Like many of us, Tommy John III has a father who isn’t a fan of pitch counts, who remembers a time when a starting pitcher could go more than five innings.
“That hundred-pitch mark? My dad’s pretty hilarious on it, because he can’t stand the pitch counts, obviously,” the younger John said. “He’s like, ‘Dr. [James] Andrews figured out through studies that 12-year-olds can do 85 pitches. So then the big leaguers can do only 15 pitches more?
“‘One of ’em’s wrong!’”
The elder John would know. Fans today associate the name with the elbow surgery, one that Jameson Taillon, Ivan Nova and Nick Kingham have all experienced; White Sox, Dodgers and Yankees fans in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s remember the left-handed pitcher, the first person ever to have it.