American baseball legend Tommy John, whose professional career was saved in 1974 by a groundbreaking elbow surgery, has died at the age of 83. He was the first pitcher to successfully return after tearing a ligament in his elbow. Until then, the injury often meant the end of a pitcher's professional career.
The left-handed pitcher was 31 when he tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing elbow. This is a well-known injury in overhead sports such as baseball, handball, and volleyball.
John gave his team doctor Frank Jobe at the Los Angeles Dodgers permission to replace the ligament with a tendon from his right forearm. That surgery had been performed before, mostly on wrists and hands, but John was the first pitcher to undergo the operation on his elbow.
Success rate one in a hundred
That was essentially a big gamble. Beforehand, Jobe estimated the chance of a successful operation at one in a hundred.
Because of the surgery, which lasted four hours, and the rehabilitation, John missed the entire 1975 season. Initially, he had no feeling in his hand due to nerve damage, which required a second operation.
His arm was in a cast for four months, which he always kept. In 2022, he donated it, signed by his team in 1974, to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C.
In 1976, John returned to the field. He won another 164 games until he retired in 1989 at the age of 46.
Legend
The successful procedure made John a baseball legend. The surgery has since been known as the Tommy John surgery and is almost as common in the sport as hot dogs and peanuts in the stands.
Former Dodgers manager Ned Colletti wrote on X: "Tommy was an exceptional pitcher throughout his Major League Baseball career and his courageous role as the first to undergo a surgery that would later bear his name cannot be overstated."
After John, many athletes with the same injury went under the knife. The chance of full recovery is now over 85 percent. This makes it not only medically a successful procedure but also financially.
Prominent American orthopedic surgeon Dr. Neal ElAttrache, who now leads the Dodgers' medical team, said about this in 2024 to the American news agency AP: "If you put it in dollars, I think there is no doubt that the Tommy John surgery is the most valuable reconstructive procedure there is."
'Tommy John from Terre Haute'
Thomas Edward John Jr. was born in 1943 in Terre Haute, Indiana. At the local high school, he already excelled in baseball and basketball. Although he had the opportunity to play basketball at the University of Kentucky, he chose baseball and signed with Cleveland in 1963.
In his farewell message published by the New York Yankees (where he also played for many years) just over a week ago, he wrote about the start of his sports career: "On the day I left for my first job as a pitcher, my father looked at me and said: 'Good luck, Tommy. Remember one thing: whether you make it in the Major League or not, you will always be Tommy John from Terre Haute, Indiana.' I have never forgotten those words."