‘The Turnaround’: A short film of Trea Turner’s season and a man’s mental illness
Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports | Breakwater Studios
In December of 2022, Trea Turner signed an 11-year, $300 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.
His freshman season with the club did not get off to a satisfactory opening. Turner was hitting .235 with 10 home runs, 34 RBI, and 21 stolen bases in 107 games, and made a game-losing error on August 3 in Miami in extra-innings. Later that night, he told reporters that he was the reason his team lost the game.
That did not sit right with Jon McCann.
“Trea was playing bad all season,” McCann said. “I’m in a group chat with the Phandemic Krew… and Todd [Orodenker, friend of McCann and Phandeic Krew member] sends a text message that night and it said something along the lines of ‘Boy, I feel bad for Trea Turner mentally. He’s playing like garbage right now and we need to bench him, but dude I feel bad for him.’ And then he wrote a bunch of other negative things about Trea Turner. But when I saw that note about him needing a break mentally… I put my phone on the dashboard of my car, waiting for my buddy to show up, and I made a video and uploaded it to my Instagram.”
In that 37-second video, McCann, better known as The Philly Captain suggested Phillies fans give Turner a standing ovation, rather than booing him as expected. The people saw it and listened.
McCann’s biggest platform is YouTube, where he had roughly 50,000 subscribers before his channel was abruptly shut down. He is currently working with YouTube to reactivate it. McCann videoed himself and his friends at Phillies games, riding on an electric scooter around Kensington, or going through parts of Philadelphia and giving history lessons.
So after the original video was posted, a domino effect began. Barstool shared, the New York Post picked up on it, and it went on and on.
“It’s the best time of my life when I get to watch baseball in October with my boys. If we booed him that weekend, I don’t know, it might have gotten ugly, the Phillies weren’t playing that great. So I put out that message, he gets the standing ovation, and he has a pretty good season.”
He is not wrong. The Phillies were in a really bad stretch, and post-standing ovation, they hit the most home runs in August of any National League team ever and stormed their way into the postseason.
And things have worked out for Turner since. After the ovation, he has a .313 batting average with 186 hits, 31 homers, 90 RBIs, and 113 runs scored in 144 games.
“Not one man can take credit for what happened to Trea Turner,” McCann said. “The credit should go to Trea Turner. I was talking to Greg Luzinski at the ballpark, and he told me he’s not seen anyone else in the batting cages working as hard as Trea Turner.”
But it was the love and care that McCann shared with 42,000 Phillies fans that boosted Turner to surge in red pinstripes, something he was struggling to do.
This act by McCann was transformed into a 25-minute short film titled ‘The Turnaround,’ directed by Kyle Thrash and Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot and produced by Barack and Michelle Obama-led Higher Ground. It premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on September 1 in Telluride, Colorado, where over 200 people filled into a theater and watched the film.
The filming would have begun in late October during the World Series in 2023 if the Phillies had made it, sending McCann to Texas and following along with the team in the Fall Classic, along with super access to Turner. However, the Phillies did not make it there.
“The Phillies don’t go to the World Series so I don’t think the movie’s gonna happen,” McCann said. “But Ben [Proudfoot] is not a sports fan. He loves good stories. So he didn’t need the happy ending of the World Series. He just thought the story was awesome. So the movie was still on.”
They began shooting on Halloween, had a camera crew follow McCann around doing his YouTube videos around the city and at Opening Day, and finished in April.
“The feedback was incredible. I know it was a good movie, but getting the feedback from what I heard, people loved it. I’m so fortunate to have these two directors make this movie. I wasn’t very cooperative with everything with these guys. It’s tough making a documentary. After a few hours I get a little bitchy. It was tough filming this thing. Maybe when I’m dead there’ll be an obituary about me. And I’m so honored and proud that this movie will be in my obituary.”
But it is not just about Turner’s turnaround, it is also about McCann’s mental illness.
“I had a mental breakdown in 2012, and when I wasn’t getting support from many people, my parents showed me love and it pretty much kept me alive because I was suicidal,” McCann said to me in a conversation over Zoom. “If I didn’t have that love from my parents, I don’t think I’d be talking to you right now.”
This helped spark his sympathy towards Turner.
“I’m a little more sympathetic to people who I see having a tough time mentally because man it f***ing sucks having mental issues…
“I didn’t know how important this mental health message was until after the premiere in Colorado and I had people coming up to me talking to me about their mental health,” McCann emotionally said. “It was really really special. I had people I didn’t know come up to me, and we had some real heart-to-heart talk about mental health.”
“Jon’s story is a testament to the ripple effect one person can have on the world around them,” Proudfoot wrote on his Instagram promoting the film. “It’s a Philly story and it’s an American story. We hope you are as inspired by Jon’s grit and enormous heart as we are and join us in giving him the ovation he deserves.”
Strong, powerful words.
“It’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me,” McCann said about Proudfoot’s statement. “To have an academy award winning director, who won the academy award last year for ‘The Last Repair Shop,’ say that about me, it’s the ultimate compliment.”
“It’s a really really good movie. And it has a really good message. The Trea Turner thing is a wonderful story, the mental health message I think is really important… It’s a beautiful message and I’m so happy to be apart of it.”
The short film will be released to the public on Netflix on Friday, October 18. A free viewing in Philadelphia will be held on Saturday, October 19 at 7:00 p.m. at the Philadelphia Film Society.
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Benjamin Goldstein
Benjamin has been covering Philly Sports for Philly Sports Reports since 2017. He is a podcaster, writer, and founder of Philly Sports Reports. Benjamin is also an intern at the WBCB Sports Network on 1490AM. Through Philly Sports Reports, Benjamin has gotten the opportunity to meet Phillies owner John Middleton in his suite and be honored as the Philadelphia sports fan of the week for KYW News Radio. He hopes to be reporting on Philly sports as a full-time job in the future.
Great writing..