Ebert and John, At the Ballpark

Written by The Common Man

Wednesday, 03 March 2010 17:55

Yesterday's appearance by Roger Ebert on Oprah Winfrey's show still has me thinking today. Ebert's battles with cancer and the loss of his lower jaw (and with it his ability to speak, eat, and drink) are incredible to read about. And to see the dramatic toll it has taken on his body only emphasizes what remarkable strength of character Ebert has. Rather than hide his struggles, and himself, Ebert has increased his intellectual productivity and visibility to an unparalleled degree. Frankly, because I did not live in Chicago, I had never known Roger Ebert as anything other than the big guy with the thumb. Thankfully, his addiction to Twitter, his continued work with the Chicago Sun-Times, and his prolific blog have made getting to know Roger Ebert possible. Despite the loss of his physical voice, the trait that most of America knew him for (well, that and his thumbs), Ebert has continued to produce work of the highest caliber.

I've often what happens to baseball players when they lose their singular ability to do the one thing they have always done well, have focused on to the detriment of their other skills, particularly when the loss of that skill is sudden, and not due to the natural aging process. It's not often that careers end precipitously (while a player is still alive, that is, Ed Delahanty, Ray Chapman, Roberto Clemente, and Thurman Munson don't count). Ray Fosse limped through several years after Pete Rose broke his ankle. Tony Conigliaro fought back after he was beaned. Players usually give it a last, sad, shot before finally hanging up their spikes for good. Dave Dravecky, on the other hand, was an excellent pitcher for the Padres and Giants through the 1980s, but cancer in his pitching arm ended his career dramatically in 1989, when his weakened humerus bone snapped on the pitching mound. Two years later, his left arm was amputated. A career doesn't end more finally and with more certainty than that. After his career was over, Dravecky struggled with depression and anger before becoming a respected motivational speaker.

But these players are nothing like Roger Ebert. While Ebert's voice was taken from him, he continued to practice his craft, better than ever. Rather, to see parallels in our game, we have to look to a player who lost the ability to do what he did best, then transcended it to reestablish himself among the game's best. Such a player was Tommy John.

John began his career as a highly touted prospect wih the Cleveland Indians. Debuting as a 20 year old, and considered a phenom out of Kentucky, John pitched just 115 innings for the club before being shipped out in a horrible (for the Indians) three-team trade with John Romano and Tommie Agee to the White Sox for an aging Rocky Colavito and change. John continued to put up good numbers for the Sox before being traded to the Dodgers in 1972 for Dick Allen. From 1963-1974, John was 124-106 with a 2.97 ERA and a 116 ERA+.

Just before the All Star break in '74, however, karma caught up with Tommy John. At 13-3, 2.50 John was leading the league in wins and thought he belonged on the NL All Star team, but was not picked by Mets manager Yogi Berra. "In all my baseball career, I'd have to say this is the biggest disappointment I've had," he told the Associated Press. "What's the excuse? Berra or Bowie Kuhn or whoever is saying a team can't have three pitchers [on the All Star team] is a lot of bunk....It really sets you back. I've had a great year, I've worked hard and yet I can't even get picked for the All Star team." His wife, recalling that night, is even more blunt, "Tommy came home from the ballpark that night with huge ol' cow eyes. It's the only time I've ever seen him angry. I don't think anyone realized how much thae snub hurt him. I hate Yogi Berra to this day for that. I know that's bad for a Christian to say, but Yogi Berra cannot even be considered a human being after doing that." For forgetting that God loves Yogi Berra far more than he loves most mortal men (like the platypus, Yogi is a walking conundrum that never fails to be amusing), the very next day John felt His wrath. In the third inning, John something felt wrong with his arm. It happened "on a hard slider....Something just snapped. I threw one more pitch and I knew it was gone," he told the AP. John took himself out of the game, and went to the doctor.

When pitchers had had similar injuries in the past, it had destroyed their careers. Indeed, in my interview with Howie Nunn a year ago, Nunn described having a similar injury, and discovering his limitations, "I tried to stay on but the arm wouldn’t do it. I still had the fastball, but I couldn’t throw a breaking pitch or anything. It would blow out the elbow or it would just pop right out like you hit it with a sledgehammer." John's problem sounds similar. In September, he told reporters, "I can't throw a real good curve. I can throw a slider, but I can't snap off the curve the way I should." Fortunately for Tommy John and for the pitchers who would follow him, he went to see Dr. Frank Jobe. Again, according to the AP, "[John's arm] could nt be repaired in a traditional manner so that he could pitch again. So Jobe decided on a radical experiment. He took a tendon from John's right forearm, placed it in the left elbow and prayed."

John was out for a full season. His wife recalled in 1976, "He'd sit down to meals and stare at his plate, knowing he couldn't even feed himself....I'd have to find excuses to race into the bedroom so Tommy wouldn't see how much it upset me." John battled depression and his own body to relearn how to use his elbow. From the same article, Jobe recounted, "[we] asked it to come alive again and perform. It was a very questionable procedure that had never been tried before but it was the only thing we could come up with that left open even a remote possibility of Tommy's return to baseball. I told Sally after the operation that on a scale of one to ten, Tommy's hances of ever pitching agian were less than one." Reports on John's comeback sound grueling, "The arm regained some of its strenght but the left hand began to shrivel and John was in almost constant pain." Another article recounts, "A numbness in his third and fourth fingers following the delicate operation Sept. 25 caused more problems than pain. He couldn't sense how hard to girp the ball and the muscles weren't working that well."

Nevertheless, by the following August, papers were clamoring for John to rejoin the Dodgers, and John made noise about returning to the club mid-season, "I want to pitch in September, but I don't know if the opportunity will present itself then. We may be in a race for second place and they may not want to take a chance." Walt Alston was less optimistic, "His arm is 85 percent back to where it was, but his control is not good. He's farther away today than he was, say, last week, but his motion is good and he's stayed in good shape."

In September, John did throw a ball in anger, but it was in the Arizona Instructional League. LA finished 20 games back of the Big Red Machine, and didn't want to risk its former star. In his first outing, Dodger VP Al Campanis was pleased, "He had good rhythm, velocity and control. He hit the corners well. At this stage he was outstanding whether it was the instructional league or not." John had thrown 33 pitches in 3 innings, striking out 3 and walking none, while allowing no hits. That Fall, John got seven total starts, throwing 31 inings with 10 walks, 21 Ks, a 3-1 record and a 2.90 ERA.

John returned to the Dodgers the following Spring and made the rotation out of Spring Training. In his first game back, John pitched just 5 innings, walking 4 and giving up a three-run homer to Darrell Evans of the Atlanta Braves, and got hung with the loss. John told UPI after the game, "My control wasn't all I would have liked it to have been. But my arm felt great and I felt I was throwing some good pitches. My only really bad pitch was that hanging curve ball I threw Evans." But John would quickly find his footing. He had three straight seven-inning starts, giving up just three runs in the process. John threw 207 innings that year, going 10-10 with a 3.09 ERA (110 ERA+). But the next year he won 20 for the first time in his career (he'd win 20 games 3 times), and would go 113-65 with a 3.15 ERA (120 ERA+) from 1975-1982. While his K/9 dropped to just 3.8 per game, John cut his HR/9 by a third (to .4) and his BB/9 by a almost a fifth (2.1).

There is a popular narrative that Tommy John was overpowering before having the radical surgery that now bears his name, and that he had to "learn to pitch" afterwards, essentially becoming a junkballer. That's hard to support. John hadn't struck out 6 batters per game since his first season in the league, and his K/9 had fallen for three straight seasons before he went under the knife, and was actually higher in 1977 and 1978 than it was in 1973 and 1974. He was a sinkerballer with good control. Sure, he had to relearn how to use his arm after his surgery, but the man knew pitching long before they made him immortal by slapping his name on a medical procedure.

Likewise, Roger Ebert always knew how to write, and contained the soul of a poet. But it took until the moment when what seemed to be his greatest gift was taken away before we really understood that.

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