any other player—no matter how gutsy. Indeed, how Tommy John responded in general to the inevitable twists and turns of a major‑league career reveals a man who deserves consideration for election to the Hall of Fame.”

So who then is this man?  And, how is it that we have come to speak his name so often. 

In 1961, John pitched for the Indians’ minor league team in Dubuque, Iowa, of the Class D Midwest League.   He went 10-4 in his first year, earning a promotion the next season to Charleston of the Class A Eastern League.   It was there that John discovered that he really didn’t know how to pitch.  As a result, he struggled.  John says that the individual who helped him during that time was, Steve Jankowski, a player‑coach in the Indians’ system. “He simply reminded me that I was not the only man on the team, that there were eight others in the field to help me put batters out,” Tommy said. Jankowski told John that, since he could trust his defense to make plays, he didn’t have to throw his hardest on every pitch. “Use about eighty percent of your power and save some for the later innings.”  This seemed to help, because in July 1962, even though he only had a 6-8 record, the 19-year-old John was promoted to the Indians’ AAA Jacksonville team.  He went 2-2 over the balance of the season and won 2 games in the International League playoffs.  As a 20-year-old, John returned to Jacksonville.  However, he struggled to begin the 1963 season and was sent back to Charleston.  At Charleston he performed really well, going 9‑2 with a 1.61 ERA.   The Indians were impressed and received a late-season call-up to the majors.  He pitched 20 innings, allowing 5 earned runs, but he gained the admiration of manager, Birdie Tebbetts

Tommy John was born in 1943 in Terre Haute, Indiana.  Like most any boy born in Indiana, they played and loved basketball.   Tommy John was an outstanding basketball player at Gerstmeyer High School in Terre Haute, Indiana, where, at one time, he held the city single-game scoring record.  He received over 50 basketball scholarship offers from schools that included Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, North Carolina State.  He received only one baseball scholarship offer.  John knew though, that as a slender 6′ 3″ white boy, who couldn’t jump, that maybe basketball was not his best career choice.  In baseball, he had a 28‑2 record in high school.   According to John, he only threw 2 pitches, a curveball, and a fastball. Those were the only 2 pitches he threw throughout his career.  In an interview with Ross Carey on Replacement Level Podcast, John said he first learned to throw a curve by reading “How to Pitch” by Bob Feller.   Later articles attribute his knowledge and command of the curveball to former Phillies minor leaguer Arley Andrews, a friend of his father.   In any event, he had a great curveball that he could place in or out, up or down as needed, and despite his lack of an overpowering fastball, he signed to play pro-ball with the Cleveland Indians out of high school in 1961, four years before the introduction of the amateur draft.  The truth was that John’s fastball was not particularly fast. It was generally clocked at around 85–87 mph.   But the, But that didn’t mean John had a poor fastball; after all, speed is only one factor that makes a good fastball. 

In 1964, the expectations for John and the Indians were very high.  John was joining a rotation that included Luis Tiant, Jack Kralick, and Sam McDowell.   But neither John nor the Indians fulfilled their promise in 1964.  Among other things, pitching coach Early Wynn was determined to have John throw a slider.  Unfortunately, attempting to throw a slider involved making changes to his delivery and this affected his control.  The Indians finished sixth, and John, who went 2‑9, was demoted to Triple‑A Portland.   At Portland, John went back to his normal routine and started to become effective again.   However, during the off-season, the Indians decided to move on from John and traded him to the Chicago White Sox, for Rocky Colavito and others.  

in 1965, John became a regular starter with the White Sox.  John quickly emerged as a solid mid‑rotation starter for them.   He spent seven seasons with the White Sox, pitching to a 2.95 ERA (117 ERA+) and 3.20 FIP while averaging 213 innings and 3.4 WAR per year. He shared the AL lead in shutouts in both 1966 and finished in the top five in ERA in both seasons. In 1968, the Year of the Pitcher, he posted a 1.98 ERA (also good for fifth in the league) with 5.6 WAR (sixth) and made his first All‑Star team.  In August 1968, John injured his shoulder in a fight with the Tiger’s Dick McAuliffe, who charged the mound because he believed John had thrown at his head.  This injury forced him to sit out the rest of the year.   John returned in 1969, and topped 5.0 WAR and placed in the league’s top 10 in each of the next two seasons as well.  By 1971, White Sox management lost confidence in his pitching.  In 1971, John had his worst full season.  He went 13‑16 with a 3.61 ERA.  That off-season, the White Sox traded him to the Los Angeles Dodgers for power-hitting Dick Allen.   Allen would win the MVP award with the White Sox the following season.

It was not a one-sided trade however as John’s fortunes began to change with the Dodgers.  John gives full credit to Dodgers pitching coach Red Adams for this. “When I joined the club,” he wrote, “I was still convinced that I had only a mediocre fastball and that I was going to have to depend chiefly on my breaking pitches to win ball games. But Red disagreed with me, emphatically.” Adams told John that he had a good fastball, that while it was not going to set any speed records it had a lot of movement. “You’ll get plenty of batters out with that.”  As a result, he began to emphasize his sinker, which had plenty of movement to compensate for its lack of velocity. In his first three seasons in Dodger blue, John pitched to a 2.89 ERA (119 ERA+) and 2.94 FIP.   He was 11-5 in 1972, and 16-7 in 1973.   1974 started out even better than the prior 2 years.  He was 13-3 with a 2.59 ERA at the All-Star break. Despite that, he was not chosen for the All-Star team, a slight that ticked him off.  There were rumors, continually denied by John, that because of Yogi Berra not selecting him, John was determined to pitch “faster.”

On July 17, 1974, John was starting a home game against the Montreal Expos.  It was the third inning, the Dodgers had a 4 run lead, and John was pitching to Hal Breeden with nobody out and runners on first and second base. “John said he was not particularly worried, because Breeden was a dead pull hitter, and John knew that if he could entice him to swing at a sharp sinker on the outside corner it was likely he would hit into an inning‑crushing double play. With one ball and one strike on the batter, John released what he hoped would be a rally‑killing pitch. That was when everything went wrong.”   Later, John said that nothing seemed unusual about his windup or delivery, though he conceded, as a sportswriter later wrote, that his body may have been “too far ahead of his arm at the critical moment when the ball is released.” Whatever the reason, after the throw John felt what he called the “strangest sensation I had ever known.”  John’s arm went suddenly dead. “Right at the point where I put force on the pitch, the point where my arm is back and bent, something happened,” he explained. “It felt as if I had left my arm someplace else. It was as if my body continued to go forward and my left arm had just flown out to right field, independent of the rest of me.”  John felt no pain, but he also knew he could no longer pitch. “You’d better get somebody in there,” he told his manager, Walt Alston when he came to the mound. “I’ve hurt my arm.” The Dodgers went on to lose the game, 5‑4, and John went to the trainer’s room with little idea of what lay in store for him.  It turned he permanently damaged the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching arm.  It also turned out that this would lead to a revolutionary surgical operation.  This operation, performed by Dr. Frank Jobe on September 25, 1974, now known as Tommy John surgery, replaced the ligament in the elbow of his pitching arm with a tendon harvested from the pitcher’s right wrist.  Three months later, Dr. Jobe operated on John again, this time to reroute the ulnar nerve. 

At the time, it seemed unlikely John would ever be able to pitch again, as he spent the entire 1975 season in recovery.  However, what they didn’t know was that this surgery would revitalize his career in ways that could not be imagined.  Not only had this surgery not been performed before, at the time, no one knew how long the recovery would take, nor did they know what needed to be done to help with the recovery from the surgery.  John spent all of 1975 undertaking a rehab for which there was no road map.   On September 29, 1975, he finally got to pitch again, this time in the Arizona Instructional League.  On his road to recovery, John would work with teammate and major league pitcher Mike Marshall (who had a Ph.D. in kinesiology) and was said to know how to help pitchers recover from injuries and taught John a completely different way to pitch where he would not turn his leg and go straight to the plate which eliminated the chance of him hurting his knee and arm.

The operation and the rehab worked.  John returned to the Dodgers in 1976, throwing 207 innings with a 3.09 ERA (109 ERA+) and 3.08 FIP. He won The Sporting News’ NL Comeback Player of the Year award as well as the Hutch Award, given annually to an active player “who best exemplifies the fighting spirit and competitive desire of Fred Hutchinson.”

In 1977 John won 20 games for the first time, placing fifth in the league with a 2.78 ERA, throwing a one‑run complete game on three days of rest in the NLCS clincher against the Phillies, and finishing second behind Steve Carlton in the NL Cy Young race.   In 1978, John went 17-10 for the Dodgers and was selected for the All-Star team.   He also helped the Dodgers to another pennant with a four‑hit shutout of the Phillies in the NLCS before getting a victory in the World Series opener against the Yankees.   The Dodgers lost to the Yankees in the World Series that year, and shortly after the completion of the Series, John would sign a free-agent contract with the Yankees.  In 1979 and 1980, John had 2 stellar years with the Yankees, winning 21 and 22 games, respectively.

After signing with the Yankees, John experienced another major crisis in his life, when on August 13, 1981, his 2-year-old son, Travis, fell from a third‑story window and struck his head on the fender of a parked car.  For the next 19 days, while Travis lay in a coma, John stayed by his side, still pitching home games when it was his turn, but he would not travel with the team for away games. “As far as I was concerned,” John later said, “there was never any choice. How can you choose baseball—or any job, or any profession—ahead of your little boy? ¼ Could I ever sleep at night with the thought that I had shirked the job of bringing my son back to full health and strength?”

Travis would eventually recover from his injuries and resume a normal life.  He even threw out the first pitch in a Yankees playoff game against the Milwaukee Brewers.

John went on to pitch until 1989, winning 164 games after his surgery—forty more than before and one fewer than the great Sandy Koufax won in his entire career.  After Phil Niekro retired, Tommy John was the oldest player in baseball in 19888 and 1989.   In 1986, Mark McGwire got two hits off him;  McGwire’s father was John’s dentist.   John said of this, “When your dentist’s kid starts hitting you, it’s time to retire!”   Nevertheless, Tommy John went on to pitch three more seasons.  In his career led to some pretty impressive numbers: 288 wins, a 3.34 ERA, 4,710.1 innings pitched and a WAR of 62.1 WAR.

To wrap this up, and summarize his career, here are some facts about Tommy John(some repeated) that will make you think about more than his famous elbow.

•      Tommy John had a 26‑year career.  Only Nolan Ryan and Cap Anson had longer careers (27 years).   In 1989, Tommy John wrapped up his career pitching for the Oakland A’s. Tommy John pitched for six teams, including two separate stints with the Yankees. The only NL team he ever pitched for was the Dodgers.

•      Tommy John ranks 8th all‑time in career starts. Tommy John started exactly 700 games in his career.   Only Cy Young, Nolan Ryan (773), Don Sutton (756), Greg Maddux (740), Phil Niekro (716), Steve Carlton (709), and Roger Clemens (707) started more games.

•      Tommy John is one of the best left‑handed pitchers of all time.   Of all left-handed pitchers, John has the 7th most victories, right behind such famous pitchers like Lefty Grove, Randy Johnson, and Tom Glavine.

•      Tommy John pitched an amazing 162 complete games.  And 91 of them coming after his elbow reconstructive surgery.  By comparison, the active leaders in career complete games today include Justin Verlander (26), Felix Hernandez (25), and Clayton Kershaw (25).

•      Tommy John had a 13‑3 record with the L.A. Dodgers record before the All‑Star Game in 1974and didn’t make the team.  His spot, ostensibly, went to Steve Rogers of the Montreal Expos, because each team had to have at least one representative, and Rogers was the only Expo worthy. 

•      Tommy John won 124 games before his elbow surgery.   He was in his 12^th season in 1974. That’s almost a full career for most pitchers.   He was solid too, with records of 11‑5 in 1972, 16‑7 in ’73, and 13‑3 in ’74.

•      Tommy John took off only one season to rehabilitate.  He rehabbed in 1975 and was back on the mound in 1976.

•      Tommy John pitched a full season following his surgery.   He started 31 games in 1976 and won 10 of them.   He finished with an impressive 3.09 ERA.

•      Tommy John had four great consecutive seasons, from 1977‑80.   He was 20‑7 in ’77 and 17‑10 the next season, both with the Dodgers. With the Yankees in ’79 and ’80, he went 21‑9 and 22‑9 respectively. (That averages out to roughly 20‑9 for those four years.) (Don’t anyone tell me that there’s no chance that Kershaw can’t get better at his age!!)

•      Tommy John pitched in three World Series.   He was on the losing end of two World Series with the Dodgers against the Yankees, in 1977 and 1978.   John signed with the Yankees in 1979, only to lose to the Dodgers in the World Series in 1981.

•      Tommy John’s lifetime regular season W‑L record was 288‑231.  Amazingly, 164 of those wins came after his surgery.  Sandy Koufax won 165 games in his entire career.

•      Tommy John has 188 no‑decisions for his career.   That achievement is a major‑league record. 

•      Tommy John was named to four all‑star teams.   His first selection came in 1968, when we went 10‑5 for the White Sox. Ten years later he started a three‑year run as an all‑star, in 1978, ’79 and ’80, all after his operation.

•      Tommy John is NOT in the Hall of Fame.   He was on the HoF ballot for 15 years but never received higher than 35% of the vote.  He can still be selected by the Modern Era Committee.  Tommy John is much like Gil Hodges for me, I think they both should be in the Hall.   They are both examples of the fact that statistics do not measure everything about a player.  

Tommy John, the man with 2 first names, was an incredible pitcher, and he is an incredible man, who had tremendous heart, moxie, perseverance and guts.  Tommy John surgery has revolutionized baseball and has saved countless pitching careers.  No one exemplifies this more than Tommy John himself.   “To have your name attached to a surgery rather than just a ligament attached to your elbow does have its recurring moments of notoriety.”  “It’s better to have a ligament replacement surgery than hemorrhoids surgery” cracked John.

https://youtu.be/vWfeuO1WRgc