Tommy John died Saturday at 83, and every obituary about him proves the point he spent a lifetime making: the man who wagered his career on a 100-to-1 gamble and won has been reduced to a medical procedure—a brand, a hashtag, a collective noun stripped of the individual will that made it matter.
The numbers tell a story the coverage won't. John was 124-106 with a 2.97 ERA over 12 seasons before his ulnar collateral ligament snapped in 1974. That was supposed to be the end. Pitchers didn't come back from that. Dr. Frank Jobe told him the odds of the revolutionary surgery succeeding were one in a hundred. John's response, as reported by The Guardian, was pure American:
