THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GAME in Major League Baseball, it exists because its practitioner has embraced a long-held axiom: form follows function. Once upon a time, Trea Turner was a gambler who used to slide headfirst, her fingers, wrists, and shoulders exposed to whatever obstacles exist when a man lunges at stationary objects. As he continued to play and watched his teammates and opponents get hurt, he couldn’t bear the risk. There had to be a better way, a safer way.
Turner had long studied other experts in the trade, a small fraternity of men who take basic running as seriously as hitting and working with gloves. He marveled at Terrance Gore, the stolen base specialist who would slip in at the last possible moment. Maybe, Turner thought, there was a way to marry his inherent ability with a touch of Gore’s guts in a feet-first approach. In 2020, while a shortstop for the Washington Nationals, Turner played and fiddled around until he found something that really worked, and with that, a way to harness his most basic abilities. , that unique fusion of the speed of a sprinter, a bigger man, the flexibility of Gumby, the mind of a mathematician and the audacity of a thief.
The world didn’t realize until August 10, 2021. That was 11 days after the mega trade that sent Turner and Max Scherzer to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Turner moved up to second. Will Smith chose right field. Bryce Harper lined up clearly and threw a hard shot at home plate. What happened next was form eclipsing function.
About 10 feet from home plate, Turner jumped. His right leg stuck out (he always slides right leg first) and his left leg tucked under his right, looking like a reverse 4. By the time Turner landed, he was nearly past home plate, except for his gloved left hand, which naturally went past home plate. Momentum around his torso, Turner embraced the run, emerging after a 180 degree turn and walking towards the dugout in one unbroken motion. The smoothness, the naturalness of the material, the aura of the toboggan was born that day, even if the toboggan itself preceded it.
“I’m not necessarily trying to be cool or anything,” Turner told ESPN in an interview last week. “It’s more that I try to slide correctly, efficiently. I’m not slowing down.”
All of this is true. Turner, now 29, never gives up on auxiliary engines. He wouldn’t dare take his body’s position in space for granted. And while she’s not necessarily trying to be cool or anything, Trea Turner’s Slide quickly became an A thing and, overnight, became the standard by which slides were judged.
Few try to duplicate it, lest they look like poor imitations of a proprietary stuntman. That’s exactly what he’s become over the past year. In a sport with gorgeous swings and scenic throws, the humble slide stole hearts. Although perhaps that shouldn’t be all that surprising.
DECEMBER 21, 1958, Gene Kelly joined NBC’s “Omnibus” to explain to viewers how dance and sports are much more alike than many realize. He had Johnny Unitas throw a soccer ball and Bob Cousy play tight defense on the basketball court. When it comes to baseball, Kelly left the choice to Mickey Mantle.
“Give us the most exciting thing for you in any baseball game,” Kelly said. ” It would be ? »
“I think the most exciting thing for me in baseball,” Mantle said, “is trying to steal second base or take extra base and slide really hard.”
As much as Kelly tried to replicate what Mantle did and make it look like dancing, the 1950s slides were much grittier than the brand typically used today. The runners intentionally went ahead. The breaking of double games was not only encouraged but necessary. Swipes were sometimes swipes and sometimes messages. Injuries occurred in both directions.
Kelly would swoon over what the current game has to offer, where creativity abounds, spawned by Turner and his peers. The swim move, in which a sliding player offers an arm to a defensive player to tag them, then pulls them back and reaches base with another, is popular. Veteran utility Chris Coghlan once jumped entirely over Yadier Molina, hitting home plate with his front flip. The inability to put out a second baseman or a catcher forced players to have more confidence in their abilities. Turner personifies it, prompting those around him to lavish praise.
“You see something really spontaneous, a movement that brings back the idea of letting go and not worrying about getting dirty and tearing your uniform,” said Jeffrey M. Katz, the author of “Pli’ Ball ”, a book exploring the intersection of baseball and dance. “When you see a great slide, you feel like there’s a thought process behind it. There’s something deliberate about it, the feeling that whoever’s doing it understands that they’re not just going to get them where they need to go, it’s almost an act. It’s something people watch. You put your creativity into it and you give the fans something to appreciate. It is a natural delight.”
There’s a universality to Trea Turner’s Slide, an aesthetic that appeals to anyone who’s tried to save a fall with deft recovery. (In other words, all of us). Turner’s falls may be intentional and controlled, but they don’t diminish the magnificence of the finish, like a gymnast jamming a landing or a stuntman sliding into a tight parking spot.
“Movement music is a bit of a hackneyed saying,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, “but it’s just the ultimate grace and control of the body with the power to create speed. So being able to glide and get up naturally requires a lot of speed. and control of his body. And I don’t think people appreciate how hard it is to do it, but it shows the kind of athlete he is.
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“It’s the distance he goes, and then the way he drops his hand and places it perfectly on the plate, and then comes on like nothing ever happened,” the Dodgers first baseman said. Freddie Freeman. “It’s a beautiful thing to see. This is really beautiful.”
Handsome enough, no doubt, to warrant inclusion in a dance show, except Turner would never come close. In 2019, en route to their World Series championship, the Nationals developed a tradition of celebration: every time a player hits a home run, when they return to the dugout, they need to dance.
“It was my worst nightmare,” Turner said.
Turner… Well, Turner can’t dance. Once he tried to do a simple dance in the dugout and it was something like Elaine’s character on the sitcom “Seinfeld.” Another time he tried The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s “Apache” dance. 360 on the dance wasn’t as natural as his 180 on the slide.
“I train at the same place every off-season. I train,” Turner said. “When the guy I work with tells me how to move, I lose my coordination very quickly. But if you tell me to go catch that ball, I have a simple goal and my body moves a little better. Dancing is not for me.”
Fortunately, almost everything on the baseball field is.
IN THE OLD DAYS, when she had free time, Trea Turner liked to build things. He went to North Carolina State as a badly outsourced baseball talent, as well as someone who took his education seriously enough to plan a career in chemical engineering. This desire to manufacture from the left side of the brain has extended to computers. Turner saw a YouTube video and edited one. After that, he assembled a few more without any tutorials.
This type of structured approach to his game has taken Turner to places far beyond someone who slides a lot. He is one of the best baseball players. Turner is one hit behind Freeman for the major league lead. If he pulls it off and holds the lead, Turner will be the first player in baseball history to lead the major leagues in hits for three straight seasons. (Ichiro Suzuki has won five consecutive titles but is tied with Dustin Pedroia for third.)
Few can match Turner’s combination of power (18 homers) and baseline acumen (20 stolen bases). His speed remains the most consistent in the entire game, exceeding 30 feet per second as he nears 30.
“I am young. I’m fresh,” Turner said. “I’m getting older compared to the youth of the game. I’m just trying to keep up with the 22 or 23-year-old players.”
For good reason: Turner is entering free agency this winter, and she won’t be short of suitors. His closest hitter, according to Baseball-Reference: former Dodgers teammate Corey Seager, who landed a $325 million contract last winter. Turner is older. He does not hit with the same power. But the weaknesses in his game are limited, and his desire to stay healthy and play every game this season (he’s 121-121 so far) suggests Turner’s confident approach is doing its part.
There are still mysteries, it is better to leave them in the hands of curious physicists and experts in numbers. Even Statcast can only quantify it so far: Sure, Turner ranks first in the majors this year in sprints over 30 feet per second with 100 (24 ahead of second-best Bobby Witt Jr.) and second in sprint speed, with 30.3 (0.1 seconds behind the leaders, Witt and José Sirí). The hard-to-measure elements provide the real mystery. Why, for example, does Turner slip as if friction did not exist for him? Mere mortals stop when they launch themselves on grass or dirt, and Turner continues to slide as if the rules of the universe don’t apply, or as if he controls his weight so well. that it was becoming an irrelevant factor. Or is it the length of the slides themselves, as Freeman suggested, that makes Turner’s so beautiful? Is he really slipping several feet further than his teammates?
The answers matter little to Turner. As focused as you may be on planning for your future, in the field your right brain takes over. Baseball is a creative game. That’s why a few weeks ago he hit the slide chasing a pop-up in dirty territory that just seemed out of reach. He caught the ball and landed the slide smoothly, of course.
“I try to be good at everything,” Turner said. “I want to be a good defender. I want to be a good hitter. I want to be a good base runner. And I’m trying to get better at all of those things.”
