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Outside The Confines: On Justin Turner and Tony La Russa

Lots of bad decisions in baseball this week.

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World Series - Tampa Bay Rays v Los Angeles Dodgers - Game Six Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images

When we posted Outside The Confines on Wednesday, the biggest story of Tuesday night snuck by until the morning, but certainly doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be discussed, and it’s one of the two big stories about bad decisions this week.

On Tuesday night as the Dodgers celebrated their first win in 32 years, the events were tainted by the news that Justin Turner had left the game in the eighth inning due to a late-arriving positive COVID test. While plenty of questions linger about how it took so long for MLB to get the results, or why Turner was allowed to play with an inconclusive test result, everything else paled in comparison to what followed.

As the Dodgers celebrated on the field, Turner defied MLB regulations, security demands, and common sense, and returned to celebrate with his team. While he started out wearing a mask, he posed maskless next to cancer-survivor Dave Roberts, kissed his wife, and appeared in close proximity to reporters, staff, family of other players, and a plethora of people who did not volunteer to be exposed to his illness.

Much of what was written since Wednesday morning has been about that topic, but the biggest news of Thursday evening was the White Sox decision to hire Tony La Russa as their new manager. The 76-year-old Hall of Famer has three World Series victories under his belt, but it has also been a decade since he last managed a team, and plenty has changed in baseball in that time.

Plenty of questionable choices were made this week, so there’s a lot to read.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster. Make it so.