In July, baseball will take a break from its litany of big arms going under the knife to welcome into the Hall of Fame two pitchers who still have all their original ulnar collateral ligaments. Freaks.
Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine know Tommy John, but not in the Gray’s Anatomy sense. While today’s pitchers are riding an epidemic of elbow reconstructions — Tommy John surgery — these two old horses have had less work done on them than Jamie Lee Curtis.
Hmmmm. Two fellows who lasted a combined 45 years. Both winners of better than 300 games. And both who did it all their own way, without sacrificing their entire youth on the altar of organized baseball or trying to throw every pitch through a wall. Wonder if they were onto something?
The current way our pitchers are being raised certainly doesn’t seem very efficient or effective. Too many stars are falling out with season-ending elbow tears, some of them, like Kris Medlen and Brandon Beachy of the Braves, now on their second round of ligament-transplant surgeries. The Tommy John surgery is becoming distressingly common, as ubiquitous in the pitcher’s world as the ice pack. A procedure originally intended as the last resort for an aged arm is now taking on the look of an inevitable cost of doing business for pitchers young and old.
It was the Miami Marlins turn to cry this past week, when their 20-year-old phenom Jose Fernandez reportedly was diagnosed with a torn UCL.
Who knows whose turn it will be next week?
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