If you came up with Nap Lajoie, I'm sorry, you are incorrect. Terry Turner played in 1,619 games as an Indian, edging Lajoie by a mere five games. We know a great deal about Nap Lajoie, but what do we know about Terry Turner? I'd be surprised if another franchise's alltime games leader was as anonymous a player.
About all I knew of Turner is what is contained within his playing record and in the fact that Kenny Lofton passed him some time ago to be the Indians leader in stolen bases. His playing record indicates a player who started at shortstop, then as he aged, he moved to a lesser defensive position; in Turner's case it was third base. Turner was a below average hitter, even given that his career as an Indian spanned from 1904 to 1918. He had a positive OPS+ only three times. The rest of his lines are equally mediocre.
So I went to another source I frequent for information, Baseball Library. Aside from the fact that Baseball Library and Baseball Reference disagree by 2 on Turner's Games Played, I did learn another interesting tidbit: Turner pioneered the headfirst slide.
While certainly interesting, it did not tell me a great deal about Turner as a player. I was able to find a magnificently written game recap from an August 15, 1918 New York Times featuring what was perhaps Turner's last great game, going 4-5 with two doubles and a triple. Included in the article was the following passage:
It was quite a day for old-timers, for in the ninth inning Manager Miller Huggins shoved silent John Hummel up to bat as a pinch hitter. It's a long time since John Hummel used to be a long swatter over at old Washington Park with the Superbas. Since that time silent John has tumbled around in the bush leagues and has been almost forgotten. He waltzed up to the plate yesterday and got a nice infield hit for himself. Before the month is over, Manager Huggins may have to look through "Plutarch's Lives" to dig up enough men to finish the season.
They used to call Hummel Silent John because he never talked back to an umpire. He still retains this clam-like virtue, but the fact remains that, while John nevre used to argue with the umpires, a microscopic examination of his mind might have shown a lot of bottled up ideas about umpires which would be surprising. There may be a baseball sensation at the Polo Grounds some of these days if Silent John happens to break his rule and say something.
While certainly exhilarating, the game recap didn't actually tell me a great deal about Turner. By 1918 he was certainly done, his already mediocre offense deteriorating further.
Fortunately, I was able to locate a SABR project which told me a great deal about Turner. It referred to Turner's headfirst slide as "patented" and that he used it when he was young, even before he even joined the Indians. Turner was by all accounts a superb defensive player, earning favorable comparisons to Honus Wagner, the player of Turner's day who was the best at almost everything.
Turner was beaned in 1908, an incident that was recounted when Ray Chapman was killed by a pitched ball in 1920. Amongst other ailments and injuries that kept him out of games was a bout of typhoid fever. His various nicks and bruises meant that he played over 125 games in a season only four times, and never after age thirty.
Before he was an Indian, he played in two games with the Pittsburgh Pirates, moving to Columbus of the American Association. After two years in Columbus, Turner moved north to Cleveland at age 23, where he would remain for fifteen seasons. His career concluded in Pennsylvania again, this time as an Athletic, where he played 38 games for a 36-104 team. After his playing career he moved to Cleveland, where he lived until his death in 1952.
I hope you enjoyed this week's lesson, and hope that Terry Turner is more than just a name in the record book to you now.
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