Tom Glavine nearly pain-free after surgery
By GEORGE HENRY, Associated Press WriterWednesday, August 27, 2008 ATLANTA (AP) — Braves pitcher Tom Glavine said he is just a little sore after having season-ending elbow surgery last week and is unsure whether he’ll pitch next season.
The 300-game winner said he’ll wait to see how his recovery goes before deciding whether he will try to return for his 23rd season.
“We’ve got a good five weeks here for me to rehab and get a good sense of how I’m recovering and what it looks like,” Glavine said. “Then I think we will all have a better idea.”
Dr. James Andrews, who performed the surgery, told the 42-year-old Glavine that his left flexor tendon had not pulled away from the bone, as the Braves had previously thought. Rather, Andrews only had to clean out scar tissue and sew together a small gap that had formed in his tendon.
Glavine was relieved to hear that his ligament looked “great” and that no bone spurs were found. Before going under anesthesia, Glavine gave Andrews permission to check out his left shoulder to make sure his rotator cuff had sustained no damage.
Andrews, who told Glavine that he saw only minor scraping in both the rotator cuff and the labrum, prescribed range-of-motion and passive-resistance exercises for both his elbow and shoulder.
“My focus right now is trying to get a little better range of motion each day from now until the end of the season, and then start worrying about all that other stuff,” Glavine said.
This year marked the first time in his career that Glavine, who has 14 career 200-inning seasons, was placed on the disabled list. Injuries to his elbow and hamstring caused him to land on the DL three times.
Glavine, who went 2-4 with a 5.54 ERA in 13 starts, is not under contract for ’09. He has said he would only return if offered a one-year deal from the Braves.
Pitching for Atlanta from 1987-2002, Glavine won at least 20 games five times and the Cy Young award twice. He was the winning pitcher in the World Series-clinching Game 6 against Cleveland in 1995.
Last year with the New York Mets, Glavine became just the fifth left-hander in history — and 23rd overall — to win 300 games. He turned down a $13 million option from the Mets to return to the Braves with a one-year, $8 million deal last November.
