Former Yankees Prospects Turned Top Surgeon

February is Prospects Month here on The Greedy Pinstripes and rather than tell you all about the current crop of Yankees farmhands we see down in the system I wanted to focus on something a little different today. I wanted to talk about a former Yankees draft pick and now one of the better surgeons in the United States, a man by the name of Christopher Luke Wilcox.

Christopher Wilcox was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in the 22^nd round of the 1992 MLB First Year Players Draft and while playing in front of his home crowd in Detroit would have been nice Wilcox decided to head to college and turn down the Tigers off. Detroit wanted Wilcox out of St. John’s High School but Wilcox decided to take his talents to Western Michigan University where he played three seasons in the outfield for the team’s baseball team, the Broncos. It was in June of 1995 that Wilcox heard his name called again in the MLB Draft but this time it was in the third round of the draft and this time it was by the New York Yankees. This time Wilcox was not walking away from his dream of professional baseball and signed with New York.

Wilcox toiled around in the Yankees farm system until the 1997 expansion draft when the Tampa Bay Devil Rays took him and kept him in their system until the Yankees came calling once again. Wilcox had two tenures with the Yankees and was called up to the show once, never getting an at bat and never once getting into a game at all, before deciding to retire from the spot in 2001 to return to WMU. Wilcox returned to school hoping to finish his degree and become an orthopedic surgeon and that Dr. Wilcox did in 2007.

Wilcox went on to work with Dr. James Andrews in Pensacola, Florida as he learned sports medicine from one of the best in the business and from one of the biggest names in orthopedic sports medicine and surgery. There Wilcox learned the Tommy John procedure from Andrews and he perfected the operation under his watchful eye. With the help of MSU and Dr. James Andrews Wilcox has gone from playing inside Yankee Stadium to helping others reach that goal and that’s truly an awesome thing and experience for the doctor.