The Dodgers won their first championship since 1988 with Justin Turner on the field until the eighth inning of the deciding game, even though he had coronavirus, and then didn’t stop him from coming back out to celebrate with the team, taking his mask down and exposing more people to the virus.
It wasn’t funny then, and given the cavalier attitude that one of the richest teams in sports took toward the pandemic, it’s gruesome to see that following the death of Dodgers scout Jairo Castillo at the age of 31 from COVID-19 complications, there’s a GoFundMe set up to take care of his family.
The goal for the GoFundMe is $10,000, or the equivalent of maybe two pittance salaries the Dodgers no longer have to pay to low-level minor leaguers, thanks to the restructuring of farm systems that baseball has decided to implement starting next year.
Or, perhaps, Dodgers owner Mark Walter could personally shake a few couch cushions and come up with a figure representing 0.0002% of his net worth — or, put differently, an amount proportional to less than one penny out of a major-league minimum salary.
The necessity of any GoFundMe is depressing enough. This one is infuriating. And even if the Dodgers wind up stepping in to do something, it shouldn’t have been a question to begin with. Taking care of people and their families is the right thing to do, and so easy for such a well-heeled organization that it’s impossible to comprehend it not happening immediately.
Castillo, as the Los Angeles Times reported, was an international crosschecker for the Dodgers, based in the Dominican Republic. He played three summers for the Mets’ teams in the Dominican and Venezuelan leagues before getting into scouting, which he did for the Blue Jays and Brewers before the Dodgers.