Tommy John, MLB comeback trailblazer, dies at 83

Tommy John, the crafty and durable left-hander 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, Fla.

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, Ind., 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 left-handed 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 1/2 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, Travis 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 Bavasi’s Angels for rookie left-hander 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.

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.