a few days and treat it with ice. After a month, though, the injury had not improved. John attempted to pitch batting practice in New York, and when he failed to get much velocity on his pitches, he told Alston he was likely done for the season. In 22 starts for the Dodgers, he had a 13–3 record, a 2.59 ERA, 78 strikeouts, 42 walks, and 133 hits allowed in 153 innings. He also threw three shutouts and led the NL with a .813 winning percentage. With his career in doubt, John decided to allow Dr. Jobe to attempt a revolutionary surgical operation. This operation, now known as Tommy John surgery, replaced the ligament in the elbow of John's pitching arm with a tendon from his right forearm. Though the procedure had actually been performed on other people before, it was usually conducted on wrists and hands; John was the first baseball pitcher to have it done on his elbow. The surgery was performed on September 25, 1974, and it took four hours; Dr. Jobe made holes in the humerus and ulna bones of John's left arm and used anchors to insert the tendon in what was roughly a figure-eight shape. It seemed unlikely John would ever be able to pitch again, as most pitchers in the past who had surgery on their arms never were effective again. Jobe gave the operation 100-1 odds of being successful, but John had it anyway, as his other option was to start working at a friend's car dealership in Terre Haute. The recovery was long and slow. Initially, John's left hand was shriveled and he lacked feeling in several of his fingers, due to damage to the ulnar nerve; Dr. Jobe performed a second procedure to reroute the nerve that was necessary to John's full recovery. His arm was in a cast until January 1975, and once it was removed, John began performing exercises seven days a week to rebuild strength in the arm. He attended spring training with the Dodgers in 1975, by which point he had recovered the full range of motion of his arm but still lacked feeling in some of his fingers, preventing him from gripping the ball properly. For six weeks, he would tape the fingers that lacked feeling to ones that had it, then feebly throw balls against a wall for a while. John also worked with