Almost 85% of all people will have acne at some point in their life, whether it’s on their face, back, or like L.A Dodgers’ third baseman Justin Turner, on their thigh. According to a recent CBS Detroit report, Turner was brought to the emergency room last Tuesday after a pimple on his leg became infected. Turner had reported feeling a problem the previous Sunday, but the antibiotics didn’t heal the blemish, and by Tuesday it already looked much worse.
“Over the off day, something went wrong,” said Dodgers manager Don Mattingly. “When he came in today, he was a lot worse. I saw him when I got here. It was something that kind of blew up, and it wasn’t very pretty, so they sent him to the emergency room. We should know more by the end of the night….He thought it was a bug bite.”
More likely than not, this infection was probably caused by an ingrown hair, or trapped dirt and oil, and worsened by the friction of motion and fabric. Because playing sports creates additional sweat, it’s common for athletes to experience acne in otherwise peculiar locations. The most popular kind of sports-related acne is friction acne, which can occur when tight athletic wear traps sweat on the skin.
Turner has a career high of 13 home runs, and currently holds the leading Dodgers batting average (.323). Mattingly has commented that he does not know how long Turner is going to be out, but Albert Callaspo covered third base, batting seventh in the Dodgers’ opener against the Athletics. Turner has gone on record about his recovery program, which has required him to avoid exposure to sweat.
“It was a pretty crazy program,” he said. “I would literally go in the cage and take five swings off the tee and go back in the weight room and sit down for three minutes and cool down. It turned a workout that would normally take an hour, an hour and a half, to 3 1/2 hours because it required so much rest in between to make sure I wasn’t sweating.”