Gloom In D.C. As Strasburg Gets To Know Tommy John

Posted by Seth in GENERAL on 08-30-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

It ain’t easy being a Washington, D.C. sports fan.

You’ve got the Redskins, owned by Daniel Snyder, who is the George Steinbrenner of the NFL, except without the championships. You’ve got the Capitals, who have Alexander Ovechkin, the greatest goal-scorer the NHL has seen in years, yet they managed to choke their way out of the playoffs the last couple years. You’ve got the Wizards. Yes, indeed, there is still an NBA team in the nation’s capital.

And then you’ve got the Nationals, who had Stephen Strasburg, the greatest pitching arm to come along since Nolan Ryan, until his rookie season was felled by a torn elbow ligament. He’s going to have the miracle procedure known as Tommy John surgery — a revolutionary innovation 35 years ago that has become a routine part of baseball today. They take a tendon from elsewhere in the body and weave it between your ulna and humerus bones. You end up with a stronger elbow than you had before — at least temporarily.

Living in the D.C. area, I can tell you the whole place has been gaga over this Strasburg guy since before he even got to the majors. Such is the hunger for power and prestige in this incredibly pompous town. To illustrate just how big a deal this is to folks around here, consider this: Even with the Redskins playing a preseason game on Friday night and the Nationals long irrelevant in the standings, the Washington Post ran a big front-page blowout on Saturday, detailing with graphics, exactly how Tommy John surgery works. Interesting that they’d go to the front page of the paper with this story, considering that the Post is notorious for playing up even the smallest scraps of Redskins coverage above everything else, and the Skins had just played a preseason game Friday night.

In case you’re not up to date on your baseball history, Tommy John had a long pitching career with several teams after having the reconstructive elbow surgery that now bears his name. To most baseball fans, the phrase “Tommy John surgery” means a guy is going to be out for a year, and they’re so depressed after that, they don’t stop to look at what this procedure is all about. So it was a pretty cool idea on the Post’s part to show everyone the visual step-by-step of the process.

While this surgery puts pitchers on the shelf for a year of recovery and rehabilitation, the interesting thing is that a lot of guys come back to be even better than they were before. Some of that may be temporary, and the newly reconstructed ligament will eventually wear down, gradually lowering the pitcher’s velocity. But there have been some remarkable success stories. One of them is playing out this season in the form of Tim Hudson, who is having a flat-out stellar season with the Atlanta Braves after missing most of 2009 while he recovered from Tommy John surgery. That anyone can come back after having their elbow reconstructed and hurl a baseball 90 miles an hour really is a marvel of medicine.

Like this post? You may also like these:

  1. Great Non-Fiction Sports Books
  2. What the Hell is Turf Toe Anyway?
  3. Red Bulls Getting High Tech Pen
  4. Episode 37 – “You sound insane right now”
  5. Sports On The Web: Now In Its AM Radio Phase


Leave a Comment