My mother used to delight in telling me stories of sport as I was growing up. She would often tell me about the 1957 Auburn defense and how it held Tennessee to 84 total yards in a downpour in the season opener en route to a national title.
She made no bones about fellow Central High grad Bobby Hoppe being the toughest football player she had ever seen. And while she loved both her alma maters – Central High and Auburn – nothing enchanted her more than baseball.
She reveled in talking about the “Gas House Gang” and her beloved St. Louis Cardinals and about the time she met Stan Musial and he signed a menu for her. By the time I was a teen, I could finish any of the sports stories she would begin to tell, but I always let her tell them.
To this day, any time I tell a story I have already told a time or two, my wife will roll her eyes and say “OK, Betty Lou” in reference to the worn out tales from my mother’s lips.
Of her favorite folk tales, though, I woke up today with a fond remembrance of one of Betty Lou’s favorite tales.
As a youngster, her daddy, a noted bookie in his day, took her see the fabled Babe Ruth play at Engel Stadium. Back then, the New York Yankees often hopped off trains and played against minor league squads en route to the big city from spring training. On this particular day, the Babe reputedly put on a show in batting practice. According to her account, the Babe rocketed a ball deep over the center field wall before ricocheting off the bridge above the rail yard.
I spent many a summer day at Engel Stadium in my 20-plus years as a sports writer, and I always glanced into the center field abyss and used to shake my head thinking there just wasn’t any way that was humanly possible, bless her heart. But I never challenged her on it.
Tales have a way of growing through years and who was I to steal the joy of such a memory.
When word came to me last night that my childhood buddy David Turner has suffered a massive stroke and passed away, my thoughts immediately went to that Babe Ruth story. You see, David Turner has always been my Babe Ruth story. Heck, David Turner was Babe Ruth as far as I was concerned.
I grew up with a little less than most of my friends and that included a father to teach me how to throw or play a game of catch in the backyard. I had the great fortune, though, to have many caring individuals in my life from Ernie McCarson to Kent Hampton and especially Roy Exum to see me past the cracks.
But among the first to really take an interest in this ol’ rugrat were the Turners.
The Turner family is among the most accomplished in our town and most of you will immediately recognize the eldest brother Wayne Turner, or Coach T, as the architect behind the storied Tyner Ram football program. Coach T’s accomplishments are impressive and I dare say there isn’t a prep football coach in this town that has made a bigger impression on young men’s lives than Coach T.
David was the youngest of the family with Ronald in the middle, both extraordinary athletes in their day. David and I were the same age and attended school together from the first grade all the way through our graduation from Tyner in 1981. David’s mother was an icon in East Lake and she made sure to include me on all the activities at the recreation center. I can still remember her making me participate in a punt, pass and kick contest even though all of us were vying for second place behind David.
David grew into the specimen that befitted his athletic skills and he was everybody’s All-American kid. Once we reached Tyner it was obvious he was something special and the sky was the limit. He was everything I wanted to be, from gifted on the field and the classroom to humble off of it. He was humble to the point of being shy, but on the baseball field he commanded attention even if he didn’t want it.
I’ve had a blessed life and the opportunity to see some of the very best athletes our great city has produced. East Ridge’s Rodney Ballard was a man amongst boys and will forever go down as the best football player I covered, only because Howard’s Reggie White graduated a year before I started reporting. City’s Tommy Freight Train Taylor was up there too as was Central’s Tom Cole, who recently passed away as well after a valiant fight against cancer.
I share in my mother’s penchant for wanting to reminisce and I can talk all day about basketball players such as Baylor’s Jimmy Braddock, City’s Orlando Lightfoot, Kirkman’s Antonio Paris and Jeffrey Strong. Tyner’s Gerald Harris was my favorite and watching him lead MTSU over Michigan is among my highlights.
I am old-school simply because, well … I’m old, but they just don’t make them like those guys anymore.
Baseball has always been my first love and I could rattle you off countless names here as well, but to be honest, I have never seen a better high school baseball hitter than David Turner. He was the Natural before Robert Redford was the Natural. If I close my eyes I can still see that smooth, powerful, sweet left-handed swing as if it were yesterday.
I kid you not when I say it was one of the most beautiful sights to behold when his bat met baseball leather. Greg Dennis, the great Chattanooga State coach of today, was to defense the way David was to offense and the two of them left Chattanooga and carried McLennan Community College in Waco, Texas to its only JUCO national title in 1983. Both were JUCO All-Amerians before they left.
Dennis and I were talking not too long ago and the subject of Turner came up and, oh man, the stories he told about David. He told me about the way teammates used to stop what they were doing to watch him take batting practice much in the way Mark McGwire or Bo Jackson commanded such attention in their prime.
In Dennis’ eyes and in my own, we both saw Paul Bunyon when we watched David hit. Even in Texas, where everything is bigger, Turner stood above the rest.
All of this brings me back to lore and the lasting legend of David Turner. Long before Turner won Most Outstanding Player at the JUCO College World Series and later was a stalwart at the University of Tennessee, there was the homer.
The old Tyner baseball field used to sit down in the corner of the curve of Ty High Drive across from the McDade’s House. There was no fence back then, only a hill in center field that eventually leveled out and ran into the back of the Tyner Auditorium. On this particular day against a very good Polk County baseball team during Turner’s junior year at Tyner, against one of Polk’s own legendary pitching names I won’t embarrass here by naming, David sealed his legend.
Turner lofted one of those deep fly balls you immediately knew was going to chase the centerfielder up the hill. Except it never saw the hill. It was like watching one of those Olympic ski jumpers flying down a hill where you lose perspective because of the terrain.
The ball just kept going. And going. And going. Eventually, if you squinted hard enough, you could see it change direction courtesy of the back wall of the Tyner Auditorium. I’m not sure who actually retrieved the ball, but I know it wasn’t a Polk baseball player. David could have crawled around the bases for this homer.
To this day, it is the longest ball I have ever seen hit in person. After the game was complete, and the equipment put away, Tyner coach Kent Hampton and I began the long trek from home plate towards the centerfield hill. We counted steps as if we were marching off a football penalty. By the time we reached the back of the auditorium we had counted off 430 steps. From there we looked up at the brick building and somewhere around 30-feet up was the distinct mark where the baseball had hit and shot towards Tyner Road.
Honest to goodness, this was a baseball which had travelled somewhere in the neighborhood of 450-feet before changing course 30-feet above us and rolling some 50 yards to the right. I dare say this would have landed close to 500 feet away had it gone uninterrupted.
I tell this story with a keen mind of the tales my mother told, and writing it still doesn’t make sense, but if you talk to Gary Woodburn or Stan Phillips or Duane Trotter, just ask them about it. Go find Coach Hampton. Tales grow as years pass by, but with apologies to mother and Babe Ruth, I dare say this is the most prodigious home run ever hit in this town. And I saw it.
David Turner was bigger than life to me growing up, and now that he is gone, my hope is that his lore will never be forgotten.
David Turner was a friend I will never forget and 35 years later, he is still a legend. Rest in peace.