IN MEMORIAM: TOMMY JOHN, THE PITCHER WHO REFUSED TO LET HIS CAREER END

There are certain names in baseball that become bigger than the players themselves.

Tommy John was one of them.

His name became part of the baseball vocabulary, attached forever to a surgical procedure that has allowed thousands of pitchers including both starters in today's Mets game, to return to the mound after what once would have been a career-ending injury.

But before there was “Tommy John surgery,” there was simply Tommy John the pitcher— a durable, stubborn, occasionally overlooked left-hander who spent 26 seasons in the major leagues, won 288 games, made four All-Star teams and kept pitching long after most people thought he should have stopped.

John died Saturday at his home in Florida at the age of 83, surrounded by his wife, Cheryl, and family.

And while the surgical procedure bearing his name will forever be his most famous contribution to baseball, it shouldn't be the only thing we remember.

Because Tommy John had one heck of a career before the surgery — and an even better one after it.

Thomas Edward John Jr. was born May 22, 1943, in Terre Haute, Indiana.

He wasn't the stereotypical pitching prospect.

John was a tall, lanky left-hander whose best pitch was his curveball. The problem, according to the early scouting reports, was that he didn't throw particularly hard.

In an era when scouts were looking for power pitchers, John was labeled a finesse pitcher almost from the beginning.

That didn't exactly discourage him.

As a teenager, he had learned his curveball from Arley Andrews, a friend of his father's and a former minor-league pitcher. When his high-school coach told him not to throw the curve in an important game because scouts wanted to see velocity, John essentially decided he knew better.

That stubbornness would become one of the defining characteristics of his career.

The Cleveland Indians signed him in 1961, when he was only 18. After working his way through the minors, he reached Cleveland in 1963. Two years later, he was traded to the Chicago White Sox, where he began establishing himself as a major-league starter.

By 1968, John had become a legitimate American League star. He finished the season with a 1.98 ERA and earned his first All-Star selection.

But there was something else developing.

John was learning how to pitch rather than simply throw.

He understood that he wasn't going to overpower hitters. He would have to outthink them.

And that ability to adapt would eventually allow him to pitch for a quarter-century.

John joined the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1972 and became one of the better left-handers in the National League.

In 1973, he won 16 games and led the league in winning percentage.

In 1974, he was even better.

Through his first 22 starts, John was 13-3 with a 2.59 ERA. The Dodgers were headed toward the postseason, and John was one of the most important pieces of their rotation.

Then, on July 17, 1974, everything changed.

Facing the Montreal Expos, John felt something happen in his left elbow.

He tried one more pitch.

It didn't work.

His season was over.

At the time, that probably meant his career was over, too.

An injured pitching arm was one of baseball's great dead ends. Players could rest. They could receive treatment. They could try to pitch through pain.

But reconstructing a pitcher's elbow?

That was something almost nobody had contemplated.

Dodgers team physician Dr. Frank Jobe had.

And John was willing to take the gamble.

On September 25, 1974, Jobe operated on John's elbow. When he discovered the ligament was beyond repair, he replaced it using a tendon taken from John's right forearm.

There was no guarantee John would ever pitch again.

There wasn't even a blueprint for how a major-league pitcher was supposed to recover from such an operation.

The procedure itself wasn't necessarily revolutionary in isolation. What was revolutionary was attempting it on a major-league pitcher and then expecting that pitcher to return to the mound and perform at the highest level.

John became the experiment.

And he wasn't about to fail.

John spent the entire 1975 season rehabbing.

He worked relentlessly.

At one point, because he still couldn't properly grip a baseball, he taped his injured fingers together and threw against a wall.

Think about that for a second.

A 32-year-old major-league pitcher, whose career everyone assumed was finished, standing there throwing a baseball against a wall because he refused to accept that the story was over.

It wasn't glamorous.

It wasn't particularly scientific by today's standards.

It was Tommy John.

And it worked.

He returned to the Dodgers in 1976 and went 10-10.

Then came 1977.

At 34 years old, John put together perhaps the best season of his career.

He went 20-7 with a 2.78 ERA finished second in the National League Cy Young Award voting behind Steve Carlton and helped lead the Dodgers to the World Series.

He won 17 games the following year and helped Los Angeles return to the World Series again.

The pitcher who wasn't supposed to come back had come back better than ever.

And the baseball world had just witnessed something it had never seen before.

Tommy John signed with the New York Yankees as a free agent following the 1978 season.

For Yankees fans, that meant something more than adding another veteran pitcher.

It meant adding a man who had already beaten the odds once.

And John wasn't finished.

He won 21 games in 1979, earning another All-Star selection.

In 1980, he won 22 more.

That gave him consecutive 20-win seasons at ages 36 and 37.

He was an All-Star both years.

The Yankees had signed a pitcher whose career was supposedly finished and instead received one of the most dependable starters in baseball.

John would eventually pitch in three World Series — twice with the Dodgers and once with the Yankees — although none of those teams would win the championship.

He remained productive into his 40s, pitching for the California Angels and Oakland Athletics before returning to the Yankees in 1986.

In 1987, at age 44, he won 13 games.

In 1988, at 45, he became the oldest player in the majors.

And in 1989, he returned to the Yankees one final time, appearing in his 26th major-league season.

He retired at 46.

https://youtu.be/NuAimhcHDXA?si=zv6jZYEBJmb0aPMh

His final numbers were extraordinary:

288 wins.

231 losses.

3.34 ERA.

2,245 strikeouts.

700 career starts.

26 major-league seasons.

Four All-Star selections.

And perhaps the most remarkable number of all:

164 of those 288 victories came after the surgery.

Today, "Tommy John surgery" is almost baseball shorthand.

Pitcher gets hurt.

UCL is torn.

Surgery.

Rehabilitation.

Comeback.

The procedure has become so common that it can be easy to forget how extraordinary the original gamble was.

John wasn't just the first major-league pitcher to undergo the operation and return.

He was the proof of concept.

His comeback helped change the way baseball viewed serious arm injuries. What had once been considered a death sentence for a pitcher's career became an obstacle that could potentially be overcome.

The ripple effect has been enormous.

Generations of pitchers have undergone the procedure since John did it in 1974. The operation has become one of the most recognizable procedures in sports medicine.

And every time another pitcher begins the long road back from elbow surgery, Tommy John's story is part of that journey.

There is an interesting irony to Tommy John's legacy.

He won 288 games, yet never received the call from Cooperstown.

He was eligible for the Hall of Fame for the final time in 2009 but fell short of election. SABR's research notes that his 288 victories remain among the highest totals for pitchers not in the Hall of Fame, while his longevity and post-surgery accomplishments make his case particularly unusual.

Reasonable baseball people can argue about whether Tommy John belongs in the Hall of Fame.

What is much harder to argue is whether he belongs in the story of baseball.

He absolutely does.

He was a pitcher who succeeded without overpowering hitters.

He was a veteran who reinvented himself.

He was a player who suffered an injury that should have ended his career and instead returned to win more games than he had before it.

And ultimately, he became part of baseball history in a way few players ever do.

Just days before his death, John had already said goodbye to the Yankees and to the baseball fans who had followed him for more than six decades. The Yankees shared his farewell message during Old-Timers' Day after he was unable to attend because of his health.

There was something fitting about that.

Because Tommy John's baseball life was always about one thing:

Coming back.

Coming back after being overlooked.

Coming back after struggling in the minors.

Coming back after a career-threatening elbow injury.

Coming back at 34, 36, 40 and 44.

Coming back when people said he couldn't.

That's the part of Tommy John's story that shouldn't get lost behind the name of a surgical procedure.

Yes, his name is in medical textbooks.

But before Tommy John became a surgery, he was a baseball player.

A pretty damn good one.

And maybe the best way to remember him is not as the man who had an operation named after him, but as the pitcher who refused to believe that one bad pitch — or one badly damaged elbow — was going to write the final chapter of his career.

Tommy John pitched for 26 seasons.

He was supposed to pitch for about 12.

He got 14 more.

And baseball was better for every one of them.

Rest in peace, Tommy.