1894 by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Page 58
games with at least one RBI, tying him with ten other players for eighth overall among all major leaguers.
Although we may never know the full story of Tuck Turner’s obviously short career, there is something we do know today about Tuck Turner that everyone else before didn’t know. That is, when Tuck Turner hit .418 and scored and drove in all those runs in 1894 he was not a 21 year old kid in his second big league season. He was actually 27 years old.
Turner had been practicing one of baseball’s oldest traditions, lying about one’s age. To all in the baseball world, Turner was born in 1873, when in reality he was born in 1867 making him a slightly less impressive 26 year old freshman whose image was featured on the front page of “The Sporting News.” Turner’s West New Brighton teammates probably knew he was considerably older than they were, but this was baseball, and the practice of presenting one’s self as younger was so much a part of the game it was almost expected.
At the Turner family plot in Oceanview, formerly Valhalla, Cemetery in Staten Island where he was laid to rest beside his wife Louise (Kiley) Turner, who predeceased him in 1942 after 52
years of marriage, the family headstone is inscribed, “George