When Tommy awakened from surgery, he groggily attempted to feel his
right arm. Having already endured left elbow surgery two years before, Dr.
Jobe had told Tommy that this new “reconstruction” would entail use of
the tendon from his right arm.^9 Dr. Jobe had told Tommy there were two
eventualities: another simple cleanup, or the new reconstructive operation.
Once the Dodger ace felt bandages on his right arm, he knew history had
been made.
Dr. Jobe had told Tommy that his chances of returning to play were one
in a hundred. After venturing into the sports equivalent of an untethered
spacewalk, Tommy came back and famously won more games after his
surgery than before. Tommy John surgery is now one of the most reliable
operations in all of sports, with a quoted return to play rate of at least 80
percent. A stroke of genius has saved hundreds of baseball careers, and
there is not a single major league baseball team without numerous Tommy
John “survivors.”^10 And because the Tommy John operation is almost
entirely elective, only reserved for elite baseball players, in some ways it
represents the ultimate expression of the implant revolution, where
surgeons now perform operative reconstructions on athletes who play for
our entertainment and vast sums of money.
If you were taking a walk on the windswept beach at Kill Devil Hills,
North Carolina (just south of Kitty Hawk), on December 17, 1903, you
might stumble upon the Wright brothers making history with their Wright
Flyer. You likely wouldn’t believe your eyes, but the meaning of manned
flight wouldn’t resonate until you saw an airplane full of passengers
making a long-distance journey. Similarly, if you were in Los Angeles at
the Centinela Hospital operating room on September 25, 1974, you might
be intrigued to see Tommy John on the operating table. The deeper
meaning of what that moment meant for baseball and sports medicine
would be impossible to know until hundreds of baseball players and elite
“overhead athletes” would have their careers (and lives) changed by
Tommy John surgery. Although sports medicine has many birthplaces,
only then would you appreciate that you were at one of those special
moments, witnessing a master at work, a humble pioneer helping birth
sports medicine.