Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner disobeyed isolation orders from Major League Baseball during the team’s on-field celebration after winning the World Series.
Turner was removed in the eighth inning from Tuesday night’s clinching Game 6 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays when it was revealed that a Monday COVID-19 test that was previously deemed to be inconclusive earlier in the day, officially came back positive while the game was going on.
Once MLB got news of the positive test they notified the Dodgers to remove Turner from the game immediately.
Despite leaving the field of play and exiting the dugout, Turner was later seen on the field celebrating with teammates, and even spotted taking photos with other players without a mask on.
Diamond reported after the game that Turner ‘went into isolation after finding out he had tested positive’ and then said Turner ‘eventually returned to the field on his own accord.’
Diamond reports that MLB officials soon found out that Turner was on the field and instructed Turner to get back into isolation, with Diamond saying that Turner 'refused to leave.’
ESPN's Jeff Passan, when asked on Twitter how in the heck Turner was allowed back onto the field, Passan tweeted 'The answer is he went back out and nobody stopped him. He was asked to isolate and didn’t.
When asked about the viral pictures and videos of Turner with his mask down, Dodgers general manager Andrew Friedman responded to reporters saying 'I haven’t seen the pictures… If there are people around him without masks, that’s not good optics at all.'
Friedman also added,''I don't think there was anyone who was going to stop him from coming out.'
Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal said of Turner after the game:
“Why he went on the field when he is positive – that is an excellent question. My understand from various people is that he was told not to go on the field, or asked not to go on the field. He insisted upon it, the Dodgers insisted upon it, and that it why he was out there. At one point he did have his mask off. He was mostly masked, but there was a point in the picture where he did take it off.”