Tommy John, the namesake and first recipient of baseball's most important surgery, died on Sunday, the New York Yankees announced. He was 83 years old. John was reported to be entering hospice in early August, two years after he announced a battle with bladder cancer. He took the occasion to pen a goodbye letter to fans and other acquaintances on the day of the New York Yankees' Old-Timers' Day, where he was a frequent participant. “While his incredible longevity and post-surgery achievements changed the fortunes and trajectory of countless athletes around the world, it also overshadowed his excellence as a pitcher, which included consecutive 20‑win seasons with the Yankees,” the team’s statement read. “We pause to remember the totality of his legacy — his competitiveness and skill, his penchant for conversation, his kind and gracious nature, and his stature as an athletic and medical pioneer.” Thanks to the surgery, John's career spanned 27 years, appearing for six different teams and racking up 288 wins. Only 25 pitchers in MLB history have more wins, and only two — known steroid user Roger Clemens and dead-ball era star Bobby Matthews — are not enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. John remains a notable exclusion from Cooperstown, between his successful career and presence in the operating room that changed baseball.
STATEMENT FROM THE NEW YORK YANKEES: “The New York Yankees mourn the passing of Tommy John, who was a bedrock of our rotation during his time in pinstripes and a longtime favorite of Yankees fans. While his incredible longevity and post-surgery achievements changed the fortunes… pic.twitter.com/p6ndlBxUTb — New York Yankees (@Yankees) August 16, 2026
Tommy John and Dr. Frank Jobe changed what a torn UCL means Before 1974, a torn UCL was an unrecoverable blow for a pitcher's career, with treatment usually consisting of some combination of rest, painkillers and prayer. That appeared to be John's fate after July 17, 1974, when the Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander felt something pop in his arm during the third inning of a start against the Montreal Expos. As recalled in a comment documented by the Society for American Baseball Research:
"Right at the point where I put force on the pitch, the point where my arm is back and bent, something happened," he explained. "It felt as if I had left my arm someplace else. It was as if my body continued to go forward and my left arm had just flown out to right field, independent of the rest of me."
The eventual diagnosis was a torn UCL, and the man tasked with treating John was Dodgers team physician Dr. Frank Jobe. As Jobe recalled in "The Arm" by Jeff Passan, his advice to John was straightforward: "We just told him to go home … he was through playing baseball." John, however, was desperate. He was 31 years old and had been a successful pitcher for the Dodgers, Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians across 12 seasons up to that point. He did not want that career to end and pressed Jobe for a possible fix. Jobe's answer was to use a surgery that had been in use for years, just never on elbows. He would take a tendon from John's right wrist and put it in his left elbow, to replace a UCL that turned out to be fully ruptured. He told John there was a 1% chance it would work, but later admitted to Passan that was to avoid false hope. He was pretty sure it could work. It worked, and the results speak for themselves. After an arduous rehab process that ate his 1975 season, John returned to the mound and went on to play 14 more seasons in the big leagues. He had 124 wins with his first UCL and 164 with its replacement. One All-Star nod with the first and three the replacement. Zero career Cy Young votes, then two runner-up finishes. John's penultimate season saw him lead the Yankees in starts with 32 at the age of 45. When he retired in 1989, he had tied Deacon McGuire's modern-era MLB record for seasons played with 26, which was later broken by Nolan Ryan.
Modern baseball doesn't work without Tommy John surgery There is no procedure in the history of sports medicine that has altered a sport so drastically. Modern baseball and its high-octane arms are unthinkable without Tommy John surgery. Among the 10 pitchers to receive votes for the American League Cy Young Award in 2025, eight have undergone the UCL repair named after its first recipient. Rather than being a career-ender, news of a torn UCL is now essentially received as if the pitcher has been put in timeout for a year. The expectation is he will come back, though there are unfortunately still a few exceptions due to surgery complications. The risk is so minimized these days that there have been reports of horrendously misguided parents volunteering their young pitchers for a new UCL because they think it means a potential velocity bump. Jobe, who died in 2014, deserves the lion's share of the credit for what the surgery has done, but it took a pushy patient to get him there.