Tommy John, a reliable cornerstone of Major League rotations who won 288 games over three decades, has died. His name became synonymous with a medical procedure that has saved the careers of countless pitchers. He was 83 years old.
The left-hander was selected to the All-Star Game four times. He held the second-highest number of wins among Modern Era pitchers not elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. He spent 26 seasons on Major League mounds, making his debut with Cleveland in 1963 and throwing his final game with the Yankees in 1989, when he was 46 years old.
On July 17, 1974, while pitching for the Dodgers, John felt what he described as a "pop" in his left elbow when throwing a fastball to Hal Breeden of the Expos. It was subsequently determined that he had suffered a complete rupture of his left ulnar collateral ligament, an injury that threatened to end his career.
"Just at the moment I put force into the pitch, when my arm was back and flexed, something happened," John told Sports Illustrated in 1978. "I felt like I'd left my arm in another place. It was like my body kept going forward and my left arm just flew out toward right field, independent of the rest of my body… I came off the mound and I met Walter Alston, who was coming out of the dugout. 'You'd better get somebody,' I told him. 'I just hurt my arm'".
