“I saw about the general manager of the Mets (Brodie Van Wagenen) calling down to the dugout telling the manager ... when to take the guy out. That’s why I don’t watch the game,” John said.

“There’s a feel you have for the game. Now, everything’s done statistically. That’s why Don Mattingly quit managing the Dodgers. The people upstairs were telling him what to do and he said, ‘No.’”

John said he first hurt his elbow at 13, when he went from the Little League pitching distance of some 46 feet to the standard 60 feet six inches from home plate.

The Terre Haute, Ind., native took a year off from pitching then but he joked, “I was a power-hitting first baseman. I had scouts tell me if you can’t make it pitching, come back and let us know and we’ll sign you as a hitter. But they got fired the next year.”

John, who has drawn on the expertise of his son, is of the opinion that it doesn’t matter how hard a pitcher throws relative to whether he will need the surgery or not.

“Guys that throw hard, your body will only accept the forces that it’s able to sustain,” John said. “You’re better off the stronger your legs are, the stronger your feet are.