Tommy John Diaries – Pre-Surgery
Tommy John Diaries – Pre-Surgery
By Scott Bolohan
I honestly don’t know when it happened.
I was first diagnosed with a partially torn UCL when I was 17. I don’t remember how long I’d had elbow pain by then, but I’m pretty sure it was all through high school. I thought back to when I was a kid, spending hours a day throwing the ball into my pitchback in the driveway pretending I was pitching for the Detroit Tigers. I thought about the pitching lessons where I learned to throw a pretty good 12-6 curve when I was 13, and throwing it a lot. I remember playing in tournaments was rough. Often you would pitch a game and end up playing another position in the same day, followed by multiple games over a weekend with no chance for recovery. I thought of the games where I didn’t want to come out despite the pain, not wanting to appear weak to my coach, worried it would hurt my playing time.
I’m 5’10” and weigh 170 pounds. In high school, I topped out in the low 80s as a junior. As a righthander, I accepted I wouldn’t be a professional baseball player, and to even play in college I was told I would need Tommy John. I didn’t think it was worth it (so instead, I got a journalism degree!). I can’t remember what it’s like to throw a baseball without pain and find it hard to remember that people can. It hasn’t stopped me. I would take four ibuprofens before pitching and usually two after. I bought a fancy $200 German brace that was supposed to prevent my arm from fully extending when throwing to stop the pain. It did nothing. I had a platelet-rich plasma injection in 2017, three years after Masahiro Tanaka had one that allowed him to pitch for years with a partial tear in his UCL. I thought it actually made my elbow worse. But it didn’t keep me from pitching through it for two more years on top of throwing regularly to my high school players. September 2019 was the last time I pitched in a game. I couldn’t bend my arm for a month, keeping it tucked in my jacket pocket at an angle like Napoleon.
On February 2, 2021, I went for the results of my MRI. It was just a formality. I’ve been told for over a decade that I needed Tommy John surgery. My partially torn ulnar collateral ligament had calcified to an extent that my doctor had never seen before, rendering it essentially useless.
I’m now 34, the same age as Tommy John was when he had the surgery. I have no notion this will somehow allow me to pitch professionally or magically add miles per hour to my fastball. This is about my quality of life. Throwing batting practice would leave me unable to use my arm for days. I stopped playing in my men’s league in Central Park because of the pain that would last the entire season, as well as the increased ineffectiveness. It just wasn’t fun to be in that much pain and suck. But the pain had started to affect me in other ways. Riding a bike with my arms straightened with my bodyweight against the handles would make my elbow feel like there was a knife in it. It progressed to the point that long drives of holding the steering wheel were painful. I learned not to sleep on my right side.
It still wasn’t an easy decision. I was nervous, often looking at my elbow and imagining the scar that would soon run along it from the ligaments pulled from my arm and holes drilled in my elbow—pretty brutal stuff. But after half a lifetime of near-constant pain, the idea that I could be out of pain was hard to comprehend. Right now, there’s just a dull pain from everyday use, but I know I’m about to put myself through a lot of pain. I’m nervous about the length of the recovery, even things like when I’ll be able to type again, and the small chance of nerve damage from the surgery. But I also want to throw a baseball and do everyday activities after. Most players have millions of dollars on the line, so it’s a no-brainer. But I want to coach baseball for the rest of my life and have kids and play catch them with them too and I could probably do it through the pain. There’s certainly a value to not being in pain, but I’ve also had doctors tell me they would only do Tommy John if I were a professional player. I feel like I tried everything else, but part of me still felt unsure I was doing the right thing.
I still don’t think I would be having the surgery if the stars hadn’t aligned so perfectly for me to do it now. The pandemic put me out of work, and I suspect high school baseball won’t happen again this year, or if it does, I’m not sure I would feel comfortable coaching. Because of losing my jobs and nearly a year without real income, I qualified for Medicaid, so I temporarily have good insurance. If I were ever going to have the surgery, it would be now.
Hearing a professional pitcher needs Tommy John surgery isn’t shocking. It barely registers a shoulder shrug now. We talk about a pitcher’s elbow almost as a part of a machine, not a joint connected to a human body. In the last year, fourteen Major League players needed Tommy John surgery, including stars like Justin Verlander, Noah Syndergaard, Chris Sale, and Luis Severino. The common assumption is the increase in velocity means more Tommy John surgeries. Yet, at younger levels, I see the game becoming increasingly dependent on showcases and playing more. They have Tommy John too, we just don’t read about it in the news. This should be shocking, but honestly, it’s not. I’m not sure baseball as a whole cares given the effectiveness of the surgery and the money that’s made off of youth baseball.
I think we should be shocked every time a pitcher needs Tommy John, and we should try to prevent the injury instead of mending it. We are going to explore Tommy John at The Twin Bill, as an epidemic. I think baseball had defaulted to assuming pitchers will need the surgery instead of finding the root of the issue. Jeff Passan’s excellent The Arm goes in-depth about the issue, but nothing has seemed to change since its publication in 2016. Pitchers disappear for a year, we don’t think about them, and they come back mostly normal. I’ll be writing about my progress and trying to show the human side of the surgery. I hope to hear from players and experts too. I also want to figure out how I can best reduce the risk of injury for the high school players I coach.
I’m having the surgery on February 19. Hopefully, my full editing velocity will return and I’ll be better than ever.
Scott Bolohan is the founder of The Twin Bill. There is a part of his brain that won’t give up on the idea of suddenly being able to throw 100 mph after surgery.