CINCINNATI — During the Cincinnati Reds’ last homestand, reliever Tejay Antone placed a hardback copy of his book, “The Tommy John Protocol,” on the chairs of each and every one of his teammates and coaches.

It was a gesture of goodwill, but since then, two teammates have undergone elbow surgeries: right-hander Hunter Greene and outfielder Blake Dunn.

Greene underwent his second Tommy John surgery Wednesday and could miss the 2027 season.

The success rate of players returning from a second Tommy John is not as high as those who have the procedure once, but the road back isn’t impossible. Greene doesn’t have to look farther than across the clubhouse at Great American Ball Park, where Antone’s locker resides.

In the unlikely event Greene didn’t know that Antone was there for him, the 32-year-old reached out to Greene this week.

“It’s not fun when you just get the news and you have to (undergo surgery) right off the bat and you’re in a really dark and not fun spot,” Antone said. “You want to be helping the team, and you’re not. You’re just broken. So I just reached out to him with some words of encouragement.”

Most big-league clubhouses are littered with guys who bear an inches-long scar on the inside of their throwing elbow, signifying their membership in the ever-expanding club of players who have had the surgery first performed by Dr. Frank Jobe on John in 1974. Antone joined the club as a minor leaguer in 2017, the year the Reds took Greene with the second pick in the draft out of a California high school.

Greene’s membership came in 2019, missing all of that season before he made his big-league debut in 2022. Antone, who debuted in 2020, underwent his second Tommy John surgery in 2021 and returned in 2023. Antone went under the knife for another revision of his elbow surgery in 2024.

Antone wrote his book while he was rehabbing from the third surgery on his elbow, in part to fill time, but also as a way to let it be known that not only is Tommy John surgery not a career-ending procedure, but also that a second or third operation doesn’t have to be one, either.

“There was no manual out there for me or for anyone,” said Antone, who is also having the book translated into Spanish. “Everyone has their own way of doing it. Every team has their own philosophies around it. I am not even saying my philosophy is the best, but I just wanted to provide something for even just high school kids, college kids that maybe don’t have the best direction of how they’re going to do it or the approach they’re going to take.”

Being a pitcher such as Greene, who has already had the surgery, presents its own set of challenges, Antone said.

“As an athlete, having gone through something like that before, you feel immediately like, ‘Oh, I’ll be able to do this one easier,’ or ‘I’ll be able to do it quicker,’” Antone said. “And it’s almost the opposite case, where you have to really take your time and just really slow down even more than you want to.”

Greene has been on the injured list in each of his five big-league seasons and started this season on the IL after March surgery to remove loose bodies from his right elbow. That surgery, like both of his Tommy John surgeries, was performed by Dr. Neal ElAttrache in Los Angeles. Greene will remain in Los Angeles for his first postoperative checkup with ElAttrache, then transfer his rehab to the Reds’ facility in Goodyear, Ariz., which Antone calls “home of the 115-degree summer.”

Antone’s experiences with Greene rehabbing at the same time give him confidence that Greene has as good a shot as anyone to come back after a second surgery just as strong as he was.

“He’s a workaholic — he loves showing up every day on time, doing the things that matter,” Antone said. “Honestly, anyone who plays at this level knows how to do that. That’s one of the foundations of returning from anything. I have all the hopes that Hunter’s going to return better than he was before.”

The NFL is changing its challenge system this season. Maybe instead, it’s time to challenge the challenges.

For the first time since the red flag challenge system was introduced in 1999, head coaches can now designate an assistant coach or staff member as the official flag bearer. It’s reasonable to wonder why we need them at all.

Before the two-minute warning, coaches have exclusive authority to force formal reviews over many ordinary plays. After the warning, that authority flips: coaches are barred from challenging, and the replay official alone decides what deserves another look. If the league trusts the booth when the stakes are highest, why not use the same system for the other 28 minutes?

When coaches first began tucking red flags in their socks and were instructed to throw them on the field whenever they were unhappy with the officiating, the world was panicking over a potential Y2K computer crash. That’s how long we’ve been doing this. Former coaches like Dick Vermeil, Ray Rhodes, Bruce Coslet and Mike Ditka were carrying red flags long before dating apps turned them into pop-culture slang.

A lack of technology may have made them necessary back when replay review was antiquated and cumbersome. We have reached an age when NFL replay officials in New York can monitor every available broadcast angle from every game across the country within seconds.

Regardless of who is throwing the flag, the NFL requires teams to spot a mistake, grab a handkerchief, find an official before the ball is snapped again and wager one of their timeouts against whether the referees got a call wrong.

Coaches have essentially become trial attorneys: File the right motion, at the right time and on the correct grounds, or have the entire case thrown out.

Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell correctly believed the Los Angeles Rams’ Colby Parkinson was down at the 4-yard line in a December game last year and challenged the spot when officials instead placed the ball at the 3.

But a spot is only reviewable when it impacts a first down or touchdown. Parkinson caught a short pass from Matthew Stafford on first-and-10 and turned it into a big play. Since the disputed yard did not affect whether the Rams gained a first down, officials ruled the spot was not challengeable and charged the Lions with a timeout. Replay assistance corrected the call, and officials placed the ball at the 4 anyway — but still took a timeout away from Detroit.

“I won the challenge, but I lost my timeout,” Campbell said.

Football is uniquely suited for an official-led system because every play is followed by a built-in review window. The play clock gives a replay official time to examine what just happened while teams huddle, substitute and prepare for the next snap. Correcting an obvious mistake during that window often wouldn’t require an additional stoppage.

More fundamentally, enforcing the rules should remain the league’s responsibility. A receiver’s foot was either out of bounds or it wasn’t. A runner’s knee was either down or it wasn’t. Those facts shouldn’t change because one coach had a timeout available, recognized the mistake or employed a better replay staff than his opponent.

The NFL already accepts that principle on scores, turnovers, failed fourth downs, and during the final two minutes. Those plays aren’t automatically reviewed because replay officials suddenly become more capable when the stakes rise. They’re reviewed because the league has decided those calls are too important to leave to coaching strategy. A mistake in the first quarter is no less wrong.

Keep automatic reviews for scores, turnovers and failed fourth downs. For other reviewable plays, transfer the authority to initiate corrections from coaches to the replay official. Give a dedicated replay decision-maker assigned to each game a limited window to correct clear, objective errors.

That would require one dedicated decision-maker for every game, rather than supervisors juggling several games at once. No problem. The NFL can afford the staffing.

If the replay official needs additional time to check an angle, he should have the authority to signal the referee and briefly delay the snap. The delay could be capped — maybe no more than 20 seconds. Replay should correct the obvious, not provide time for New York to launch an investigation.

Such a system might create an occasional brief delay, but it should eliminate most lengthy replay stoppages. The NFL is already monitoring every play.

Baseball offers a useful model for making the final decision: MLB’s replay umpire in New York makes the ruling and relays it to the crew chief. The on-field umpires don’t review the evidence themselves. The NFL doesn’t need to bring a tablet onto the field for an expedited correction. Make the call in New York, relay it to the referee and play on.

It would eliminate the coach-triggered formal reviews and sideline theater that occur when coaches run down the field with a flag while assistants scream into their headsets. Or moments such as Thursday night, when New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel played long toss with his flag to protest a fumble call.

Why should coaches have to weigh whether a first-quarter officiating error is important enough to risk a timeout? Getting a call right shouldn’t depend on whether a coach is willing to make a bet.

The NFL has tried a booth-driven system before. From 1986 through 1991, replay supervisors decided which plays warranted review. The league dumped it amid complaints about delays and frustration that teams had no way to request a review.

Technology has evolved quite a bit since the late 1980s. Video was primitive, and the process was excruciatingly slow. Now replay officials can view synchronized, high-definition angles through Hawk-Eye Innovations and communicate directly with officials on the field. The concept wasn’t necessarily wrong; it just arrived about 35 years too soon.

Tennis has largely eliminated human line judges in favor of the same Hawk-Eye system for line calls. Soccer uses its own version of Hawk-Eye for goal-line technology and semi-automated offside technology.

The obvious objection is that the replay official may occasionally miss something a coach would have challenged. Of course that could happen. But the NFL already removes the coaches’ role during the final two minutes, precisely when a missed call can do the most damage. If booth-only authority is sufficient during a winning drive, it should be sufficient in the first quarter, too.

The speed at which these games are played makes perfect officiating impossible. No one is demanding perfection, but rather giving them a little help from the sky when they need it. We shouldn’t need a red flag to do it.