TOMMY JOHN

I'll always picture TJ in a Dodger uniform, although he started out in Cleveland in 1963 and had a year with the White Sox before coming to L.A. It was his longest stop in baseball. In '79 he went back to the AL, finishing his career with the Yankees and Angels.

"When I don't think I can play anymore. I'll quit," he said to a NY reporter in '82. "I just haven't found a summer job that pays as well." After his second year with the Angels in '84, he must have felt that 21 years was enough. At the end he had 255 wins to show for his efforts (against 197 losses).

But wins and losses don't begin to tell the TJ story.

"The Tommy John Operation" is now a part of baseball's lexicon. Taking a length of tendon from the Terre Haute, Indiana native's right wrist, Dr. Frank Jobe used it to replace the permanently damaged elbow tendon of his left arm in I974. The idea was to enable an exballplayer to do simple things like combing his hair. Pitch again? Forget it, said the doctor. Two years earlier he had bone chips removed. His arm was beginning to look like a demonstration model at a medical school. But Dr. Jobe wasn't done yet. 3 months after the tendon operation he opened up the arm again to reposition the nerve in the elbow, a more risky procedure than the earlier one. John could have been spent the rest of his life with a claw on the end of that famous left arm. Combing his hair could be a problem.

When Dr. Jobe reiterated that he would never pitch again, TJ had a simple but determined response.

"You're a great doctor, and I believe in you. But you're wrong. I will come back. You did an excellent job inside my arm. Now it's up to me. I know how much pain my body can stand, and it's quite a bit. I know how hard I can work, and if it takes 18 hour a day, I'll do it. I will come back."

Those of you into late night TV have perhaps seen Jimmy Stewart and June Allyson in "The Monty Straton Story." Tommy and his wife Sally did a remake right in their front yard. Like Mrs. Stratton, Sally played catch by the hour with her husband until he could once again grip a ball and throw it with some accuracy.

By spring training '76 he had complete use of his left hand, and that season he won 10 games with a 3.09 ERA. Picking him as Comeback Player of the Year was one of the all-time no brainers. The next year he doubled his wins, finishing second to Carlton for the Cy Young.

"I know they had to graft a new arm on John," quipped Pete Rose, "but did they have to give him Sandy Koufax?" A pretty ironic quote when you consider that Sandy tore his arm up with supersonic fastballs and fall-off-the-table curves. TJ never threw a ball much faster than 80 MPH. He tantalized batters with two pitches, a little slider and a little sinker.

The fact that he could still pitch after the '74 surgeries is a tribute to the skill of Dr. Jobe, but the L.A. orthopedic specialist might not even be TJ's favorite doctor. That distinction might belong to Dr. Fred Epstein, the neurosurgeon who operated on Travis John, the John's younger son, who fell 3 stories from a window in Aug., '81. TJ was in Detroit with the Yankees when he was summoned from the field to take the frantic call from Sally telling him Travis might not make it. He must have some of dad's determination, for his recovery was as complete and just as miraculous.

A rebuilt arm that gave him nine more years of pitching, a son who came close to not making his 3rd birthday about to celebrate his 18th---and now a place in the SITT Hall of Fame.

Did I mention that Tommy and his wife are very religious, that their faith saw them through the crises that they have shared? I can almost hear TJ in that trademark stammer of his:

"I have been tru-tru-truly blessed."