Tommy John bid an emotional farewell to Yankees fans before Old-Timers\u2019 Day, issuing a statement through the team as he battles health issues from his Florida home.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s message did not specify John\u2019s condition, but in 2024, the former left-hander announced he had been diagnosed with bladder cancer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to thank the Yankees organization and the Steinbrenner family for giving me this opportunity to say goodbye to everyone, along with all the family and friends who followed me throughout my 26-year MLB career,\u201d read John\u2019s message.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you to all the fans who supported me and my teammates for 26 years. I\u2019ll never forget you.\u201d<\/p>\n
John, 83, went 288-231 with a 3.34 ERA over 760 games (700 starts) from 1963-89, pitching for Cleveland, the Chicago White Sox, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the California Angels, the Oakland A\u2019s and the Yankees.<\/p>\n
He totaled eight seasons with the Yankees over a pair of stints from 1979-82 and 1986-89. He went 91-60 with a 3.59 ERA as a Yankee.<\/p>\n
A four-time All-Star, John\u2019s legacy transcends his on-field excellence. On Sept. 25, 1974, John underwent a then-unprecedented surgery to repair the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in his left elbow.<\/p>\n
The successful operation – now known as Tommy John surgery – extended John\u2019s career by more than a decade, marking a medical breakthrough that\u2019s now commonplace among MLB pitchers, including current Yankees such as Max Fried (2014), Gerrit Cole (2025) and Clarke Schmidt (2025).<\/p>\n
John\u2019s surgeon, Dr. Frank Jobe, was among those he thanked in Saturday\u2019s message, which he concluded with a heartfelt memory from the start of his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe day I left for my first job as a pitcher,\u201d John\u2019s message reads, \u201cmy father looked at me and said, \u2018Good luck, Tommy John. Just remember one thing: Whether you make it in the big leagues or you don\u2019t, you\u2019ll always just be Tommy John from Terre Haute, Indiana.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never forgotten those words. Thank you and God Bless.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tommy John bid an emotional farewell to Yankees fans before Old-Timers\u2019 Day, issuing a statement through the team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":773967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[5,2323,2317,2313,57,19,2310,2328,2304,2318,2308,2319,4,2305,2303,62,2432,5971,2429],"class_list":["post-773966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb-postseason","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-events","tag-baseball-games","tag-baseball-playoffs-and-champions","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-major-league-baseball-competitions","tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","tag-major-league-baseball-seasons","tag-major-league-baseball-teams","tag-major-league-baseball-teams-seasons","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-playoffs","tag-mlb-postseason","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-sports-in-the-bronx","tag-tommy-john","tag-yankee-global-enterprises"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/773967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}