Turner credits mom's toughness (and boos) for success

This story was excerpted from Todd Zolecki’s Phillies Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

It was just last Wednesday when Trea Turner smashed a game-tying home run with two outs in the ninth inning in a comeback victory over Arizona.

Afterward, Turner relayed a text from his mom, Donna.

“Good game, except for your fourth at-bat,” it read. “I was booing you.”

Fans and mom booed Turner following an ugly seventh-inning strikeout, but Turner said the boos did not bother him because his mom “prepared me for anything in this game or in this world. She was tough on me from an early age, and not much fazes me.”

It got us wondering … was it just a throwaway line, like, “Hey, my mom was tough on me?” Or did mom really push him?

“She grew up in a competitive family,” Turner said Saturday in Atlanta. “She’s super competitive. That’s kind of where I get the competitiveness from. My dad [Mark] is super chill and calm. Nobody can read him. So I feel like I got a little bit of both of them. I try not to get too high or low, but then I’m always competing. I don’t really let much bother me because she’s always made comments throughout my life, more like psychological warfare.”

Turner smiled.

“But it was my mom and my grandpa,” Turner said. “They kind of like demanded perfection or wanted to be perfect, so I got that from them.”

Turner’s grandfather, Dick Morick, died before the 2020 season. He proudly wore a Nationals cap that had “Trea’s Grandpa” stitched on the back. Turner said his grandfather was born without a knee and a tibia, so his foot was connected to his femur. Morick had a wooden leg his entire life, but he still played three sports in high school.

“He taught me how to golf,” Turner said. “He did a lot. My grandpa, with one leg, would always say he was my running coach.”

Funny, because Turner’s mom says in her Twitter bio that “He gets his speed from me.”

“He” being Trea, of course.

“My mom’s side of the family is really athletic, and that’s their claim,” Turner said. “I probably did get it from them. My dad said he was fast as well, though.”

Dad loved baseball growing up. He loved baseball so much that he wanted to name Trea “Brett” after George Brett.

“He was a big Royals fan,” Turner said.

Mom, meanwhile, pushed her son into becoming an excellent baseball player.

“It was always like, 3-for-4, 'Good game, except for that strikeout,’” Turner said. “It was always stuff like that. But that’s why I think I’m where I’m at. It’s because of that. If I didn’t have that, I don’t know what I would be like. I’m definitely thankful for it.”