Remembering learning about ‘Tommy John Surgery’ — from Tommy John — at UNC
It was 1981 and the New York Yankees, having ended spring training, were making a stop in Chapel Hill for an exhibition baseball game against the North Carolina Tar Heels.
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Yankees owner George Steinbrenner had a daughter who attended UNC and later would donate $1 million for lights at Boshamer Stadium. Steinbrenner already had brought the Yankees to Boshamer for preseason games in 1977 and ‘79, drawing big crowds.
During the ‘81 game, a Yankees pitcher spotted an open seat on press row, then situated low and behind home plate, with a good eye’s view of the strike zone. He asked a local reporter if he could jump in and sit for a while and soon struck up a conversation.
Turns out, the pitcher was Tommy John. He also was very conversational. He quickly noted he had been a star high school basketball player in Terre Haute and once was recruited by legendary N.C. State coach Everett Case. But baseball was his sport, he noted, and his best path to the big leagues.
A lefthander, he noted he made it by age 20, making his Major League debut. He said he had a nice career in progress until he injured his pitching arm and was told his career might be over.
Then again, there was an intriguing second opinion. He explained that a doctor had devised a form of radical surgery. It was something about taking a tendon out of his right wrist and replacing a ligament in the injured elbow, and how he was skeptical at first but decided to go along with it.
“Saved my career,” Tommy John said that day in ‘81. “I was a better pitcher after the surgery than before it.”
While puzzling an unknowing reporter with medical talk about the ulnar collateral ligament and inserting the tendon and screwing it in, Tommy John simply was describing what universally would become known as “Tommy John Surgery.” but then seemed slightly screwy and surreal. The ulnar what?
Dr. Frank Jobe performed the surgery in September 1974 and John missed the 1975 season. By 1981, John had been a 20-game winner in three of four seasons after surgery, winning a career-high 22 games for the Yankees in 1980.
John won 288 games in a career spanning 26 seasons, pitching more than 4,700 innings. He was selected to the MLB All-Star Game four times, all after the surgery.
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Memories of that long-ago exhibition game at Boshamer and a chance encounter with Tommy John have been rekindled of late. John, 83 and living in Florida, missed the Yankees’ annual Old-Timers Game and issued a statement on social media saying his health issues — he was diagnosed with bladder cancer — prevented him from going to Yankee Stadium. He died Saturday.
“Thanks to Dr. Jobe, who saved my arm and made it possible for me to continue pitching,” John’s statement said. “That surgery has since gone on to save the careers of countless pitchers, including many of the very best in the game today.”
The “very best’ including Shohei Ohtani, Chris Sale and Justin Verlander, among others.
No one could have predicted all that way back when on that late-March day in 1981. It was just a quick conversation — player and reporter — that the pitcher struck up during a long-forgotten exhibition game.
The reporter from Raleigh interviewed Yankees outfielder Dave Winfield about his 10-year, $25 million contract, then the richest in professional sports history. The Yankees beat the Tar Heels, 6-2.
But there was some basketball talk, too.
“You know, I think Everett Case really wanted me at N.C. State …” Tommy John said.
(Staff writer Chip Alexander interviewed Tommy John and Dave Winfield at the 1981 game)
This story was originally published August 16, 2026 at 3:21 PM with the headline “Remembering learning about ‘Tommy John Surgery’ — from Tommy John — at UNC.”
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