“The day I left for my first job as a pitcher, my father looked at me and said, ‘Good luck, Tommy. Just remember one thing. Whether you make it big in the big leagues or you don’t, you’ll always just be Tommy John from Terre Haute, Indiana.’ I’ve never forgotten those words. Thank you, and God bless.”
John went 288-231 with a 3.34 ERA, 6.4% walk rate, and 2245 strikeouts over 4710 1/3 innings over a whopping 26 Major League seasons. Nolan Ryan and Cap Anson (at 27 seasons apiece) are the only players in MLB history to appear in more seasons than John, and the left-hander ranks 20th on the all-time innings list.
The first 12 of John’s seasons came before the UCL repair surgery that came to define his career. While “Tommy John surgery” made the southpaw a household name amongst baseball fans to this day, the fact that John went on to have essentially a whole second career in the aftermath of the revolutionary surgery reinforced both the effectiveness of the UCL repair procedure, and John’s legacy as a workhorse starter.
Beginning his career with the Indians in 1963, John was traded to the White Sox prior to the 1965 season, which began a seven-year run for John in Chicago. It was in the Windy City that John established himself as a front-of-the-rotation starter, and posting a 1.98 ERA over 177 1/3 innings in 1968 earned John the first of his four career All-Star nods.
More success followed when John was traded to the Dodgers in December 1971, as part of a memorable deal that saw Hall-of-Famer Dick Allen sent to Chicago. John pitched well for the Dodgers in 1972-74, but his 1974 campaign was cut short on July 17 when John left a starter after only two innings due to arm pain. Tests revealed a tear of John’s ulnar collateral ligament, which seemingly meant that his career was over at age 31.
Dodgers team doctor Frank Jobe had another idea. Jobe proposed the idea of using the tendon replacement procedure to attempt to fix and heal John’s UCL. Similar surgeries had been successfully performed on hands and wrists prior to 1974, but a tendon repair on an elbow (and a heavily worked elbow of a MLB pitcher, no less) represented a new frontier. Figuring he had nothing to lose, John agreed to undergo the surgery in September 1974, and the long and unprecedented rehab process saw John return to pitching in the Arizona Instructional League a year later, and he made his return to the majors on April 16, 1976.
John’s comeback year saw him post a 3.09 ERA over 207 innings in 1976, beginning probably the best stretch of his career. John finished within at least the top eight of Cy Young Award voting each year from 1977-80, and was the runner-up for the NL Cy in 1977 and the AL Cy in 1979.
The move back to the American League came in the 1978-79 offseason, when John signed with the Yankees on a three-year, $1.4MM contract. This was the first of two stints for John in the pinstripes, as after pitching with the Angels and Athletics in 1982-85, John returned to finish his career with four more years in New York in 1986-89.
Once John finally retired, he worked as a broadcaster for both Major League and minor league games, and he also worked as a coach and manager in the minors (in the Expos’ and Yankees’ farm systems) and in independent league baseball. Despite spending the full 15 years on the ballot, John was never inducted to Cooperstown, and he has yet to be recognized by the veterans’ committee. There has long been speculation that John and Jobe could or should be inducted to the Hall of Fame in a nod to both John’s career and their shared legacy as pioneers in sports medicine.
We at MLB Trade Rumors extend our condolences to John’s family, friends, and loved ones.
