Phillies’ Trea Turner, the WBC’s brightest star, makes his high school coach flash back to the beginning
Trea Turner #TreaTurner
MIAMI — The memories are never far from the surface. An All-Star Game here, a playoff series there, and they bubble back up. Heck, a 20-second clip on the nightly highlight shows or posted to social media usually does the trick.
How must it feel, then, when the best player you’ve ever coached morphs into Captain America on national television?
Larry Greenstein picked up the phone Monday and tried to make sense of it. Team USA had the night off on the eve of the World Baseball Classic championship game, which was the only reason Trea Turner didn’t hit another home run. It was OK. Everyone was still processing the Phillies shortstop’s stunning grand slam in the eighth inning of a come-from-behind quarterfinal-round vanquishing of Venezuela Saturday night and his two homers in a semifinal rout of Cuba on Sunday.
Turner, 29, has been the brightest star in this interstellar two-week tournament wedged into spring training. He’s 7-for-19 (.368) in five games; he leads all players with four home runs and 10 RBIs; he’s the second U.S. player ever with a multi-homer game in the WBC after Ken Griffey Jr. in the inaugural tournament in 2006 and the first player ever with back-to-back four-RBI games.
And he’s doing it all 58 miles down the road from Park Vista High School in Lake Worth, Fla., where it all began for him 15 years ago.
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“You get flashbacks of where he’s come from, how hard he’s worked,” said Greenstein, the varsity baseball coach at Park Vista since 2005. “I’ve had a lot of kids that have been successful, not always on the baseball field. We have doctors, we have lawyers, and I’m proud of all those kids. But obviously this kid has reached the pinnacle of baseball. That’s as special as it gets. To watch this on TV, it just sends a chill down my spine.”
Not that any of this is a surprise. Turner has made two All-Star teams and won a batting title and a World Series. He signed an 11-year, $300 million free agent contract in December because the Phillies have him rated as one of the top 10 players in baseball. Bryce Harper often calls Turner his favorite player to watch.
But Turner also bats ninth in Team USA manager Mark DeRosa’s loaded lineup. And as the tournament got underway two weeks ago, Turner was talking with Phillies/U.S. teammates J.T. Realmuto and Kyle Schwarber about the challenge of taking quality at-bats in March, when they would usually be playing exhibition games on lazy Florida afternoons.
“I haven’t hit a homer in spring training in like four or five years, or something like that, so it’s kind of funny how it works out,” Turner said. “But I don’t ask questions. I just go up there and hopefully it continues on.”
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Greenstein sees little sense in questioning anything his former player does. Turner hit a grand total of one homer in four years at Park Vista. When he arrived as a freshman, he was 5-foot-4 and bony. He was taller but still skinny when he left. Many scouts would dismiss him just by looking at him.
In watching Turner every day, Greenstein saw things that the scouts didn’t. Like the day when Turner ran the 60-yard dash in 6.3 seconds. Greenstein figured the stopwatch was broken, so Turner did it again — in 6.3 seconds flat.
“I’m calling scouts and they’re going, ‘We never heard of this kid,’” Greenstein said. “I go, ‘I don’t care. How many times have you seen a high school kid run a 6.3? I’ve got a pro prospect.’”
But Greenstein remembers precisely when he knew Turner was unlike any player he’s coached.
In 2011, Park Vista advanced to the semifinals of the state playoffs. The opposing pitcher: José Fernández, who was throwing 97 mph en route to being the Marlins’ first-round draft pick. A few days before the game, Greenstein took his players to an indoor batting facility that had a high-velocity pitching machine. He positioned the machine 30 feet from home plate, half the distance of a regulation mound. It was the closest approximation to what they were about to see.
“I start off at 90, and this is no lie, Trea looks at me and goes, ‘C’mon, coach. Ninety? This guy throws 97!’” Greenstein recalled. “So I go, ‘Can you jack this thing up?’ It goes to 92-93, and Trea is riding me. ‘Coach, come on!’ Finally we get this darned thing up as high as it goes. It was like 100. Of course, he’s the only one that could barrel up some balls. No one else could. And I’m like, ‘Oh my god, really?’ It was amazing.”
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Turner topped it. He led off the game by banging a Fernández heater for a triple off the 375-foot sign in right-center field at the Mets’ spring training ballpark in Port St. Lucie, Fla., for the first of three hits.
“That alone, that whole series of events, I said to myself, ‘What have we got here?’” Greenstein said. “That’s when you knew. He was able to do things that I haven’t seen anybody do. He was just another breed out there.”
The WBC is a tough ticket in Miami, with the games selling out and boisterous crowds mimicking a playoff atmosphere. Even the players are limited to leaving tickets only for family. Greenstein and his wife, Cyndi, are content to watch on television. They’ve been yelling at DeRosa through the screen, imploring him to leave Turner in the No. 9 spot.
DeRosa isn’t a fool. He went to Penn, after all.
“I kept saying every time he went deep, ‘Who is the idiot that’s hitting him ninth?’” DeRosa said, laughing. “But that’s the way this lineup’s built, so I’m going to leave him alone right now.”
Greenstein, who hasn’t reissued No. 3 since Turner graduated and hopes to eventually retire it with a formal ceremony, saw Turner at a wedding in November and reached out a few weeks later to congratulate him on signing with the Phillies. After seeing Team USA spill out of the dugout to celebrate with Turner at home plate after the grand slam, Greenstein reached for his phone.
“That was so awesome,” he texted.
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Turner responded the next morning: “Thanks, Coach Greenie. Crazy game.”
It brought back another memory. After Turner’s first major league home run late in the 2015 season, Greenstein texted his former star.
“I said, “Great home run. Now, don’t start thinking you’re a home run hitter,’” Greenstein said. “And now look at him. I’m glad he didn’t listen to me.”
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