Medical Marvel

Where were you on May 3, 1964? I was in Mercy Hospital in Baltimore, racked by some sort of mystery illness. Encephalitis? Meningitis? Hedgehopper Syndrome? They never did figure it out, but I remember lying in my bed that Sunday afternoon while my parents huddled with the doctors.

I listened to the second game of the doubleheader against the then-Cleveland Indians as a rookie pitcher named Tommy John threw a three-hitter and beat the Orioles and their pitcher, Robin Roberts.

No, not THAT Robin Roberts.

For the next 26 years, Tommy John kept winning ballgames against the Orioles and everyone else in the American League. 

But in 1974, pitching for the Dodgers, something went kablooie in his left arm, the one he used to throw with, and it didn't take long to determine that his ulnar collateral ligament had ruptured.

In those days, that meant the end of a playing career, without a throwing arm to throw with. 

“It felt as if I had left my arm someplace else,” he told Sports Illustrated. “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. I heard this thudding sound in my elbow, then I felt a sharp pain. My fingers started to tingle.”

But, rather than go home and open a bar and grill or sporting goods store, he took advice from Dr. Frank Jobe, the Dodger team physician, who said he had an idea for how to fix it.

And with nothing to love, Tommy John offered up the left arm for which thousands of operations in his name have been done since.  Listen to any ballgame, no matter what the team, and you will hear the announcer talk about some guy having had Tommy John surgery. Guaranteed!

Dr Jobe had come up with the idea while performing surgeries on polio patients, replacing atrophied ligaments and tendons in their legs and helping them walk. So, why not try it on a pitching arm? He transplanted a tendon from Mr. John’s right wrist to his left elbow, first drilling holes in the bone to make room for it.

It took one more surgery and a lot of physical therapy, but Tommy John got back on the mounds and pitched another 14 years, becoming the first patient of the eponymous Tommy John surgery.

He won 124 games before his elbow surgery, and 164 games in the 14 years after it, and died on Saturday night at 83. The cause was bladder cancer.

“There are only two players that have any medical things named after them — Lou Gehrig and Tommy John. Gehrig’s is fatal and mine gives life.” - Tommy John