Langston Ready to Have Elbow Surgery

For more than four years, Angel team orthopedist Dr. Lewis Yocum has kept a loose watch on the “loose bodies” in Mark Langston’s left elbow. Monday morning, he decided they would have to be removed.

Langston, who has been on the disabled list only one other time during his 10-plus major league seasons, will undergo the first surgery of his life at about noon today at Centinela Hospital in Inglewood. Yocum is hoping he’ll have to do nothing more than remove a couple of those bodies--bone chips--in an arthroscopic procedure that could allow Langston to resume his spot in the rotation by the last week in May.

“We’ve known about the bone chips since he came here,” Yocum said, “but there are a lot of pitchers out there with bone chips and they’re not a problem until they become symptomatic. For the first time, Mark’s chips are now floating around and causing trouble.”

Yocum said that a preventative procedure in the off-season--or before Langston signed a three-year, $14-million contract this February--was never really considered.

“We knew it was something that could occur but it wasn’t like we were waiting around to jump into surgery,” Yocum said. “He hadn’t missed a start in five years.

“We periodically checked it (with X-rays), but there were no previous indications or warnings. It’s the ‘if it ain’t broken don’t fix it theory.’ If the chips aren’t bothering him, it’s pretty hard to talk a guy into a surgery.”

Langston said he never would have consented to such a surgery, anyway.

“I don’t believe in maintainance-type surgery,” he said. “You don’t have surgery unless you have a compelling reason.”

Langston, who saw his bone chips on the X-rays taken after he was first examined in Minnesota, said he was “pretty much geared up” for Monday’s news that surgery would be required.

“I’m actually relieved because now that I know they’re there, now that I’ve seen them, I would just as soon have them taken out,” he said. “I guess they’ve always been there, but they finally just decided to exercise their option.”

Langston felt no discomfort last Tuesday during or after his opening-day performance when he pitched 7 2/3 innings and picked up the victory. He thought maybe bumping the elbow on a chair in his hotel was a factor, but it wasn’t until the next day that the elbow “locked up” while he was walking through the clubhouse.

“Banging it on the chair may have been a minor factor,” Yocum said. “Pitching baseballs is probably the major factor.”

Langston spent about 20 minutes after Monday’s 9-6 loss to Cleveland lifting weights.

“I told Dr. Yocum I was going to make it tough for him, but he said that the scalpel has a way of getting through it,” he said, laughing.

Yocum, who performed similar procedures on former Angel pitchers John Candelaria and Kirk McCaskill, said if everything goes as expected and there is no ligament or nerve damage, there is every reason to believe that in six weeks Langston will be the same pitcher he was before the surgery.

“We’ll know more when we get in there and see how many pieces and how many changes there are in the elbow,” Yocum said. “But if there is no other damage, then the percentage of pitchers who come back throwing as hard as ever is relatively high.

“Later this week, we’ll begin working on his range of motion and then start him on exercises next week. And Mark has an advantage in that he’s both well-conditioned and physically strong.

“He asked me how soon he could get on the bike and I told him he could start on Wednesday.”

Langston’s experience with hospitals is pretty much limited to what he has seen on television series, but he says he is not concerned.

“I’ve been very fortunate to go as long as I have without a major injury,” he said, “and the chips are in the back of the elbow, in an easy place to get to. And the way it happened, the way they just sort of fell into place while I was walking, isn’t as scary as if I’d thrown a pitch.

“I’m also fortunate that I’m living in this age of medical technology. If this would have happened even 10 years ago, I probably would have just tried to pitch through it until I couldn’t go anymore.”