Trea Turner’s comeback is a valuable reminder to Philly fans: Being tough isn’t always the answer

We were crammed into a cramped coaches’ office at North Carolina State University in February, three men who knew Trea Turner as well or better than anyone trading stories about his baseball career and insights into his personality, me scribbling into a notebook for all I was worth, trying to keep up.

Trea the base-stealer and line-drive hitter. Trea the freshman who couldn’t get a decent fake ID. Trea the down-to-earth, normal dude. Leaning back in one chair was Elliott Avent, N.C. State’s head coach. Behind a desk was Chris Hart, the program’s associate head coach, who had recruited Turner. Next to Hart was Brett Austin, now an assistant under Avent, formerly a teammate of Turner’s with the Wolfpack, still his best friend.

So Philly can be a pretty tough place to play. Think that’ll be an issue at all for Trea in his first season with the Phillies?

“Not a bit,” Hart said.

Avent nodded.

“He’s so levelheaded,” Avent said. “Whatever people think of him, they can think of him.”

Austin had been the Washington Nationals’ bullpen catcher for two years, while Turner was on the team.

» READ MORE: Trea Turner’s path to Phillies’ $300 million man began as a baby-faced freshman at N.C. State

“I caught in Philly,” he said. “I’ve never been [bleeped] in any other ballpark.”

“Trea will handle that very well,” Avent said. “He gets motivated by things.”

As everyone around here knows by now, Trea did not handle it very well. Trea struck out a lot and committed a lot of errors. Trea watched his batting average plummet to .235. Trea made it clear that he was pressing, that a small slump had spiraled into something worse, and it appeared that a combination of stresses — a new team, a new home, the pressure of living up to his 11-year, $300 million contract — was weighing on him like an anvil strapped to his back.

As everyone here knows by now, Turner received a standing ovation in his first at-bat Friday night at Citizens Bank Park, an episode that ignited a civic debate that rages still. Were Philly fans getting soft? Were they just showing their loyalty? Were they doing it to create a favorable atmosphere for Turner — and, in turn, their hometown team — or were they doing it with cynical and self-serving intentions, to head off any snowballs-at-Santa-style criticism from national pundits? At what point would the public show of support go from being heartwarming to patronizing?

Whatever the reason or rationalization for the ovation, Turner hit .368 with four doubles, a home run, and six RBIs over his first 20 plate appearances after those fans stood and cheered for him. If you want to ascribe that hot streak to more rational explanations, you’re free to, and you might be right. One could certainly argue that Turner is and has been too good a player for too long for anyone to think that he’d be that bad all season. Put simply, maybe he was due. And it didn’t hurt that, in the Kansas City Royals and the Nationals, he was facing the teams with the third- and fourth-highest earned run averages, respectively, in Major League Baseball. Neither of those starting rotations is exactly Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz.

There’s enough evidence, though, to make the case that the ovation was just what Turner needed, and much of that evidence might seem counterintuitive, based on his reputation before he joined the Phillies. Ask anyone at N.C. State or anyone around Major League Baseball if they thought Trea Turner would lose his confidence for a prolonged stretch of time, and they would have said you were nuts. Turner’s confidence, above all else, was what made him great. But that self-assurance was also tinged with self-consciousness.

» READ MORE: Hall of Famer Scott Rolen was never the bad guy with the Phillies

“He was a little reserved,” Austin said. “He’s always been not shy but somewhat of an introvert. He was a little in his shell freshman year, but he had some success his freshman year, and his confidence was off the charts. It’s not an arrogance. It’s a quiet confidence where he thought he was better and knew he was better than everybody he was playing against, but he was very humble at the same time. It was a perfect mix.”

Take an even better example. One day in March 2019, the Washington Post columnist Tom Boswell approached Turner at the Nationals’ spring-training complex in West Palm Beach, Fla. Turner was sitting at his locker, trying to wrap sticky tape around the handle of a bat, and he was frustrated with himself that he wasn’t doing it correctly. He was coming off a season in which he had batted a career-low .271; his on-base-plus-slugging percentage had dropped by nearly 30 points, too.

“I was frustrated by myself last year,” Turner told Boswell. “I could have done so many more things. I’d think, ‘Why did I do that?’ or ‘That was dumb.’ I slid past the bag by an inch one time, got tagged out. ‘Come on.’

“I expect more from myself. And there’s more there. Am I going to hit [.342] like my rookie year? Obviously, no. But how much better is ‘better?’ Is it hit .290? Is it 20 home runs ... 50 steals? With my speed and my hard-hit-ball percentage, there’s no reason I shouldn’t hit .300.”

That doesn’t sound like a supremely confident athlete to me. That sounds like an athlete who was putting a heavy amount of pressure on himself to be great. That sounds like a perfectionist, and it doesn’t take much for a perfectionist to dwell on his struggles and flaws until he becomes his own worst enemy. It might take just getting off to a slow start in a sports town known for being the most demanding in America.

“If you’re not from here, I can get how it’s kind of tough,” said Eagles running back D’Andre Swift, a city native and alumnus of St. Joseph’s Prep. “Fans here are passionate, as they should be. If you’re from here and been around the area, you know how Philly sports and Philly sports fans are. So if you’re not from here, you’re not accustomed to it, I can see how it would be a little much to you. But when you’re doing good, they love you.”

They’ve loved Turner ever since he returned from his road trip from hell, and by all appearances, that love is helping. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Trea Turner the Phillies get the rest of this season is the Trea Turner they and everyone else thought they were going to get all along, and that standing ovation last week should be a lesson to athletes and fans here. Yes, Philly just wants its athletes to try. But sometimes, the harder one of those athletes tries, the worse everything gets.