September 18, 2023

By Mark Whicker

Canadian Baseball Network

If you find yourself in a hole, the Philly fan will loan you a shovel.

If you’re teething on the edge of the Walt Whitman Bridge, the Philly fan will provide diving lessons.

It is supposedly the home of the coldest shoulder in sports. It is certainly not a place for the sensitive soul, the ambivalent brooder.

That is why the case of Trea Turner, and how he rediscovered himself with a little help from thousands of sudden friends, seems so weird. But actually it’s very true to form. If Turner continues to scorch the National League and gets the Phillies back into the World Series, the fan base will attribute it to its main preoccupation: Itself.

To summarize, Turner was a longtime antagonist as a member of the Washington Nationals, who won the Series in 2019. Two years later, Washington traded him to the Dodgers, where he became even better. The Dodgers let Corey Seager become a free agent so that Turner could play shortstop, but even though he excelled, they couldn’t return to the Series they won in 2020. Now it was Turner’s turn to test the market. Since he was from Florida and North Carolina State, he was always pegged as an East Coast lifer. He signed with Philadelphia for the fanciful sum of $300 million over 11 years. That ensured Turner an annual wage of $27.5 million through his 40th year on earth.

Turner then forgot how to play. He was hitting .235 on Aug. 3 with a flimsy .657 OPS, and after one rough night in Miami he went straight to the indoor batting cage and hit balls past midnight. The Phillies were returning home, never a threat to beat Atlanta in the National League East and scuffling to even make the playoffs. Turner figured to hear the same reaction from the denizens of Citizens Bank Park that Nikolai Volkov used to hear when he’d sing the Soviet anthem in the middle of the ring.

Unbeknownst to him, the Philly fan was coming to his emotional rescue. Through social media interactions and the power of talk-show station WIP, Turner was stunned to hear a raucous standing ovation when he came to the plate against Kansas City on Aug. 4. Suddenly the padlock on Turner’s talent disintegrated.

Since that game, Turner is hitting .372 with a .411 OBP and a .763 slugging percentage. That's a 1.174 OPS. He has raised his batting average from .235 to .271 and his OPS from .657 to .791 and has probably been the best player in baseball.

In a 13-game stretch (between Aug. 28 and Sept. 12), he hit 11 home runs. The only Phillies to do that were Mike Schmidt and Ryan Howard, who played for the only two world championship teams in franchise history. He is 27 for 27 in steal attempts, too. His 26 home runs are already five more than last year’s total, and there’s a chance he’ll match or surpass his 101 runs, 39 doubles and .809 OPS of 2022, when Turner was 11th in National League MVP voting.

Turner also has 146 strikeouts and 20 errors, both career highs, both byproducts of the civic pressures he felt, even though he’s always been prone to missing pitches and grounders. But, thanks to Turner, Kevin Stott has moved to second base and been electric there. And Turner’s speed has boosted an already solid batting order. Nick Castellanos has had a major comeback, third baseman Alec Bohm had 89 RBIs, Bryce Harper has overcome elbow surgery to thrive at the right time, and Kyle Schwarber has become the archetype of 2020s leadoff hitting: a .197 average with 44 home runs, 119 walks and a .345 on-base percentage (OBP). Ten times, Schwarber has clubbed a homer as the Phililies’ first batter of a game. That not only creates a 1-0 lead, it makes Turner the de facto second leadoff hitter.

Turner’s spree took a timeout when he went on paternity leave. His wife Kristen, a former N.C. State gymnast delivered Tatum, their second son. Interestingly, it happened exactly nine months after Trea signed the big contract. Oh, what a night indeed.

The Phillies are the top wild-card team in the N.L. at this writing. Last year, they were the last seed in the dance, a team that wouldn’t have qualified if the playoffs hadn’t expanded. They weren’t hot going in either, with 10 losses in their final 14. But they somehow pulled off a Game 1 win in St. Louis, which meant they only needed one more win to advance through the wild-card round, and Harper provided that. Then, with the CBP crowd at full roar, the Phillies bashed Atlanta and San Diego to get to the Series, which they insistently pushed to six games before Yordan Alvarez won it for Houston.

The Philly fan needs something to lament the same way a tire needs air. This year it’s the pitching. Aaron Nola has given up 31 home runs. Craig Kimbrel, the closer, has wobbled recently.

Harper was familiar with the scene from all his days in Washington. When he signed as a free agent, he began praising the knowledge and passion of the Philly fan and never stopped. That made him bulletproof. After the fans absolved Turner, he expressed his thanks on billboards around the city. That worked, too.

The essence of the Philly fan is the self-importance therein. The base takes credit for running Terry Francona and Andy Reid out of town, and, eventually, into their Halls of Fame. Its renowned “toughness” becomes sloppy idolatry when its teams win and its individuals perform with the right panache. No town welcomed back a hero the way Philly did when Chase Utley returned with the Dodgers.

Most of them, the Philly fan claims to be a franchise, too, or at least a brand. Question is, what happens the next time Trea Turner needs a friend?