Within the space of the past week Kris Medlin and Brandon Beachy of Atlanta and Jarrod Parker of Oakland had or were scheduled to have their second elbow reconstruction operations. Like approximately 20 other pitchers, because they had previously experienced the operation, they knew what to expect – a long, grueling rehabilitation along with a season off.

What they and most others didn’t know is that the pitcher for whom the operation is named, Tommy John, had two operations himself.

“There was a second surgery but no one knows that,” Sally John revealed last week. “The first surgery was a failure. His ring finger and little finger were dying.”

Dr. Frank Jobe, the orthopedist for the Los Angeles Dodgers, John’s team, performed the initial operation Sept. 25, 1974. Jobe did the second one …

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The talk is all Tommy John surgery. There’s so much of the elbow injury going around, it must be contagious, like the black plague or MRSA. Every day seems to bring a new pitcher to the operating room. Or maybe he’s been there before for the same reason.

Much has been written about Kris Medlen, Brandon Beachy, Daniel Hudson, Jarrod Parker and Patrick Corbin, among others, but nothing new has been introduced into the discussion. Only speculation is offered about why pitchers tear or otherwise damage their ulnar collateral ligament and need to have it replaced by a tendon, often from the opposite wrist.

No one can explain why pitchers from earlier decades, such as Robin Roberts, Ferguson Jenkins, Bob Gibson and Tom Seaver, never encountered the problem despite the number of pitches they threw and the number of innings they pitched.

Some of their contemporaries incurred elbow injuries and had their careers end. That was before Dr. Frank Jobe introduced Tommy John surgery to Major League Baseball in 1974 by reconstructing John’s left elbow.

Despite the frequency and popularity of the operation …

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Many years ago, when I was starting out in this business in the Pittsburgh bureau of the Associated Press, we had a seven-man staff, and everyone rotated into each shift.

One of the shifts was midnight to 8 a.m., and one of the other staffers hated it. He would do anything he could to get out of working it, and the best strategy he came up with was fouling up on the shift as often as he could without getting himself fired.

His strategy worked, and the heads of the bureau stopped scheduling him for the midnight shift, much to the consternation of the rest of us, who became burdened with extra midnight-to-eight shifts.

Zack Greinke, who suffered a calf injury last week, will very likely miss the Los Angeles Dodgers’ season-opening trip to Australia, which will suit him just fine. Had he not been injured, he would most likely have started the second game of the two-game series. Now, though, his appearance is, at best, questionable.

I guess this would fall into the category of …

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