01x03 - Justin Turner & Sloane Stephens

[bunniefuu]

- Is that a bat?
- Play ball!

[screams]

[music playing]

[all shout]

- MAN: Wow!

- Oh!

I'm Sloane Stephens
and I am a professional tennis player.

- MAN: Singles champion, Sloane Stephens!

- MAN: Turner smashes another!
- [crowd cheering]

- I'm Justin Turner,
and I'm a professional baseball player.

- MAN: A fly ball to center field!
It's way back!

- MAN: It is gone! It is a walk-off
home run for Justin Turner!

- JUSTIN: Hey, guys.
- Hi!

- JUSTIN: How are we doing?
- SLOANE: Nice to meet you...

- Nice to meet you. Justin.
- ...officially.

- JUSTIN: I'm fired up. I'm ready to...

- Wait, where's your beard?

- I was Chucky for Halloween...

- SLOANE: Oh!
- ...so I took it all down.

- Why?
- Um... I wanted to

really get into character.

- Oh!
- JUSTIN: Yeah.

- OK. I'm gonna go look at your Instagram
after this.

- LONNIE: Let's go ahead
and do a little warm up.

Just have a seat right on the ball.

So, we're gonna come right to the mid
section, just roll back just a little bit.

Good. Let's get about 15 of them.

- Ooh! We're squeezing
our glutes right now.

Our core, because we have to,
like, stabilize.

And then obviously the arms.
It's not curls for the girls.

But it's similar...

I'm only 26.

Careers are lasting way longer.
People are playing into their 35 now.

So, if I want to play that long,
I'm gonna have to keep my body strong.

- I got a nice little burn going.

- SLOANE: It's less about the tennis now,

and more about making sure
that I'm staying injury-free and healthy.

That's what's gonna keep my career going.

Wait, Justin.
This might help you with your swing.

- JUSTIN: Yeah.

- But I heard you hit
the sh*t out of the ball anyway so...

- LONNIE: This next workout is just so
you kind of get the idea

of anticipation of the ball.

- JUSTIN: Man!

- Is that out the park, JT?
- JUSTIN: That's good.

- SLOANE: So these help me with my loading
and, like, get my racket back.

Load, swing...

- JUSTIN: Yeah.

I like seeing you completely
unweight your backside.

Because we talk about that in baseball.

- SLOANE: Yeah.
- Like it.

- So, we're working on transferring
our weight with that load forward. Oh!

- How good is, like, your swing?
- I don't know. We're about to find out.

[both laugh]

If I miss this fence right here,
I'm in trouble.

- We are in a lot of trouble
if you miss the fence.

- JUSTIN: All right. Here we go.
- All right.

[both scream, laugh]

[Sloane screams]

- LONNIE: Home run. Home run.
- JUSTIN: Hey, wait a minute.

Wow! I get paid to hit it over the fence.

- SLOANE: Right. Oh, my God. OK.
You went under. So you have to hit--

- Under.
- Yeah, you have to swing through.

- Here we go.
- OK.

- Nice.
- Yeah! That's so much better.

- Yeah, there you go.
- All right. Pretty good.

- SLOANE: This is going to be fun.

- OK, ready?
- LONNIE: Not bad.

- JUSTIN: Don't take it easy on me now.

- Oh, God! Shank!
- OK, watch the ball. Don't forget.

- When I was younger,

I loved, like, getting out there
and just hitting, hitting, hitting.

- Oh, my God, it's so good.
- JUSTIN: What?

- And now, I still love it,
but I've learned to focus in more.

- Oh, almost,

- If I focus really hard
on what I'm doing for an hour...

- Wow!
- SLOANE: Again.

Less is more. Quality over quantity.

I can get so much more done,
and I feel really good about it.

- JUSTIN: Yeah, 100%.
I mean, there's a time and a place

for when you're logging in those...

- Yeah.
- ...long hours of repetition.

- [Justin screams]
- SLOANE: But I thought you did well.

- JUSTIN: Get out ball.
- That was great. [laughs]

- I appreciate the compliments.
I didn't feel like I did well.

- You're actually making contact.
Your forehand is really good.

- JUSTIN: Go!
- Oh, my God! Good shot!

- JUSTIN: Sloane,
let's even it up a little.

- Is that a bat?

- Play ball!
- All right.

I don't even know how to do this.

[screams]

- SLOANE: Oh, my God!
- That was it, right there.

- JUSTIN: All right.

I think I did all right in your world,

but let's go over
to the baseball side of things.

I'm gonna show you
a little bit of my world.

- All right. All right. I'm kinda nervous.

- You'll be great. You'll be great.
- But that was fun.

- JUSTIN: All right, Sloane.
Now you're in my world.

In a batting cage, this is where
we get most of our work done.

This is our strength coach
Brandon McDaniel.

- BRANDON: We're gonna start
with a little hitting in the cage.

He's gonna walk you through
kinda his steps

that he's thinking about at the plate.
- All right. Let's do it.

- You ready? Let's roll.
- Yeah.

- JUSTIN: For us hitting,
we pay attention to everything,

from the ground all the way up.

And that's why we have some cameras here

that are gonna help us
kinda understand that.

- SLOANE: Got it.
- So, I'm gonna take couple flips.

- OK. Hopefully, I'm not gonna get hit.

It tells you how far you go?

- BRANDON: Yep, and how high and how hard.

- JUSTIN: Just like your tennis drills,
going over the Bosu ball.

Same thing in hitting.
I wind up and get my leg kick.

And then as the ball's coming,

I'm gonna try to transfer all my weight
into my front leg.

- [sighs] All right, let's try it.
- You ready?

- Yeah. OK.
- All right.

- SLOANE: OK. Ready?
- JUSTIN: All right, here we go.

Ready? As I wind up you wind up.
- Oh, God.

- OK. Ooh!
- Leg kick and go.

That's all right.
- [Sloane laughs]

- Leg kick and...
- Leg.

- Oh, sh*t, you guys.
- JUSTIN: That's OK.

Try to see the ball hit the bat
and keep your head down.

You don't want to watch where it's going.
OK?

- SLOANE: All right.

Oh! Justin! At least you have to, like,
make me hit it.

- JUSTIN: It's me. I know.
- sh*t.

- Let's do this.
Let's take a couple off the T first.

- Thank you. I mean, I was wondering
when you were ever going to say that.

- JUSTIN: There it is.

In baseball, probably the most
important thing is hand-eye coordination.

And you know practice makes perfect.

- Oh, there we go.
- OK, that's better.

- I've spent so many hours
in a little cage just like this.

You know, working on my swing,
watching videos.

What have we got?

- BRANDON: Looks like we got


- You know, you talked about
what makes tennis players great.

You know, it's the same thing
for baseball players.

Little bit lower, little bit harder,
right in the center.

The discipline, the sacrifice, the ability
to kind of find focus in a moment,

it's all kind of the same.
- Yeah.

- Instead of starting with it down here,
like you do in tennis...

- Yeah.
- ...try starting with it up.

And then go and see if that helps you
be more efficient.

- So, up. Leg...
- Up, and then leg kick.

- Hyah!
- Oh!

- JUSTIN: There we go.
- That was better.

- JUSTIN: You want to
try couple more flips?

- OK, let's try the soft toss.

Bat up, leg up.

All right. Ready. Yeah.
- JUSTIN: Ready?

- Leg.
- JUSTIN: There it is.

- Yes.
- JUSTIN: There we go.

- BRANDON: Fifty-one miles an hour,


- OK!

Before today I had never hit a baseball.
- Never?

- Yes!
- [screams] OK.

So, this is a very new experience for me.
It was super fun.

And it's not everyday you get to work out
with somebody that is such a badass.

[both scream]

- BRANDON: That was over 100.

- JUSTIN: I think it's special because

you've reached the top, the pinnacle
in your sport,

and I know what that took
for me to get there.

[screams]

So, I feel, like, getting to meet you,
hang out with you has been awesome.

- Oh!
- I'm so glad I got to be a part of this.

- BRANDON: 101.5.

- SLOANE: Yeah!
- Yeah!

- SLOANE:
Think I only brought my tennis racket.