Remembering Tommy John: A Legacy in Baseball and Surgery

Sad story over the weekend too. Tommy John passed away there. Craig, 83 years old. A lot of folks don't realize just how good a pitcher he really was. They're just like, isn't that the surgery? Yeah, it was named after Tommy John. Exactly that. I don't think he quite got the 300 wins. Was he 288? Was it 288? Yeah, I crossed paths with a lot of these guys. I met Tommy John. I can't say that I knew him or that he would know me. I can't say that. Fortunately, just being in baseball, I pretty much met them all. I would say I've interacted with them all. He's one of them that I interacted with. Naturally, a few days ago when the Yankees had their old-timers day, you saw that announcement that he was in hospice. At that point, you thought maybe there was a chance he was going to pass away, which indeed, of course, he did. The thing is that it's crazy to think this and to say it, but it's absolutely true. When you say that or when anybody says that no pitcher will ever win 300 games again, no pitcher will ever win as much as Tommy John ever won, ever again, moving forward in the history of baseball. There will be no pitcher to win 288 games like he did. The Hall of Fame right now, it's going through this transition of not rewarding longevity and rewarding players who did it at a very high level, maybe for a shorter period of time, where they used to call it compilers, guys who compiled stats worked their way into the Hall of Fame maybe 10, 15 years ago. Now, it's like your peak had to be incredible to get into the Hall of Fame. I think that's what hurt him. Maybe eventually, from a pitching standpoint, he gets in because of the surgery being named for him and because of the stats, but he was never a high strikeout guy, Joe. He was never going to get 3,000 strikeouts. He was just a guy that, in his era, went seven, eight innings every time. You look at complete games, 10 complete games, 15 complete games, 7 complete games. This is just who he was. The game has just changed so significantly. Guys like that just can't pitch. They can pitch, but they will not pitch anymore in Major League Baseball because baseball has decided that putting the ball in play is the worst thing you can do as a pitcher. Allowing a ball to be in play is horrible. We would rather take you walking somebody than letting you hit the ball with the opportunity to maybe get a strikeout. Strikeouts are king. High whiff rates are king. That's why we've seen batting averages down across the league. We talked about last week, you're batting 240. That's awesome. 240, that was 280. Now, 240 is like, wow, Mike Trout's hitting 240. Oh, he's having a terrible year. Well, that's actually a pretty good year in baseball. Rest in peace, Tommy John. Certainly, in the 80s, Joe, growing up in the 80s, had a chance to see him pitch many years with the Yankees. Then before that, before I saw him pitch with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Dr. Frank Joe, I'll never forget that name. When he had the surgery, it was the first, watch why it's called Tommy John surgery, but he won 164 games after that surgery. He played 26 years. Think about it. He had that surgery in 1974. I think he was on the Dodger. It wasn't a Yankee then. I think he was a Dodger. He was a Dodger first. One of my favorite Tommy John stories, when he did an interview back when it was Matt Harvey and the Mets. I believe it was Scott Boris was his agent. Remember Scott Boris told the Mets, yeah, he's not pitching more than that. The Mets actually had a pretty good team that year. I remember he went absolutely ballistic in an interview saying, who the hell is Scott Boris, Matt Harvey? You work for me, Scott, I don't work for you. I was like, yeah, let's see how long that goes. It was just such a different era, but the idea that you were going to dictate what a pitcher was going to do to his generation was just not, yeah, yeah or not. He's like, I won 164 games after the surgery and never, my arm never hurt once after that, but he also didn't throw a hundred miles an hour, did it? No, look, you know, Burt Bly Levin struck out a lot more guys than Tommy John did. But other than that, I mean, their careers are very similar in terms of, and Bly Levin's a hall of famer. Not that, you know, anybody streaming this knows who either of those two guys are, but Burt Bly Levin was a really good pitcher, deserves to be in the hall of fame. But what really was the difference between those two guys? Not a lot. And one is in the hall of fame and one not. I mean, we can play this game with everybody, of course, you know, but I do think that eventually through one of those committees that they have, I forget what they call it. It's not even veterans committee anymore. It's like the classic committee or the like, it's the different era committees. So I would say that Tommy John probably was at his peak in the seventies committee, I would guess. And so when they have that again, I would think that there's a chance that he gets into the hall of fame. But as of right now, still on the outside, looking in.