Surgery's bonus: a new efficiency

Tommy John surgery worked wonders for Tim Kiely.

About three starts into his junior season at Trinity College, Tim Kiely, the strong-armed right-hander from Swampscott, could feel soreness, stiffness, and swelling in his arm increase little by little. A part of him wanted to shrug it off as tendinitis. The smarter part of him knew better.

In his fourth start, he was in Waterville, Maine, for a road game against New England Small College Athletic Conference foe Colby. It was about 30 degrees, freezing rain. His arm felt horrible in the warm-up. Everything he threw was about 80 miles an hour and lifeless. His fastball had nothing on it. He took the mound and made it to about the fourth inning.

He told Trinity coach Bill Decker he couldn't throw anymore.

"It's just not right," he told Decker.

At that point, Kiely just wanted to be one of the fortunate ones to fully come back from Tommy John surgery, named after the former major league baseball pitcher, in which a damaged ligament in the elbow is replaced with a tendon from elsewhere in the body.

But now with the Bantams running off 20 straight wins to start the season and Kiely himself protecting a stainless 5-0 record with a microscopic 0.52 earned run average, that point seems so long ago.

Last season, barely a year removed from the operation, Kiely had an almost made-for-TV return, not only taking the mound, but becoming the ace of the staff, throwing the first perfect game in Trinity's 139-year history, and being selected as the conference's top pitcher. And with the numbers he's posted so far this season in his fourth year of eligibility, he's about to add another accomplishment to the list.

Later this spring, he'll be named the school's Male Athlete of the Year, as voted by the student-athletes.

"A lot of it's because of his own makeup, his own work ethic," said Decker. "He's a special kid who works hard and just competes. You can't coach that stuff."

The injury was easily his lowest point on and off the field.

""Everything kind of bugged me," he said. "I was down. Once I decided to have the surgery, I just tried to have a positive outlook, tried to look down the road and say hopefully, if I do everything I'm asked of, everything I'm told to do, I'll be lucky, I'll be one of the fortunate ones who comes back."

In 1974, John, then pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers, was the first to undergo ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction. At the time of his surgery, the chance for complete recovery was placed at one in 100. Today, the number is roughly 85 to 90 percent, with a 12-month recovery time frame for pitchers.

"Once I got the surgery," Kiely said. "I was just hoping if I put in the work and really dedicated myself to the work, then hopefully someday I'd get back to the mound."

The steps were gradual. Doctors had him on a day-to-day workout program to rebuild the strength in his arm. "What a lot of people don't realize," Decker said, "is that throwing is a part of the rehab. Regardless of whether we needed to use him or not, he had to throw."

Kiely was back on the mound in 10 months, throwing bullpen and hitting sessions, with a pitch count somewhere between 60 to 70 pitches.

When he threw the perfect game against Tufts last year, he was allotted only 80 pitches to do it. The ground ball to shortstop was his best friend.

"I knew I didn't have much to waste," he said. "If I wanted to pitch and I wanted to have an impact on the game, I was going to have to be efficient. It kind of changed the way I approached it."

If there's one benefit, it's his efficiency. So far this season, he's struck out 29 batters without a walk. The surgery made him a new pitcher, more so a new person, but contextualizing it all and what it means in life's grand scheme isn't something he is ready for.

"I'm ready to be a baseball player," said the 6-foot, 170-pound Kiely, "and not a pitcher who's had the surgery."