"You're looking at something that's really spontaneous - a movement that brings back the whole idea of letting yourself go and not caring you're going to get dirty and tear up your uniform," said Jeffrey M. Turner embodies it, prompting those around him to lavish praise. The inability to take out a second baseman or catcher has necessitated players rely more on their skills. Longtime utilityman Chris Coghlan once leapt over Yadier Molina entirely, touching home plate on his frontflip. The swim move, in which a slider offers an arm for a fielder to tag, then pulls it back and reaches around with another, is popular.
Kelly would swoon at what today's game offers, where creativity, spawned by Turner and his peers, abounds. Slides were sometimes slides and sometimes messages. Breaking up double plays wasn't just encouraged but mandated. Much as Kelly tried to replicate Mantle's and make it resemble dance, the slides of the 1950s were far grittier than the brand typically employed today. "I think the most exciting thing for me in baseball," Mantle said, "is trying to steal second base or taking an extra base and sliding in real hard." "Give us the most exciting thing to you in any baseball game," Kelly said. When it came around to baseball, Kelly left the choice up to Mickey Mantle. He asked Johnny Unitas to throw a football and Bob Cousy to play tight defense on the basketball court. 21, 1958, Gene Kelly joined the NBC show "Omnibus" to explain to viewers how dance and sports were far more alike than many realized. Though perhaps that shouldn't be quite as much of a surprise as it is. In a sport with gorgeous swings and picturesque pitching deliveries, the humble slide has stolen hearts. Which, over the past year, it has become. And even if he's not necessarily trying to be cool or anything, the Trea Turner Slide very quickly became A Thing - and, overnight, became the standard by which slides were judged.įew attempt to duplicate it, lest they be seen as poor imitations of a patented maneuver. He wouldn't dare take for granted the position of his body in space. Turner, now 29, never lays off the afterburners. "It's more that I'm trying to slide correctly - efficiently. "I'm not necessarily trying to be cool or anything," Turner told ESPN in an interview last week. The velvetiness, the effortlessness - the aura of the slide was born that day, even if the slide itself predated it. With momentum already pulling around his torso, Turner embraced the ride, popping up after a 180-degree spin and walking toward the dugout in one uninterrupted motion. By the time Turner landed, he was practically past home plate, except for his gloved left hand, which he matter-of-factly swiped across the dish. His right leg stuck out - he always slides right leg first - and his left leg tucked under his right, looking like a backward 4. What happened next was form overshadowing function.Ībout 10 feet from home plate, Turner jumped. Bryce Harper fielded it clearly and unleashed a strong throw home. Will Smith laced a single into right field. It was 11 days after the blockbuster trade that sent Turner and Max Scherzer to the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 2020, when he was the shortstop for the Washington Nationals, Turner toyed and tinkered until he found something that really worked - and with it, a way to leverage his most elemental skills, this unique amalgamation of a sprinter's speed, a larger man's power, Gumby's flexibility, a mathematician's mind and a cat burglar's daring. Perhaps, Turner thought, there was a way to marry his inherent aptitude with a touch of Gore's moxie in a feet-first approach. He marveled at Terrance Gore, the stolen-base specialist who would slide at the last possible moment. Turner had long studied other experts of the craft, a small fraternity of men who take baserunning every bit as seriously as hitting and glovework. There had to be a better way, a safer way. As he continued to play - and to watch teammates and opponents alike get hurt - he couldn't abide the risk.
Once upon a time, Trea Turner was a habitual head-first slider, his fingers and wrists and shoulders exposed to all the obstacles that exist when a man launches himself toward stationary objects. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL play in Major League Baseball exists because its practitioner embraced a long-held axiom: Form follows function.
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