Now and then, a heart-breaking injury on the field or court — or a secret drug problem — does more than stop the game clock.
In his new book, “Tiger Woods’s Back & Tommy John’s Elbow: Injuries & Tragedies that Transformed Careers, Sports, and Society,” Jonathan Gelber, an orthopedic sports medicine surgeon at Olmsted Medical Center in Rochester, Minn., examines how momentous medical events in sports reverberate in our larger society — and not always with positive results.