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Passions & Pursuits

Two Fields, Two Dreams
By Randy Southerland

Terry Yochum, D.C., pursued two paths: baseball and chiropractic.

If only Terry R. Yochum had been left-handed things might have been so very different. He might have had that pro baseball career he had dreamed of since he was a kid playing third base and demonstrating that even then he had a strong pitching arm.

Instead, baseball became a pastime and Yochum found another profession that allowed him to channel his discipline and will to win, and along the way has earned him another kind of devoted following. Yet, while a pro career never panned out, baseball has remained an abiding passion that he has pursued throughout his life.

Most doctors have studied “Essentials of Skeletal Radiology” during their career. This weighty tome revolutionized chiropractic and earned Yochum and DCs respect far beyond the confines of the profession. It’s one of the most popular textbooks in history—not just in every chiropractic school in the nation, but in a host of medical and podiatric schools as well. That’s the public part of his career, but there’s also the avocation that he developed early and never left.

Growing up in St. Louis, baseball was Yochum’s life, and he knew that his destiny was to pitch for his hometown Cardinals. He got his first crack at organized sports at age 10, when a friend’s father invited him to play for a local team.

“They had me play third base because I had a strong arm and it was a long throw to first base,” says Yochum. The strength of that right arm soon earned him a spot on the pitcher’s mound when he began playing Little League ball. It was a position he would continue to hold through high school, college and on into semi-pro.

“At the age of 60 I am still pitching baseballs,” he remarks.

He is the son of a chiropractor and one time athlete who supported his sports interests by encouraging him and coming to games. He also provided Yochum with a firm foundation for sports by teaching him the secrets of good health, including getting his first adjustment when he was just three days old.

“My dad was a family practitioner and I was in and out of his office many times,” he recalls. “I was never vaccinated nor were any of my children. We lived the chiropractic lifestyle and I enjoy the benefits of good health today because of the nutritional and chiropractic foundation that my father gave me.”

Those teachings have clearly served him well as he has continued to play, pitching in tournaments against men much younger than he. Today Yochum is a member of a men’s senior league in Denver, and has umpired high school and semi-pro baseball for the past several years.

“One of the most memorable times in my life was a trip in July of 2005 to Cooperstown, N.Y. to play in the Legends of Baseball Tournament,” says Yochum. He had the privilege and rare opportunity to pitch in an eight-game tournament and play on the same team with his son, Philip A. Yochum. Philip played Little League and high school baseball, and hadn’t played since his freshman year in high school.

“The switch-hitting, left-handed first baseman, who I coached in baseball since he was 8 years old, took the challenge to get in shape to play with his 58-year-old father,” remembers Yochum.

In his son’s first game of the tournament he had three hits out of five at bats and adeptly covered first base and right field. The elder Yochum pitched 22 innings over four different games in the tournament, including a three hit, seven ?inning complete game, which he lost 1-0 to a 38-year-old ex-New York Jets player.

“It was a great experience for me to be able to play a game that I have loved for so long with my son, and have his girlfriend, my wife Inge, and her mother from Germany there to experience it with us,” he recalls. “We played these games at multiple fields, but had a number of games at Abner Doubleday Field, where the very first baseball game was played many years ago. On our team was another father and son, and while our team did not win the tournament, we were all winners because we had this great opportunity to play with our sons.”

Finding a balance between his passion for baseball and chiropractic has not always been easy. Although he never considered doing anything other than following in his father’s footsteps, there was some conflict over the details.

As a young man playing college baseball he had acquired a local girlfriend and planned to study chiropractic at nearby Logan. His father had different ideas. Dr. Kenneth E. Yochum wanted his son to attend National College in far away Chicago.

“I was 19 years old and my dad said ‘Well, you need to go to school in Chicago,’ so we had a little bit of an argument about that and he actually told me that he wouldn’t provide me any financial assistance if I wouldn’t at least meet this one man and see this school,” recalls Yochum.

He finally agreed—the trip made palatable by tickets to a Bears game at storied Soldier’s Field and a match between the Cardinals and the Cubs. Sandwiched in between was a Saturday morning meeting with Dr. Joseph Janse, National’s president.

He emerged from the meeting with one question for his father: “Who was that man?” Not what was his name, but who really was this powerful and passionate chiropractor?

“I felt the magnitude and the charisma of this man, his commitment and his stewardship to the profession,” he recalls. “To this day I am ever so thankful that I was mature enough—and I wasn’t very mature at 19—to appreciate the depth and the magnitude of that man.”

Yochum didn’t need to see anything else—the classrooms, the dissection labs or the student clinic.

“I said, ‘It’s over Dad,’” recalls Yochum. “This guy could be teaching in a garage or in an alley somewhere and this is where I need to go to school. That decision changed my entire life—my entire life.”

Today, he says that if he had gone to Logan he would have become a good practicing DC, but he would never have achieved the goals that made him famous.

“I would have taken over my dad’s office and practiced with him and someone else would have written this book,” he says.

At National, under Janse, he found inspiration and a new purpose in life. Long a “C” student who teachers said didn’t live up to his potential, he soon caught fire, becoming president of his class and graduating cum laude in 1972.

He didn’t forget about baseball either, pitching for a series of semi-pro teams. He was always highly competitive on the diamond, but he soon learned to be equally competitive and achievement-oriented in the classroom and lab as well.

Over the next 12 years he taught radiology at three different schools including National, Logan and then Phillips in Melbourne, Australia. It was during this time that he was contacted by Toni Tracy, a vice president at medical publishing house Williams & Wilkins about writing a new radiological text for the profession.

Sales expectations for the book were low. Few medical texts sold more than 5,000 copies during their entire life. Yet, Essentials took off, selling more than 5,000 copies in just three weeks. In fact, the first edition garnered more than 45,000 copies in sales and was reprinted more than six times in a year. The second edition sold another 30,000. Total sales through three editions have exceeded 100,000 copies, making it one of the biggest sellers in either chiropractic or medicine for that matter.

The book proved to be much more than just another textbook. It was adopted by chiropractic schools to be sure, but then something unique in the annals of the profession occurred. Soon medical schools began adopting it as their own text—despite being written by a chiropractor. For both professions this was clearly something unexpected.

Now at age 60, Yochum is still going strong. He travels the country teaching post graduate seminars on radiology to a wide variety of professionals. He also plays baseball with the same passion and dedication he has brought to his practice and his profession.

Yochum owes much of his accomplishments to the teachings of his father, who imbued him with a sense of honor early in life. “Right’s right, wrong’s nobody,” he recalls hearing. Right was right for Yochum. Even though he wasn’t the highly coveted left-handed pitcher, these words of fatherly advice have motivated and defined his life.