It’s times like these when it’s always right to come back to a conversation Terry Collins had years ago with Dr. Frank Jobe, the man who invented Tommy John surgery and saved countless pitchers from careers as insurance salesmen and phys-ed teachers.
Collins was working with the Dodgers then, and Jobe already had a long affiliation with the club, and the baseball man asked the fellow with the stethoscope how to cope with young pitchers and fragile arms. Collins talked a long time about all the preventative measures the Dodgers had taken, and how little it seemed to matter.