Tommy John obit

Tommy John, MLB comeback trailblazer, dead at 83

 He was not on the list.

Tommy John, the crafty and durable lefthander who won 288 games across 26 major league seasons, mostly with the Yankees and Dodgers, but achieved his greatest fame with the revolutionary elbow surgery that bears his name and saved both his and the careers of hundreds of other pitchers, has died. John (born May 22, 1943) died Saturday night at his home in Lakewood Ranch.

John had recently released a goodbye message to fans and supporters through the Yankees.

“I want to thank the Yankees organization and the Steinbrenner family for giving me this opportunity to say goodbye to everyone, along with all the family and friends who followed me throughout my 26-year MLB career,” John wrote.

“Thank you to all the fans who supported me and my teammates for 26 years. I’ll never forget you.”

A native of Terre Haute, Indiana, John broke into the majors with the Cleveland Indians in 1963 but didn’t begin to become an accomplished big league pitcher until two years later after being traded to the White Sox and coming under the tutelage of their pitching coach Ray Berres, who taught him a sinker ball and how to create the illusion with his pitches of throwing harder than his max velocity of 85-87 mph. Because he was not the hard-throwing, high strikeout prototype of many of his Hall-of-Fame contemporaries – Jim Palmer, Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson et al – he never achieved the respect he probably deserved having amassed double figure wins totals in 15 of his first 17 seasons.

Opposing managers often attributed his success to putting a little extra on his pitches. He made four All-Star games, but never won a Cy Young Award (although he did finish second in both ’77 with the Dodgers and ’79 with the Yankees). When it came to the Hall of Fame, the highest percentage John ever received from the Baseball Writers Association was 31.9% in 2009, his last year on the ballot. In the subsequent Veterans Committee Era elections the most votes he ever received was seven (of a necessary 12) in 2024.

In December of 1971, the White Sox, in one of the most transformational trades in their history, dealt John to the Dodgers for Dick Allen, who went on to become the American League Most Valuable Player in 1972. John won 40 games for the Dodgers from 1972-74, but on July 17, 1974, while leading the NL in wins with a 13-3 record and 2.59 ERA, John suffered a catastrophic injury in a game against the Montreal Expos that he thought may have ended his career. Facing Expos’ Hal Breeden with a 4-0 lead, nobody out and runners at first and second in the third inning, John attempted to break off a sharp sinker in an effort to get a double play ball. But after the pitch, which blooped to the plate, he heard a pop in in his elbow and felt a strange sensation as his arm, in his words, “suddenly just went dead.”

Initially, Dodgers physician Frank Jobe suggested John rest the arm, but when there was no improvement for a month, X-rays showed the ulnar collateral ligament in John’s elbow was completely ruptured. Surgery was going to be necessary, but in this case Jobe, upon seeing the damage, decided in the middle of the surgery, he had to find a whole new ligament, harvested from another part of John’s body, and transplanted the palmaris longus tendon from his right wrist into the elbow.

“Since no pitcher had ever had this kind of surgery,” John said later, “we had no idea what to expect. We were making medical history.”

After the radical surgery, even Jobe expressed doubt John would ever pitch again, saying that “we took a piece of ligament from Tommy’s right arm and replaced in in the left and asked it to come alive. I told him he’d at least be able to brush his teeth lefthanded but otherwise might want to consider another line of work. Happily I was wrong – because of the dedication of the individual involved.”

John spent the entire 1975 season rehabbing, then returned to record a 10-10 record with 209 innings in 1976, and in ’77, with the media] now proclaiming him to be” the man with the bionic arm,” he won 20 games for the first time. For him, it could not have happened at a more opportune time – the advent of free agency – and that November John was courted by a dozen teams before signing with the Yankees for a three-year deal worth $1.725 million after the Dodgers had refused to go beyond two years for him. It was a negotiation in which John also incurred the wrath of Angels GM Buzzie Bavasi, who called him a “phony with a capital P’ after accusing him of using the Angels to up the ante for the Yankees.

With the Yankees, John thrived, winning 21 and 22 games his first two seasons in New York while, at the same time, becoming a darling of the fans and the New York media because of his outgoing, loquacious personality. “Ask Tommy John what time it is and he’ll wind up telling you how to make a watch,” quipped Yankee manager Bob Lemon one time.

Then on August 13, 1981, near tragedy struck John and his family when his 2 ½ year old son, Travis, tumbled out of a third floor window onto the roof of a car in the driveway below at the home they were renting in Bay Head, N.J. John was in Detroit with the Yankees at the time and rented a two-engine plane to get home. For the next two weeks as Travis lay in a coma at New York Hospital Medical Center, an entire nation prayed for his recovery. Finally, after extensive treatment from the hospital neurosurgeons, he revived and recovered completely, and was able to throw out the first ball of the ’81 World Series along with Reggie Jackson.

After those first two seasons, however, John’s relationship with the Yankees began to deteriorate. When Lemon pinch hit for him in the fourth inning of Game 4 of the ’81 World Series, the TV cameras caught John waving his arms in disgust in the corner of the dugout. The following year he clashed with Yankee manager Gene Michael after being asked to go to the bullpen for a spell, and as the feud festered, John asked to be traded, prompting Yankee owner George Steinbrenner to blast him, saying: “Tommy John is turning out not be the golden boy he used to be.”

On August 31, 1982 the Yankees traded John to Buzzie Bavasi’s Angels for rookie lefthander Dennis Rasmussen. After a brief retirement, John, having made amends with Steinbrenner, returned to the Yankees as a free agent in May 1986 and was 13-6 for them in 1987 when he was 44. He finally retired after being released by the Yankees, May 30 1989, with a career record of 288-231 and a 3.34 ERA. His 288 wins rank 26th on the all-time list and his 4,720 innings pitched are 20th. The only pitcher with more wins than him not in the Hall of Fame is Roger Clemens.

He established himself as a major league starter in 1965 and became Chicago's Opening Day starter in 1966. In 1968, he finished fifth in the American League (AL) with a 1.98 earned run average (ERA) and was named to his first All-Star team, though he missed the end of the season after he was injured in a fight with Dick McAuliffe. In 1971, pitching coach Johnny Sain tried to have John throw a slider more.

As a youth, he often played sandlot ball with other kids, either at Spencer F. Ball Park or Woodrow Wilson field. Arley Andrews, a former minor league pitcher and a friend of John's father, taught John to throw a curveball, which would be John's main pitch. John was an outstanding baseball and basketball player at Gerstmeyer High School in Terre Haute. He had a 28–2 record as a pitcher. Athletics did not get in the way of his schoolwork, as John graduated as Gerstmeyer's 1961 valedictorian. School faculty forbade John from delivering a valedictory address because of his stutter. Several colleges recruited John as a basketball player, including the University of Kentucky, but John also caught the eye of Cleveland Indians' scout Johnny Schulte, who worried that John needed more of a fastball to succeed but considered his curveball already a major league pitch. John picked baseball and signed with the Indians after graduating, getting assigned to the Dubuque Packers of the Class D Midwest League.

John had a 10–4 record in 1961 but had some trouble with the Charleston Indians of the Class A Eastern League in 1962. "I was rearing back on every pitch and firing with all my strength at the strike zone," he said. "As a result I kept getting behind in the ball-and-strike count, often running it to three balls and no strikes, so I just had to put my fastball right over the plate and get it creamed." This led to a lot of walks, but player-coach Steve Jankowski worked with him, suggesting that John throw less hard so that he would have more control. The alterations helped John get called up to the Class AAA Jacksonville Suns of the International League during the year, and John won two games for them with the playoffs. He started 1963 with Jacksonville, got sent down to Charleston, went 9–2 with a 1.61 ERA for the West Virginian Indians, and got called up to the major leagues in September at the age of twenty.

In his first start of 1964, on May 3, John threw a shutout against the Baltimore Orioles for his first major league win in the second game of a doubleheader. He won two of his first three games but then lost eight decisions in a row and got sent to AAA (now the Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League) in July. Indians' pitching coach Early Wynn had been trying to get John to throw a slider, but John altered his grip, affecting his control. He returned to throwing just a fastball and a curveball in the minors and was called up for a few games in September by the Indians. After the season, he was sent to the Chicago White Sox as part of a three-way trade between Cleveland, Chicago, and the Kansas City Athletics that sent Rocky Colavito to Cleveland.

Between his stints with the Angels and Athletics in 1985, John served as color commentator alongside Tim McCarver for a game between the White Sox and the Athletics on ABC's Monday Night Baseball on June 24. Following his career, John did broadcasting for several different teams. From 1994 through 1996, he served as a broadcaster for the Twins. In 1997, John served as the color commentator for the Charlotte Knights of the International League, also performing a public relations role for the ballclub. John returned to New York in 1998 to do commentary on select games during WPIX's final year of broadcasting Yankees games. On June 26, 2008, he guest-hosted the Mike and Mike ESPN Radio program.

John started his coaching career at Furman University. During the 2002 season, John joined the Expos' organization, serving as the pitching coach for the Harrisburg Senators of the Eastern League before managing the Maryvale in the Arizona Fall League. In 2003, he was promoted to coach the Triple-A Edmonton Trappers of the Pacific Coast League. Next year, the Yankees got permission from the Expos to interview John, and New York hired him to be the pitching coach for the Staten Island Yankees.

On December 17, 2006, John was named manager of the Bridgeport Bluefish in the Atlantic League. The fifth manager in team history, he compiled a 159–176 win–loss record in two and a half seasons with Bridgeport. John resigned on July 8, 2009, to pursue a "non-baseball position" with Sportable Scoreboards. Frank Boulton, the team owner and CEO, publicly thanked John for his contributions. While still managing the Bluefish, he became the spokesman for Tommy John's Go-Flex, a joint cream for older athletes manufactured by New Vitality.

John is survived by his second wife, Cheryl, his sons Tommy III and Travis and a daughter Tamara Mannelly. His other son, Taylor, an accomplished singer who performed on Broadway, died from a drug overdose in 2010.

 

MLB statistics

Win–loss record          288–231

Earned run average     3.34

Strikeouts        2,245

Stats at Baseball Reference Edit this at Wikidata

Teams

Cleveland Indians (1963–1964)

Chicago White Sox (1965–1971)

Los Angeles Dodgers (1972–1974, 1976–1978)

New York Yankees (1979–1982)

California Angels (1982–1985)

Oakland Athletics (1985)

New York Yankees (1986–1989)

Career highlights and awards

4× All-Star (1968, 1978–1980)