The Turnaround 2024 Movie Review
“He’s got high hopes.”
As I’ve written in the past, my dad refers to baseball as “a slow game of failure.” I’m pretty sure he stole that from Cal Ripken Jr., but whatever. Regardless of the quote’s original source, it was crucial to my development as a baseball fan, a mantra I repeat to my own son after every strikeout, every pop fly, and every heartbreaking Phillies loss. Unlike the NBA, where half of all field goal attempts hit the net, or the NFL, where over seventy percent of plays result in a gain of yards, the average OBP — a measure of plate appearances that result in a runner — in the MLB hovers just around thirty percent. That means seven out of every ten at-bats results in an out. The Major Leagues’ all-time batting champion Josh Gibson hit .371 over sixteen seasons. That’s tremendous. That’s other-worldly. But that still means Gibson spent most of his career walking back to the dugout empty-handed. Why? Because a year of Major League Baseball is a crucible. It’s 162 games played over three grueling seasons, from bitter cold to sweltering heat and everything in-between. It’s a grind.
But for Jon McCann, a die-hard Phillies fan from Bridesburg and the subject of Netflix’s new documentary short The Turnaround, that grind gives life depth and texture. It gives each day purpose and focus. Like so many of us throughout the Delaware Valley, McCann measures his mental fitness in Schwarbombs. We sleep easier after Daycare celebrations and get hyped-up when The Showman wears his Phanatic cleats. We eat Chickie’s crab fries and pose with Harry’s statue in Ashburn Alley. Wheeler’s on the mound? Franzke’s in the booth? Consider us world-beaters. Especially at the beginning of 2023, which saw the reigning NL Champs sign shortstop Trea Turner to an eleven-year, $300 million contract. For baseball prognosticators everywhere, Turner was the last piece of the puzzle, the speedy All-Star who would finally lead the Phillies to their third franchise title. But as The Turnaround shows, even a batting champion has to grind, and it’s our willingness to grind with him that gives our game — and our lives — the beauty that makes it all worthwhile.
But to really understand Trea Turner and The Turnaround, you need to go back to the first week of August 2023, when Turner was hitting a measly .235 on his way to committing a career-high twenty-three fielding errors. The raucous Philly sports media was already calling for his head, especially after Turner went a miserable 0-5 on August 2nd and missed an easy ground ball that allowed the game-winning Marlins run to score. Manager Rob Thomson had dropped him to the eight hole — that’s near the bottom of the lineup — to try to get him right, but it wasn’t looking good. Fans weren’t shy about voicing their buyer’s remorse, either, including McCann, known online as The Philly Captain. Loud, charismatic, and opinionated, McCann exemplifies our city’s reputation for better and worse. Despite his internet celebrity, though, McCann hadn’t been having the best year. He’d been in therapy and in and out of hospital care. He’d thought about taking his own life more than once. He was feeling the grind, and he needed hope. He needed magic. He needed Trea Turner to be better.
So, as filmmakers Ben Proudfoot and Kyle Thrash illustrate over The Turnaround’s crisp and effective twenty-five minutes, McCann decided that he and Turner would grind it out together. He called local radio shows and implored his capricious city to show Turner some love on the next homestand. “Not tough love,” he clarifies. “He doesn’t need that now. He needs love love.” Brotherly Love, to use a phrase employed by national sportswriters when they’re not bringing up the Santa Claus thing for the thousandth time. And so when Turner came to the plate with a runner in scoring position on August 4th, Citizens Bank Park rose to its feet and cheered him on. And you know what? Turner lined out. So they tried again. He popped out. So they tried again, and on that third at-bat, he ripped an RBI single into right field for the lead. And even though the Phillies would go on to lose that game, the ballpark was on its feet again the next night when Turner blasted a first-pitch heater to deep left field, starting a hot streak that he and his teammates would ride deep into the Postseason.
And for folks who don’t follow our National Pastime, the Phillies would eventually fold to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2023 NLCS. And you know what else? They folded even harder to the…ugh…New York Mets in the Division Series just last week. What does that mean? It means that The Ovation didn’t fix Trea Turner, and it didn’t fix the Phillies. As far as some fans are concerned, they’re still overpaid bums who break our hearts for fun. They give away at-bats and let inferior teams make them look foolish. They’re lazy. They’re undisciplined. They flat-out suck. All that might sound harsh — especially if you don’t live in a sports town — but that’s how we talk. “Sports is suffering,” McCann says in a recent Instagram post. And it is! Sports don’t fix us. They connect us. Suffering for our teams is how we show sympathy with our community. It’s a shared badge of honor. A source of pride. Sometimes, frankly, it feels like collective psychosis. But if sports is suffering, then The Turnaround at least reminds us what we can achieve because we suffer it together.
