Returns from Tommy John surgery may seem routine. Recovery can be full of grief, angst and isolation
One August morning in 2022 while all alone at the Oakland Coliseum, Daulton Jefferies plopped down in the grass and wept.
The pitcher cried for a good 45 minutes. Six years after becoming a first-round draft pick and days after his 27th birthday, he contemplated giving up baseball altogether — a first for him, in spite of multiple injury roadblocks.
Jefferies made eight starts for the Athletics that season and knew his right elbow had something seriously wrong – again. He had been through one Tommy John surgery in 2017 and would soon be headed for another.
“I needed a good cry,” he said. “Sometimes, you need it.”
Elbow injuries have plagued generations of pitchers, and damage to the ulnar collateral ligament in the pitching elbow used to be a career-stopper. That changed 50 years ago, when Dr. Frank Jobe reconstructed the
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