Read Online The Arm by Jeff Passan - Free Book Online

more or less ignored UCL tears, which Dr. James Andrews of the American Sports Medicine Institute later blamed on the difficulty of diagnosing the injury with X-rays.
    Though far less frequently than today, torn UCLs did end pitchers’ careers. Tired of telling pitchers the same sad two-word phrase—“You’re done”—Jobe vowed to devise a work-around. Rather than get lost in fixing all three sides of the UCL, Jobe homed in on the anterior bundle, the most vital piece of the triangular ligament because it absorbs most of the energy that travels to the elbow. His choice of the palmaris longus was particularly intuitive, too, despite its success in other, unrelated surgeries. Its size was perfect, between 3.5 and 4.5 millimeters wide, almost an exact match of the anterior bundle. It was long enough to allow Jobe to drill tunnels in the humerus and ulna and wrap the tendon in a figure-eight pattern. The best part: the palmaris longus is altogether useless, anatomically inert, the appendix of the arm. Patients function no differently after its extraction than before. Doctors estimate 15 to 20 percent of people don’t even have one. But when John touched histhumb to his pinky and flexed his hand, a palmaris longus popped up in the middle of his wrist.
    â€œGod put it there,” Dodgers trainer Stan Conte said, “so Frank Jobe could do this surgery.”
    I N BETWEEN STARTS, WHEN HIS elbow ballooned to cartoonish sizes because the damage in it invited fluid to congregate near the joint, Sandy Koufax would visit Dr. Robert Kerlan and brace himself. Relief came in the form of a needle that Kerlan jabbed into the swollen area. Red-tinged liquid oozed into an empty syringe. No matter how many visits to Kerlan it took, Koufax was not going to let his degenerative elbow stop him from throwing a baseball.
    For the last three years of his career, Koufax, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ ace, subjected himself to the treatment with regularity. His arm refused to cooperate otherwise. X-rays showed that three or four spurs hooked off the bones of his elbow. Nobody knew the full extent of the tumult inside, though the accumulation of fluid indicated that the body recognized trouble and was trying to protect it from further wreckage. On the day before, the day of, and the day after his starts, Koufax ate a white-and-orange capsule of Butazolidin, a brand of phenylbutazone, an anti-inflammatory originally intended for horses and today considered unsafe for human consumption. He eased the pain with a codeine-cut aspirin. Then, before Koufax pitched, the Dodgers’ training staff snapped on rubber gloves, scooped a glob of Capsolin, a clear, pungent balm, and applied it to Koufax’s elbow, shoulder, and back. Capsolin wasn’t a salve so much as a declaration of war; it consisted of 3 percent pure capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers, along with turpentine, camphor oil, and other elements that punished the body with heat. Nerve endings stood no match. They wilted and died from Capsolin overdoses. Koufax needed it to manage his misery.
    Today, Koufax looks about two decades younger than his eighty years, fit and tan, a man who could star in a pharmaceutical commercial that features happy octogenarians taking a walk or tilling the garden. A half century after he walked away from baseball in his prime, Koufax remains one of the finest pitchers the game has ever seen. His friendship with Jobe blossomed in retirement, and Jobe has often said that if he’d conceived of UCL reconstruction a decade earlier it would be called Sandy Koufax surgery.
    Koufax grants one-on-one interviews as frequently as a total solar eclipse. When I asked through an intermediary if he would talk about Jobe, Koufax was happy to make an exception, inviting me to Dodgers spring training to visit and reminisce.
    â€œHe was a very gentle man, but he was also very strong,” Koufax said. “Great bedside manner,