Former vaulter now a world class surgeon

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http://www.philly.com/dailynews/sports/ ... _EDGE.html

THE JOCK DOC'S CUTTING EDGE

By MARK KRAM
kramm@phillynews.com

GULF BREEZE, Fla. – The young pitcher lies on the operating table in a state of deep anesthesia. One of his surgeons has opened up an incision in his left elbow. Just 16 but physically developed beyond his years, the young pitcher is here today for an ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction (UCL), a procedure that has come to be known as Tommy John surgery. When the surgical site has been prepared, the call goes out to an adjoining room for Dr. James Andrews, who had been chatting casually on his cell phone with a Lamborghini dealer in Houston. Quickly, the doctor gets up and proceeds to the operating room, where he steps into a surgical gown that a scrub nurse is holding up for him, yanks on a pair of latex gloves and gets to work.
Andrews had flown this morning on a private plane from his home in Birmingham, Ala., where the day before he had performed 23 surgeries (including seven Tommy Johns). Today, he has another three Tommy Johns and a knee surgery scheduled at his new state-of-the-art facility, the Andrews Institute for Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine. Situated on the Gulf of Mexico in two buildings occupying 127,000 square feet, the institute is unique in that it provides the injured athlete with a full spectrum of care to carry him from injury through rehab. Significantly, it also affords the 66-year-old Andrews with a place to educate young surgeons, to pass along the knowledge he has accumulated, just as others had years ago passed it along to him. "This is part of your responsibility," he says. "And let me tell you, each generation is smarter and smarter."

For athletes who have suddenly found their careers in jeopardy because of a shoulder, elbow or knee injury, Andrews has become the surgeon of choice of an array of top athletes - including Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, who last November suffered a season-ending tear of the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. Of the players who have sworn by Andrews through the years - such as Roger Clemens, Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan - quite a few have connections to Philadelphia: Among them are Eagles running backs Brian Westbrook and Correll Buckhalter, Sixers guard Willie Green and former stars Charles Barkley and Allen Iverson; and Phillies pitcher Freddy Garcia and Hall of Famers Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton. Andrews has been called upon with such frequency that in one World Series in the 1990s, it dawned on him with some amusement that he had performed surgery on 15 of the 20 pitchers on both teams.

"The fun part is when you turn on the TV and see someone you operated on back out there playing again," Andrews would say later in the day. "But not every surgery we do is a success. I have what I call a 'worry list.' And some of them just end up breaking your heart."



Contrary to the anxious conversation that has surrounded him so far this year, Donovan McNabb does not occupy a place on that worry list. In the 11 months that have elapsed since McNabb clutched his leg in agony in a game against Tennessee, Andrews says he has been very pleased with how McNabb has come along.

"The first day he flew down to see me, he was terrible - that knee was all swollen, and he was deeply upset," Andrews says.

But once surgery was performed and the shock of what had happened wore off, the doctor says that McNabb worked diligently in rehab with the aid of Eagles head athletic trainer Rick Burkholder, of whom the doctor says: "He can get athletes well that no one else can." But Andrews cautioned McNabb to keep the healing process in perspective.

"I told him he would be better at the end of this season than at the beginning of it," says Andrews, eating a sandwich between surgeries. "And I told him he would be better next year than he is this year. I said, 'Set your goals high.' But we have to see how he does from week to week."

However talented his hands are in the operating room, Andrews has come to think of himself as a psychologist as much as a surgeon. In the case of McNabb and countless others, the athletes he sees at initial consultations are commonly in a state of apprehension, uncertain when or whether they will play again. Experienced players seem to handle it somewhat better than less experienced ones, if only because they have seen teammates come back from an injury or they themselves have done so. Andrews says that "you have to be able to read a patient. Is this a guy who is mentally tough? Is he a Roger Clemens who can get through just about anything?" The doctor found McNabb to be that type of athlete, someone who had a "linebacker mentality" to getting better. Others have been so deeply depressed by their ordeal that they have to be coaxed out of bed to begin physical therapy.

When an athlete is injured, the cycle of emotions he experiences is not unlike the stages of grief. "Initially, when they first get hurt, there is shock, acute depression and denial," says Andrews. "So you have to let them get through some of that." The ordeal of surgery then follows, beyond which lies the grudging realization that the rehabilitation process "may be more important than the surgical procedure." Unlike the old days of orthopedic surgery, when it was common for athletes to spend weeks recuperating before beginning rehab, the goal now is to get them up and around quickly to prevent atrophy. Andrews says that the initial stage of rehab is "getting the soft tissues to heal and alleviating the pain," a process that can take upward of 6 weeks, depending upon the injury. At that point, there is a "gradual progression of activity levels," the period of which can last from a few months to 2 years in some cases. Finally, there is a 2-month stage when the athlete must address the psychological aspects of playing again, when he must prove to himself he can be the same player he was before his injury. Says Andrews: "The nature of orthopedic surgery is that it takes a long time for patients to get well."

To appreciate the bond Andrews has developed with his patients, it is necessary only to walk through the rehabilitation center in Florida, where it is not unusual to see pro players side-by-side in therapy with the public. Up on the walls are dozens of autographed pictures from NFL stars, big-league baseball players and even some professional wrestlers, of whom the doctor says: "People think they fake those injuries. But I have operated on some of those guys two or three times." Written on each of the photos is the same sentiment: Thank you for everything you did for me. But it is not just what Andrews does in the operating room that the McNabbs and others appreciate. With that easy Southern drawl, he approaches each case as if "the glass is half full," even in ones in which the prognosis is uncertain. When he has had to inform a player his career is over, he says he always lets them down slowly. And each one of them can contact him on his cell phone, which can ring at any hour with questions or concerns.

"He is straight up with you," says McNabb, who says he has spoken occasionally to Andrews since the surgery "just to stay abreast. You need someone like that. If you are not ready to go, he will say so. Secondly, he instills confidence in you that you can come back. No one wants to have surgery in the first place, but if you have to have it, you want someone doing it you can feel confident is going to get you healthy again."

The Sixers' Willie Green echoes that. "He is very precise," says Green, who tore an ACL in 2005. "And he was very to the point. He told me, 'This is a serious injury, but we can get you back playing again.' So that put me at ease. I knew I was in capable hands. Going to him was one of the best things I could ever do."

But no one could be more appreciative of Andrews than Buckhalter. The Eagles running back twice tore the patellar tendon in his right knee, which caused him to sit out the 2004 and 2005 seasons. "That patellar tendon just exploded [in 2004], and that is usually a career-ender," says Andrews. "We fixed it and they rehabbed him up there. I had never seen one do so well. But then camp opened [in 2005] and - boom! - he blew it out again. I remember thinking, 'Oh, God.' I had never seen anybody with two big injuries like that. But I put it back together again, put a big, old wire around it to hold it in place, and he came back and played. That is what you call a miracle." Buckhalter says Andrews eased his fears, stayed positive and ultimately became a friend. Says Buckhalter: "I love Jimmy."

Andrews chuckles and says, "Buck was definitely on the worry list."




What you notice are his hands, how ordinary they appear. Comparatively, you would say they are small, which is advantageous working with surgical instruments in tight places. Close associate Jay Vines calls them "confident-looking hands," which is to say they move with a certain knowledge and fluidity. As the doctor works on the young pitcher, another associate looks on through an observation window and says, "I have seen a lot of people do this procedure, but he is sheer poetry." Given how unusually skilled his hands are, you would think he would be especially protective of them and not hammer nails at home. But that would not be Jimmy Andrews, who thinks of himself as an ordinary person and who approaches the treatment of a 45-year-old housewife the same as if she were a $10 million pitcher. The pressure he feels is no less.

"When I get into the operating room and we open them up, the athlete is just like anyone else," says Andrews. He pauses and with a smile adds, "But I have to confess that when I operated on Jack Nicklaus, I was preparing to place a scope in his knee when I suddenly thought: 'My God, this is Jack Nicklaus - one of my heroes!' And then I said to myself: 'Are you sure this is the right knee?' But once I got started, it was just like any other procedure."

How Andrews emerged as the "go-to doc" for so many celebrated athletes is a function of some very positive word-of-mouth. A collegiate pole vault star who graduated from the LSU School of Medicine in 1967 and completed his orthopedic residency at Tulane Medical School in 1972, Andrews became an acolyte of one of the forerunners in sports medicine, Dr. Jack Hughston, at the Hughston Clinic in Columbus, Ga., in 1973. There, Andrews became the orthopedic surgeon for the royal family of Saudi Arabia, which Vines says helped broaden his public profile. When he operated on a struggling Clemens in 1985 for a shoulder injury, and Clemens won the Cy Young Award the following year with a 24-4 record for the Red Sox, Andrews experienced what Vines calls "a tsunami wave" of referrals from sports agents and team physicians that only increased when the doctor formed the Alabama Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Clinic in Birmingham in 1986. There, he assembled a stellar staff of associates that included Kevin Wilk, who is widely regarded as one of the top rehab specialists in America. Andrews became known as "the king of the second opinion."

A casual conversation led Andrews to Gulf Breeze. Chad Gilliland approached him in September 2002 on behalf of Baptist Health Care and asked whether he would be interested in opening a facility that provided "a whole continuum of treatment from injury to rehab." Gilliland had known Andrews since he was a boy playing high school football in Alabama and also knew that the Florida Panhandle would probably hold some appeal to him. Andrews is an avid yachtsman who in 2000 entered the America's Cup. But Gilliland still had to pinch himself when Andrews replied that he would do it. Excitedly, Gilliland says: "Because of Dr. Andrews and what he brings us, Pensacola is going to became known for being on the cutting edge of sports medicine."

But it was not just access to a boat slip that lured Andrews to Florida. For some years, he had been thinking in terms of leaving behind some legacy, and that has become an even larger issue since he suffered a heart attack in January 2006. He has come to view himself as a link between generations in the chain of knowledge that included Hughston, the legendary Dr. Robert Kerlan and Dr. Frank Jobe, who performed the Tommy John surgery on Tommy John. Until these physicians and others came along, players who had rotator-cuff, UCL or ACL injuries had to face the sad fact that their careers were over. Now they can be saved. Says Andrews, who stills run his clinic in Alabama: "Medicine is a moving target. If you blink, you are going to be 10 years behind." To that end, Andrews stresses the value of research and education. The young doctors he now teaches will pass their accumulated knowledge on to someone else.

So long as his ability in the operating room remains unaltered by age, Andrews has no plans to retire. In fact, he has become as energized as ever by a cause that has become a crusade for him. The players he operates on these days are younger and younger, 16-year-olds whose throwing elbows have been destroyed by overwork. Unlike the days when kids played sports seasonally, baseball has become a year-round sport overseen by overzealous coaches and driven by parents with "go-for-the-bucks" aspirations. Andrews has become an advocate of decreasing the workload of young pitchers, who at the amateur level also usually play other positions when they are not trying to throw a baseball 95 mph. "The Tommy John ligament gets stronger as you develop," says Andrews, who has performed 2,500 or so Tommy John surgeries, with a 90 percent success rate. "A pitch count is a starting place. If someone has a better idea, I would love to hear it." Andrews adds that a severe injury is usually "a big strike" that prevents young athletes from succeeding.

"Elite athletes are better equipped to get better because of their physical ability and access to top training facilities," he says. "But if you take a young kid who is barely hanging on, you just do what you can. None of them wants to give it up. Our job is to give them every opportunity to live their dream. But some of them are not going to get to that level regardless of what you do."

Andrews removes his glasses, rubs the bridge of his nose and adds, "You just never know."




Out at the airport, the private plane Andrews flew in on is waiting for his return for the trip back to Birmingham. But it is nearing 6 p.m. and he is just finishing up. In between surgeries, he meets with some medical-equipment representatives, jokes with some of the staff and chats with a reporter. The young pitcher is wheeled into recovery and seems to be doing fine. Confidentiality prohibits Andrews from identifying him or any of the other patients he had seen today, but he says they will leave later in the evening and begin rehab as soon as they can. None of them appears an immediate candidate for his worry list, yet he always dreads the phone call that comes a year later advising him that the player is having "a little problem." Says Andrews: "The only results I remember are the bad ones."

As his staff begins leaving for the day, Andrews remembers with some chagrin what happened with Bo Jackson. The doctors had been close with Jackson since his playing days at Auburn. "Bo was playing for the Raiders and was injured in a playoff game [in January 1991]," Andrews says. "I happened to see it on television at the Dallas airport. They said it was a hip pointer." Four weeks later, Jackson called him at home and said, in a pronounced stutter that reflected his fear: "There is something wrong with my hip. I am coming to see you tomorrow." Andrews could see that the hip was destroyed. Because Jackson was then also a player for the White Sox, the hip replacement was performed by their team physician with assistance from Andrews. Jackson never played football again and retired from baseball in 1994.

The doctor reaches for his cell phone and places a call. Of Jackson, he concludes: "That was probably the biggest disaster of my career."

The call is to a Yankees team physician in Florida. Cordially, Andrews begins: "You guys are keeping me busy down there." He reports that the pitchers are doing well, briefly outlines their rehab protocol and says they would be flying back to Florida later that evening. When the call is complete, he asks whether his own plane is gassed up. Told by an aide that it is, he looks back over his shoulder at the reporter from Philadelphia and says: "Say hello to Donovan for me."

Grinning, he pauses and adds: "And remind him to take one step at a time. It is a long season." *

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http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/vi ... p?t=296299

Andrews operates across sports spectrum

Posted: October 27, 2007

GULF BREEZE, Fla. (AP) -- He's almost as famous as the superstars he operates on.

When the likes of Roger Clemens, Bo Jackson, Michael Jordan, Jack Nicklaus, Dwyane Wade and Drew Brees needed surgery to repair worn out elbows, shoulders and knees, they went to Dr. James Andrews in Birmingham, Ala.
Andrews recently opened the Andrews Institute for Orthopedics and Sports Medicine in Gulf Breeze to be near the gleaming white sands and turquoise waves of Pensacola Beach.

But the 66-year-old, who had a heart attack last year, isn't interested in retiring to the beach -- his passion for the operating room remains.

He's perhaps best known as the surgeon Major League Baseball turns to when pitchers blow out their ulnar collateral ligament, which stabilizes the elbow.

When the Cleveland Indians' Paul Byrd needed his elbow repaired in 2003, Andrews was the only surgeon he considered for the job.

"He's kind of like the E.F. Hutton of doctors. When he speaks, people listen," said Byrd, who recently made headlines for acknowledging he used human growth hormone for a medical condition.

What Andrews says, "You kind of take it to the bank," said Byrd, who had Tommy John surgery in 2003.

Andrews is considered the master of Tommy John surgery, the procedure named for the pitcher Dr. Frank Jobe first performed it on in 1974. In the surgery, a tendon from the forearm or leg is used to replace the damaged ligament.

"Jim is a pioneer in the field. He's a leader. He has a well-deserved and tremendous reputation," said Dr. David Altcheck, medical director for the New York Mets and the attending orthopedic surgeon at New York's Hospital for Special Surgery.

Altcheck said what separates Andrews from other doctors is an ability to connect with his patients.

"There are a lot of excellent surgeons in the world, but only a few who understand what it means for an athlete to get back into their sport," he said.

That could be because Andrews was an athlete himself, pole vaulting at LSU and later sailing in the America's Cup.

Andrews performs surgery at his Florida center once a week -- "Circus Fridays" his staff calls them -- because of the chaos of his multiple operating rooms and the constant communication with the athletes and their families, teams and agents.

Andrews manages his circus with the finesse of a veteran ringmaster.

On one recent Friday, he was running between patients in eight operating rooms. Three held New York Yankees minor league pitchers awaiting arm surgery. As he zipped back and forth, he stopped for a few minutes to field a phone call from the Philadelphia Eagles.

"Tell management this was a season-ending situation," he said, leaving one of the operating rooms and entering the observation lounge -- a hallway-like area outside four operating rooms. Viewing windows allow an athlete's entourage to watch Andrews do what he does best -- drill holes through the joints and sew the torn ligaments of athletes who often make millions of dollars on the playing field.

Before ending his call with the Eagles, Andrews asks -- "How's McNabb doing?"

That's five-time Pro Bowl quarterback Donovan McNabb, who has recovered after a torn knee ligament, which Andrews repaired last year.

Andrews also put Brees' shoulder back together before the New Orleans Saints quarterback led his team to the playoffs last season.

Andrews says part of the fun of watching sports is seeing athletes he's operated on succeed. He recalled watching a preseason game between the Saints and the Chiefs in which both quarterbacks, Brees and Kansas City's Brodie Croyle, were patients.

"I was pulling for one when he was on offense and the other when he was on offense," Andrews said.

Andrews has only been nervous once -- when he performed knee surgery on Nicklaus. The golfing icon was one of his first superstar patients.

"I was sitting there fixing to do it, fixing to put a scope in, and I said to myself, 'Gosh this is Jack Nicklaus -- have I got the right knee?'" he laughed.

The Homer, La., native was a Southeastern Conference indoor and outdoor pole vault champion at LSU. He graduated from LSU's medical school in 1967 and created a niche for himself in sports medicine before it was a specialty, building a reputation for Southern friendliness and a willingness to go above and beyond for his patients.

He became the go-to doctor for the Auburn and the University of Alabama programs. Word spread, and Andrews' name grew.

"The kind of loyalty he has bred among those coaches is unbelievable. It's just the type of mentality a lot of those guys have out there. They only trust Andrews to fix their athletes," said Chad Gilliland, an administrator at Andrew's Florida institute, and the son of a former Alabama high school football coach.

But the decades of performing surgery on healthy young athletes has shifted Andrews' focus from fixing athletic injuries to preventing them, especially among the young.

He pushed for a pitch-count limit in Little League.

"Sports are more intense now. Kids are throwing harder, and they are growing up faster. They are 6 foot, 2 inches and 210 pounds when they are 15 years of age. Baseball is a developmental sport; their bodies have to be developed. In this case, the development of the Tommy John ligament doesn't keep up with their body development," he said.

And he says the increasing number of serious childhood sports injuries isn't limited to baseball. He is pushing parents and coaches to give young athletes time for their bodies to recuperate.

"Young female softball players are tearing their shoulders up right and left," he said. "In the soccer kids we see the knee injuries. The quantity and the severity of all of these injuries are increasing."

Whether a promising high school pitcher or a famous NFL quarterback, Andrews understands that unique passion that carries some athletes to greatness.

Not every surgery has a happy ending.

"That's the most difficult thing for everybody," he said. "But you cannot tell that right away, you have to let them down slowly. You have to say in the sports world that the glass is half full and not half empty."

Just like the underdog team that pulls of the amazing upset, there are those rare cases of an unprecedented comeback from seemingly career-ending injuries.

Andrews points to Brees.

"He had a terrible shoulder injury, and we thought that maybe his career was in jeopardy -- we never said that to him, but believe me it was thought."

And then Andrews heads into another operating room, the ringmaster of Circus Friday has another patient to fix.

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http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd ... p&c_id=mlb

Andrews a pivotal force in health of game
Distinguished doctor has revolutionized treatment of injuries
By Ian Browne / MLB.com


Dr. James Andrew has performed over 3,000 Tommy John surgeries in his career. (ASMI)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Without question, this is college football country, where introductory greetings are quickly followed by inquires of whether you're an Auburn fan or an Alabama enthusiast. They are also quite fond of NASCAR in these parts. And it is where you come to get barbeque so tender that the meat literally falls right off the bone.
Major League Baseball? What does that have to do with Alabama, or quite specifically, Birmingham? When you look at the 30 teams that play in the Majors, Atlanta, which hosts the Braves about 150 miles away, is the closest Major League city.

But when you look at a different type of map -- the one that shows where countless baseball players have gone over the last 20-plus years to have their careers prolonged, and even completely resurrected in some cases -- Birmingham has a big proverbial star on it to indicate it as a capital for the national pastime.

For Birmingham is where renowned sports orthopedist Dr. James Andrews has called home since 1986. When a baseball player is seriously injured -- particularly if it's a shoulder or elbow malady -- he'll often forego a more central location and get on a plane to see Andrews.

Not that Andrews thought it would turn out quite like this when he traded in his pole vault -- he was the SEC champion in that sport during his days at Louisiana State University -- for scrubs.

"That was never my ambition," said Andrews. "If you try to plan something like that it never works."

At 66 years old, the man is still -- according to those he works with and those he works on -- at the very top of his game.

"He's the best there is," said Blue Jays center fielder Vernon Wells, who had left labrum surgery from Andrews last September. "You start talking to other doctors that are around now and they've all seemed to study under him. When I got there, he was a good ol' Southern boy. He has a great sense of humor. He looked at my shoulder and told me what we were going to do. He was like, 'You'll be fine in a few months and you'll be ready to go.' I believed every word that he said."

Andrews has the track record to back up his talk, which comes in the form of a comforting southern drawl. Not that he is ever boastful around patients, co-workers or reporters. If anything, Andrews is exceedingly humble, good-natured and comforting, three things which have endeared him to his countless patients.

"The first thing is, if you're still talking about what you did yesterday, you're not doing much today," said Andrews. "The second thing is that this is not an 'I' situation here, it's a 'we' situation. 'We' makes 'I' stronger and that's sort of how we think. One person can't do any of this. The third thing is, even though I just had a birthday a week ago, I'm still learning and listening, I'm still trying to figure out what we do next."

If Andrews -- whose practice comes complete with a biomechanics center and a rehab facility -- never performed another surgery, his legacy would be secure.

Andrews is in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. His non-profit American Sports Medicine Institute is a uniquely innovative organization dedicated to researching and educating injury prevention, particularly for youth players, as well as proper mechanics. In June, Andrews will be officially inducted into the Louisiana Hall of Fame. Perhaps some day, there could even be a spot for Andrews in Cooperstown, N.Y., where one national baseball writer opined last year that Andrews should have a plaque. That's a point that could pick up steam in the coming years.

Baseball players have the means to see any sports doctor in the world. So why is it that so many of them -- from Roger Clemens to Bo Jackson to John Smoltz to Kerry Wood, just to name a small few -- have come to Birmingham for repairs and advice and continue to do so?

"He's very honest with you," said Yankees catcher Jorge Posada. "He's up front, and he doesn't fool around. He tells you what is wrong with you and how you can fix it. Every doctor is pretty much like that, but [Andrews] tells you how it is and you believe him. You let him know what's going on, and he's good at what he does."

"He's seen the most," said Smoltz. "It's like that argument about whether you go with the old pilot or the young pilot. I'm going with the old pilot because he's seen it all."

Smoltz is one of the many Andrews success stories. Prior to the 2000 season, Andrews performed Tommy John elbow ligament replacement surgery -- a procedure in which the ulnar collateral ligament is reconstructed with the insertion of a tendon from somewhere else on the body -- on Smoltz. By 2002, Smoltz was healthy enough to save 55 games. In fact, Smoltz sent Andrews an autographed picture from that 55th save as a gesture of appreciation.

Throughout the halls of where Andrews sees patients, there are similar posters from other athletes all over the place.

This is a man who hasn't just performed sports surgeries -- he's helped revolutionize them.

How it all started

Though Andrews operates on players from virtually every sport -- the National Football League is another major institution his name is a fixture in -- his work in baseball is probably what he's known most for.

Ironically, it was basically by coincidence that Andrews got involved with baseball players.

During his orthopedic residency at Tulane University, Andrews had a great desire to work with the late Dr. Jack Hughston, who was a prominent sports orthopedist at that time. He got that wish after going to Columbus, Ga., and personally asking Hughston for some hands-on experience.

When Andrews was out of medical school and ready to work full-time, he went back with Dr. Hughston. Inevitably, many of the colleges in the South would send carloads of athletes to see Hughston.

After a while, a trend formed. Hughston would work on all the wounded legs of the football players. The baseball players? He'd send them to a back room and tell Andrews to try to figure out what was wrong with their arms. At the time, in 1973, there was barely any knowledge of how to fix shoulder and elbow ailments.

"So I'd have to go back and look at five or six of them at a time," said Andrews. "It was real hard to figure out a baseball player's shoulder. 'Well, my shoulder hurts. Why does it hurt?' We didn't have a clue. I figured out after a while that if I was going to have to see all these upper extremity things, shoulders mainly, that I better figure out something about them."

Around that same time, the advent of arthroscopic surgery for athletes occurred. A household term to sports followers and players now, Andrews helped turn it into an art form.

"We didn't have MRIs, all we had was X-rays in the examination back in those days," said Andrews. "So I started scoping shoulders in baseball players and that's where I started learning what was going on with baseball players. The arthroscope helped me figure out the shoulder. There weren't many people doing it."

Aside from the many shoulder scopes he has done through the years, Andrews was the very first doctor to do an elbow arthroscopy.

Though Dr. Frank Jobe of California was the pioneer of Tommy John surgery by operating on, yes, Tommy John, in 1974, Andrews studied that procedure intently. Andrews traveled to the West Coast to examine Jobe in action and took the success of that particular type of surgery to another level. Andrews has done more than 3,000 Tommy John surgeries on amateur and pro players of all different ages throughout his career. It isn't abnormal these days for a pitcher to throw harder after Tommy John surgery than before.

Opportunity knocks

Then there was the whole matter of Andrews deciding to take part in the ownership of a Double-A baseball team in Columbus. The team's owners were running out of money and they were going to either fold or leave town. To Andrews, who was just starting to learn how to fix baseball players and was serving as the team's physician, losing the Columbus Astros would have been a tough blow.

So he did something about it.

"I got George McCloskey, who was our head physical therapist with Dr. Hughston, and he and I bought the team," said Andrews. "It's embarrassing, but it was probably the best investment I ever made. We borrowed $40,000 from a local bank and that's what we bought the franchise for."

Nearly a decade later -- once Andrews decided to open his own practice in Birmingham -- he and McCloskey sold the Columbus Astros for a cool price of about $1 million. But you can't put a price on all the invaluable experience Andrews gained by examining and repairing all those Minor Leaguers.

His reputation developed to the point where a young pitcher named Roger Clemens -- in his second season with the Red Sox back in 1985 -- went to Andrews to see what was wrong with his shoulder. An arthroscopy followed, and so did a Cy Young Award and a Most Valuable Player trophy, both of which Clemens won in 1986.

From there, a doctor's reputation that had already been solid was on the way to stardom.

Big impact

Not long after Andrews operated on Clemens, he moved to Birmingham. And that was when players from around Major League Baseball began flocking to see him.

There were routine cleanups and monumental achievements. When Jimmy Key -- an Alabama native -- went to visit Andrews after tearing his rotator cuff in 1995, the prognosis was grim. No pitcher had ever come back from a full rotator cuff tear.

But Andrews changed that with a procedure so successful on Key that the lefty won the clinching Game 6 for the Yankees in the 1996 World Series.

There are other watershed moments that Andrews remembers, such as the night Al Leiter flew with him to Birmingham immediately after the Blue Jays beat the Braves in Game 6 of the 1992 World Series. Leiter couldn't pitch in that World Series because his arm was a mess. His psyche was even worse.

"I had operated on him twice, on his shoulder," said Andrews. "Couldn't get well. He was still sore. He was on the plane flying back home with us that night. I had operated on his brother, who had played for Baltimore. I had done all of Al's surgeries. He was saying, 'I can't play, I'm going to have to go back home and work on the wharf.' He had tears in his eyes coming home with us that night. I brought him back home and operated on him the next day here."

"The third time, I don't know what I did to get him well, but he got well and he made $50-60 million since then. That was probably the biggest comeback thing in baseball that I had ever seen, to come back and have that longevity after all of that."

A year later, Leiter earned a win in relief in the 1993 World Series, helping the Blue Jays win the second of their back-to-back titles. By 1997, Leiter was an elite starter, helping the Florida Marlins win the World Series. He helped the Mets win the National League pennant in 2000. And Leiter's arm held up so well that he pitched until 2005, some 13 years after he had confided to Andrews that he thought his career might be over.

Key and Leiter were far from the only lefty starters whose careers Andrews helped resuscitate. There have been 17 perfect games in Major League history. No. 14 was by Kenny Rogers in 1994 while David Wells twirled No. 15 in 1998. Both perfectos came after Andrews had them on the operating table for major procedures on their shoulders and elbows. In fact, Rogers had his Tommy John surgery performed by Andrews in 1987. Twenty-one years later, he is still going strong.

"We know the nature of the business," Rogers said. "But in my state, I was semi-young. I talked to him a little bit, and he'll reassure you. A lot of them are good that way. They'll reassure you that it's not a major thing, it's not a big deal. He's fixed so many of them already. He'll say, 'This is what I think is going on,' and that he can fix it."

Of course, not all the surgeries are full-fledged success stories. Jose Rijo came to Birmingham again and again and again, but couldn't find long-term comfort. That still troubles Andrews.

"I finally did get him back, but I never really did get him back to where he should have been," said Andrews.

Of course, it didn't help that Rijo went against doctor's orders and started throwing three months after Tommy John surgery. That was roughly six months ahead of schedule, and Andrews can now only shake his head as to why Rijo was stalled in his return to the mound.

Then, there was the matter of the two-sport athletic marvel named Bo Jackson, an Alabama native that Andrews had been acquainted with ever since high school. On January 13, 1991, Jackson's pro football career was halted by a hip injury in a playoff game. The condition degenerated so much that Jackson eventually needed a hip replacement, which Andrews performed. The agreement Jackson made with Andrews was that the injury was only for quality of life, and he would not attempt to play baseball again.

"I went through all different kinds of gyrations with him; I had a big flip board with all the different types of hips and all the problems and it was the most education I've ever done for a patient," said Andrews. "He promised me when he was having his hip done, that he wouldn't play again. Putting a hip in a young guy like that, he couldn't walk. He said, 'I'm doing it for three reasons. Number one is the pain, number two is not to limp and number three is to be able to take my two boys fishing.' That was agreed. No baseball, no sports. He woke up in recovery and the first thing he said was, 'man, my hip feels good. I'm going to Spring Training.' "

As it turns out, Jackson made a near miracle comeback, hitting 16 homers for the White Sox in 1993 and 13 more for the Angels in '94 before finally calling it quits.

No end in sight

Perhaps Andrews will retire at some point. But he's not planning on it any time soon. In fact, he just opened up the Andrews Institute, which is a state of the art, multi-faceted facility in Pensacola, Fla., that he travels to every Friday. And his Birmingham practice will move into a new and improved building this fall.

"He's actually busier than he's ever been, I think," said Dr. John Richardson, who performed a quadruple bypass on Andrews following a heart attack two years ago. "And he really ought to be. He's got more blood going to his heart than he's had in a long time. When he got back, he got back full speed. He's doing more I know, traveling and going to all these things, meetings, doing as many cases as he's ever had."

It is an energy that is infectious within the walls of where Andrews works.

"You'll get to see a 66-year-old guy who's got more energy than your children," said Dr. Jeff Dugas, who was a member of Andrews' fellowship program nearly a decade ago before settling into a full-time job in which he gets to work side-by-side with the master. "I'm telling you, he is go, go, go, all the time. He gets it all done. He's a great role model. Everything he does, he does it right."

Though Andrews has several hobbies -- including yacht racing, golfing and hunting -- not to mention a wife, six children and three grandchildren, his job consumes him.

"It's going to be hard to get off the merry-go-round if I ever do retire," said Andrews. "That's why I built that facility down in Pensacola, so I can go down and administrate and watch that place grow. Got some more work to do here first, though."

[ukpv]

There is no arguging that Dr. Andrews is a lifesaver. In November of 2006, during the begining of my sophomore year, I fell straight armed into the pit. I was falling sideways, and like they always say- never try to catch yourself- Well I did and needless to say it was bad. I competely tore up my elbow and upper arm. I dislocated my elbow, tore my ulnar collateral ligament, and partially tore my bicept. The doctors at my school didnt really have an anwser, and were not sure that Id be able to pole vault again.They suggested no surgery, but I knew that if I didnt have surgey, I would never trust it again.

My mom found the famous doctor to the basball players in Dr. Andrews. And who knew, he turned out to be a pole vauters!!! I went down to Birmingham in December and immediatly I took a liking to him. He was honest and up front: he said he had never need a pole vaulter with this type of injury but had seen plenty of baseball players. He didnt water down the injury, and was very blunt in what it would take from me to get back. He only asked me one question: do you REALLY want to pole vault? and of course, my answer was yes, more than anything! and he said- lets book the surgery.

On Feburary 29th 2007 I had the Tommy John Surgery. The rehab was long , but well worth it. The estimatd time I would be out was a year to a year in a half. I visited Dr. Andrews one last time in July, and he was just as honest and sincere as before. I started back to jumping in December 2007 a little over a year after my initial injury. TALK about scary! But I knew that my elbow was strong. ( in fact I think it is stronger now than befrore)

To make a long story short. I owe a lot to Dr. Andrews. Almost a year to date on Feburary 28th 2008 I competed in the SEC championships and PR'ed with 12'6 ( prior to my injury my pr was 12) So there is no doubt in my mind that he is a world class surgeon, on top of his game. He is one of the nicest people you will ever meet and I recomend him to anyone!