Dr. Frank Jobe, right, and the former pitcher Tommy John in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 2013. Credit Mike Groll/Associated Press
On a July night in 1974, Dr. Frank Jobe, the orthopedist for the Los Angeles Dodgers, was sitting in the stands at Dodger Stadium watching the ace left-hander Tommy John face the Montreal Expos.
In the third inning, John threw a pair of wild pitches and heard the sound of a “collision” coming from his arm. He had torn an elbow ligament, which almost certainly meant the end of a pitcher’s career.
But Dr. Jobe performed a pioneering operation, transplanting an unneeded tendon from John’s right wrist into his left elbow, where it functioned as a new ligament. John went on to win another 164 games over 14 seasons, retiring from the game at age 46.
Dr. Jobe, who died Thursday in Santa Monica, Calif., at 88, was renowned as the father of Tommy John surgery, a landmark in sports medicine that has been duplicated thousands of times and has saved the careers of numerous athletes, most of them pitchers. His death was announced by the Dodgers.
Dr. Jobe also performed groundbreaking shoulder surgery on the star Dodgers pitcher Orel Hershiser in 1990, developing a procedure that reduces trauma to tissue during the operation. Hershiser pitched for another decade, and Dr. Jobe’s shoulder procedure has been employed many times since.
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Dr. Jobe in the Biomechanics Laboratory at Centinela Hospital Medical Center in 1998. Credit Reed Saxon/Associated Press
When Hershiser returned to the mound at Dodger Stadium on May 29, 1991, he bowed his head in silent prayer, then placed his Dodger cap on his head and threw a salute to Dr. Jobe.
“I think there should be a medical wing in the Hall of Fame, starting with him,” John once told The Orange County Register.
With John standing beside him, Dr. Jobe was honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame at a ceremony last July in Cooperstown, N.Y.
“There are a lot of pitchers in baseball who should celebrate his life and what he did for the game of baseball,” John said in a statement after Dr. Jobe’s death.
The long list of pitchers who have undergone Tommy John surgery includes A. J. Burnett, Chris Carpenter, Tim Hudson, Francisco Liriano, Joe Nathan, John Smoltz, Stephen Strasburg, Billy Wagner, David Wells, Brian Wilson and Matt Harvey.
But when Dr. Jobe suggested the tendon transplant to John, he said the chances of success were slim. He had performed the procedure on polio patients to improve joint use, but never on an athlete.
“He looked around my office very seriously,” Dr. Jobe told Fox Sports in 2012. “He looked me in the eye and said, ‘Let’s do it.’ And those are three words that changed baseball.”
Frank W. Jobe was born in Greensboro, N.C., on July 16, 1925. His father was a postman. He joined the Army out of high school during World War II and served as a medical supply sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division during the Battle of the Bulge.
He was inspired by watching surgeons work under combat conditions.
“These guys would be operating in tents with bullets and shrapnel flying around,” Dr. Jobe told The Los Angeles Times in 1991. “There was tremendous noise from the shells going off. There was blood everywhere. These guys became my real heroes.”
After the war, Dr. Jobe graduated from La Sierra University in Riverside, Calif., and obtained a medical degree from Loma Linda University in California.
He was a general practitioner for three years, then completed a residency in orthopedic surgery and in 1965 joined with Dr. Robert Kerlan as founders of the Southwestern Orthopaedic Medical Group in Los Angeles. It was renamed the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic in 1985.
Dr. Jobe began doing consultant work with the Dodgers in 1964 and became their orthopedic doctor in 1968. In performing his surgery on John, who had won 124 games in the majors to that point, Dr. Jobe took a tendon from the wrist, then drilled holes in John’s damaged elbow and wove the tendon through them. During John’s long rehabilitation process, the tendon began to function as the damaged ulnar collateral ligament had.
John missed the last half of the 1974 season and all of 1975. On April 26, 1976, he won his first major league game since the injury, a victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates. He later became a mainstay of the Yankees’ pitching staff, and his elbow never troubled him again.
The Dodgers Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax retired at 30 after the 1966 season because of an elbow injury similar to John’s.
“I’ve seen him many times in spring training and, sure, he’s brought it up,” Dr. Jobe told The Daily News of Los Angeles in 2012. “He’d say, ‘Why didn’t you do that on me?’ We simply didn’t know what to do for them back then.”
In addition to his practice, Dr. Jobe was a clinical professor in the department of orthopedics at the University of Southern California School of Medicine. He was the founder and medical director of the Biomechanics Laboratory at Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Los Angeles, studying body motion and designing exercises to prevent injury.
Dr. Lewis A. Yocum, the longtime orthopedist for the Los Angeles Angels, who was one of baseball’s most renowned orthopedic surgeons when he died at 65 last May, was mentored by Dr. Jobe.
Dr. Jobe’s survivors include his wife, Beverly; his sons, Christopher, Meredith, Cameron and Blair; and eight grandchildren.
Dr. Jobe said that he himself did not coin the term Tommy John surgery, but that it had evolved over time.
“It’s the ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction while using the palmaris longus tendon,” he wryly remarked to The Orange County Register. “That’s why they call it Tommy John surgery.”
In July 2012, John presented Dr. Jobe with a magnetic resonance imaging exam of his pitching elbow that he had just taken as a souvenir for him.
Reflecting on his contributions to sports medicine, Dr. Jobe looked beyond the medical terminology. He told Major League Baseball’s website: “Sometimes it just makes you want to cry watching those guys go on to great things. It really does.”
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