Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw

Tommy John knew what was coming, and he prepared us all for it.

The former big-league pitcher recently sent out a public letter through the New York Yankees front office acknowledging that his time on earth was slipping away.

He used that platform to thank everyone who had supported him over the years.

Then he simply said “goodbye.”

And a few days later, he was gone.

Tommy John pitched 26 seasons in Major League Baseball, starting with the then Cleveland Indians in 1963. During his career, he pitched for seven teams, including seven seasons with the White Sox.

He pitched in 760 games and was the winning pitcher in 288 of them. He finished with a career ERA of 3.34, striking out 2,245 batters.

But why he matters to me has very little to do with numbers.

Tommy John was special to me for two big reasons.

First, he was left-handed, and I was a kid who batted left-handed and threw a baseball with my left hand.

My baseball heroes, as I look back on it, were all left-handed. That’s not shocking because of our tendency to associate with people who look like us, act like us and like the same things we like.

And when you are left-handed, you have to look a little harder to find people to pattern your game after.

But Tommy also had a speech impediment.

He never shied away from talking with the media despite his trouble, and I found him as a role model in that way also.

If he could do it, why couldn’t I?

But everyone knows Tommy John for an injury suffered in the 1974 baseball season.

John’s elbow started to hurt, and in July of 1974 the pain made pitching a baseball virtually impossible. He knew that others had suffered from similar pain in the past, and it signaled the end of their careers.

John couldn’t accept that.

The problem was that he had ruptured his ulnar collateral ligament, which would be the modern-day equivalent of tearing the ACL of his elbow.

On Sept. 25, 1974, Los Angeles Dodgers team doctor Dr. Frank Jobe performed the first UCL reconstruction surgery on John’s left elbow.

John missed the entire 1975 season while recovering from the operation, and no one gave him much of a chance to pitch again. Even Jobe himself gave his patient a 100-1 chance of ever throwing another pitch in a major league game.

Well, he came back and pitched again alright. As a matter of fact, he pitched 14 more seasons after that. He made 31 starts in 1976 and took the ball for at least 30 starts in 11 of those 14 seasons.

And now that operation is known as “Tommy John Surgery.”

Over 2,600 baseball players, almost exclusively pitchers, have had that operation.

It has salvaged the careers of players who would have had no other recourse without Tommy John.

See, Tommy was approached by Dr. Jobe about exploring this option for his future. As we might all do if in his shoes, John was not sure he wanted to try this.

He had no one to ask about it. He had no one’s experience to tap into. He didn’t really know what would happen if it didn’t work. How would it affect the rest of his life?

He said “yes” and changed the course of the game of baseball forever.

No longer is that twinge in a pitcher’s elbow a death sentence for their career.

There is a path back to the mound, and it has been well-traveled.

The recovery still takes about a year, and there is no cheating the system to get back sooner.

But it’s still possible to pitch again.

If you think about it, Tommy John’s greatest contribution to sports was not so much what he gave to baseball, it’s what he took away.

What’s missing now is fear.

No longer is that pain in a player’s elbow the first step into the unknown.

Fear has been replaced with a blend of perseverance and patience.

It’s a year-long challenge to keep your sanity while resting until the repaired area has healed, then walking step-by-step through the process proven to lead back to pain-free activity.

All because Tommy John said “yes” to something there was no precedent for.

He stepped out on a bridge that he couldn’t see, and the sport he dedicated his life to is infinitely better for it.

If not for this surgery, baseball may have had to deal with people not wanting their kids to be pitchers like some don’t want their kids to play football.