'LUCKY TO BE ALIVE'
Former Yank Tommy John fighting way back from near-death scare
HE WILL forever be remembered as the first pitcher to return to the big leagues following what would prove to be a groundbreaking operation and on June 3, in a private ceremony at the Garden of The Smithsonian Castle in D.C., Tommy John will present his original cast, signed by his 1974 Dodgers, Vin Scully and surgeon Dr. Frank Jobe, to Smithsonian secretary Lonnie Bunch.
“The surgery itself brought me back so I could play baseball again, which is what I’d wanted to do ever since I was a small boy,” John said. “Dr. Jobe gave me a 1-in-a-hundred chance, and his big thing was, ‘What are you going to do when this doesn’t work? How are you gonna take care of your family? I don’t want you to think that you’re going to be going out there and playing baseball again. You probably won’t, so be thinking about that.’
“And I told him, I said, ‘If you do your job, which is put me back together, I will more than do my job, and that is rehabilitate.’ I told Dr. Jobe if it takes one year, it’ll take one year. If it takes two years, it’ll take two. If it takes three, I’ll do three years. I’ll do whatever it takes for me to get back and pitch Major League Baseball again.”
He was 31 at the time and once he returned to the mound a year-and-a-half later in 1976, he didn’t stop pitching until he was 46. Following Tommy John surgery, he won 164 games to finish with 288.
But Tommy John’s Greatest Comeback is the one he is living now.
“I’m lucky to be alive,” he told The Post.
This is the story of The Miracle of Tommy John:
COVID had stricken John and his wife, Cheryl, and he could barely walk when they returned from Nashville to their La Quinta, Calif., home on December 12, 2020.
“I don’t know how I got him in the house, but I did,” Cheryl told The Post. “The morning of the 13th, he tried to stand up and he fell and sliced his entire forehead open. I was trying to get him up, because he was wedged between our bed and a dresser. I went out to the garage to get a baseball bat. I said, ‘Hang on to this, and I’ll pull you up.’ Well, I couldn’t get him up, and 911 said, ‘Leave him, don’t move him.’
But when the ambulance came they went, ‘Are you in a domestic relationship?’ Because they saw the bat.”
They took him to Eisenhower Health Center in La Quinta.
“They sent him home the next day,” Cheryl said. “He couldn’t stand up, he couldn’t go to the bathroom. Five times they sent him home.
“I’m looking at my husband that looked like he was dying. I couldn’t get help. Tommy was like 280 pounds, I couldn’t lift him. He couldn’t go to the bathroom, he had the worst bed sores ever, the hospital never checked him. The last time that he went into the hospital, they dropped him ... on the ground.”
Cheryl, meanwhile, was trying to fight off pneumonia.
“I couldn’t be sick enough because I had to take care of him,” she said. “I couldn’t taste or smell for four months. I love this man.”
John would be in and out of Eisenhower for five weeks. He is thankful it wasn’t five weeks and one day.
“I had two huge blood clots in my upper and lower lobes of my lung,” he said.
Finally, Cheryl texted Dr. Dan Oakes, an orthopedic surgeon friend who would send all the necessary information to Dr. Antreas Hindoyan at Keck Medical Center of USC.
“And at 3:30 in the morning,” Cheryl said, “Dr. Hindoyan said, ‘Get him out of that hospital! I have an ambulance downstairs, he’s going to die.’ So they transported him to Keck Medical. They had him in surgery at 6 and broke up two massive blood clots in his lung.
“They saved his life.”
But then came another COVID curveball.
“And then I came down with Guillain-Barré syndrome,” John said. “It affects the nerves and I was paralyzed in my lower extremities for seven, eight months.
“I’m still fighting it right now. I have to have a walker and I’m getting myself better and better and better, and stronger and stronger and stronger. But I was in a wheelchair for seven, eight months.”
It didn’t stop their wedding day.
“Obviously I couldn’t walk,” John said, “so I’m in the back of our SUV laying down, and Cheryl was standing outside the car and we were in the parking lot at the County Clerk’s office. So the lady came out and did the vows and married us and ...”
Cheryl interrupts: “We’re happy!”
“And we’re happy!” John said. They were introduced by friends 10 years ago. It’s his second marriage, and hers as well. He turned 79 on May 22 and was treated to a surprise party at his apartment clubhouse with some 60 guests, including his son Tommy John III and son-in-law and retired Bears long-snapper, Patrick Mannelly, and granddaughter Tyler Mannelly. His daughter Tamara Mannelly was away on business, but will attend the Smithsonian event.
“Cheryl bought me for my birthday a
HurryCane, you know those canes that stand up?” John said. “I’m gonna try to start walking with that.”
Major League Baseball will film the ceremony.
“I just want people who are baseball fans — or not baseball fans
— to see the cast and the signatures,”
John said. “I’m sure there’ll be a little commentary written up that they can read about the surgery and what happened, and how I performed post-surgery. It just shows you what a great surgeon Frank Jobe was.”
He is proud that he stands today as the namesake of Tommy John surgery — or Ulnar Collateral Ligament Reconstruction.
“I feel grateful that I was in the right place at the right time and had the right doctor,” John said.
He hopes that he won’t need the cane after a few more months of physical therapy.
“Maybe I’m not smart enough to figure it out. But whatever comes my way, I’ll fight it. I’ll fight it. I’ll go for it,” John said. “I’m lucky to be alive. But it attacked the wrong person, ’cause I will get back. My whole goal is to get myself ready so Cheryl and I can play golf. Nine holes of golf.”
Never bet against Tommy John.
“Tommy John surgery was much, much, much easier because it was strictly orthopedic,” he says.
This one is much tougher. “But you know what? You know what? I’ll come back,” he said.