Tommy John, the Man Behind Baseball's Most Famous Surgery, Dies at 83

The somber news out of Bradenton this weekend: Tommy John has passed away at the age of 83, at his home in Florida, after time in hospice with bladder cancer and other ailments. And what a life in the game it was. This is the man who won 288 games across 26 big-league seasons — tied for third-most in MLB history — with a 3.34 ERA and 2,245 strikeouts over 760 appearances. But the number that changed baseball forever came in 1974, when Dr. Frank Jobe rebuilt his left elbow in a four-hour operation that Jobe himself pegged at 1-in-100 odds to work. It worked. John pitched 14 more seasons and won 164 more games, and the procedure carries his name to this day — a surgery roughly 35% of active pitchers have now undergone, according to the AMA in 2024. He missed the Yankees' Old-Timers' Day on Aug. 8, and the Dodgers honored him Sunday with a video and a moment of silence. A pioneer, a survivor, a legend.