Is Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Trea Turner's slide the prettiest play in baseball?
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL play in Major League Baseball exists because its practitioner embraced a long-held axiom: Form follows function. Once upon a time, Trea Turner was a habitual head-first slider, his fingers and wrists and shoulders exposed to all the obstacles that exist when a man launches himself toward stationary objects. As he continued to play — and to watch teammates and opponents alike get hurt — he couldn't abide the risk. There had to be a better way, a safer way.
