Signing with his hometown team nearly nine years ago changed Justin Turner’s life.
He and his wife, Kourtney, have been changing other lives ever since. Turner’s work in the community through his Justin Turner Foundation as well as the Los Angeles-based Dream Center has been recognized with MLB’s Roberto Clemente Award for 2022.
Turner will be presented the award – given annually since 1971 to a major-league player who represents the game “through extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy, and positive contributions, both on and off the field” – in a ceremony before Game 3 of the World Series on Monday night at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.
“Honestly, I think with the way the season ended and how everything went, this award actually was probably as far away from being on our mind as it could get,” Turner said, referring to the Dodgers’ early exit from the playoffs. “When we got the phone call informing us, it was quite the surprise and obviously very exciting news for us.
“My wife and I are very, very proud of it.”
The Dodgers’ nominee for the Clemente Award in five of the past six seasons, Turner becomes the third Dodgers player to win the honor, joining Clayton Kershaw (2012) and Steve Garvey (1981).
“It’s crazy looking back and seeing how everything on all fronts kind of took off for me once I became a Dodger,” said Turner, a Lakewood native and College World Series champion at Cal State Fullerton. “Obviously, I grew into an everyday role. I rehauled my swing and started performing better and slugging better. Off the field, I got married to my wife, started a foundation and really have grown that to bigger than we ever thought it would be honestly.
“Just all around, everything kind of in my life I feel like it has really taken off since the day I put the Dodger uniform on. So obviously it’s very special to me, growing up in Southern California and getting to wear that jersey and getting to be a part of an organization that has so much history and has so many people who have impacted the game in so many different ways. I’m just trying to do my little part.”
It has been much more than a little.
Turner started his charitable foundation in 2016 with a mission to help support homeless veterans and families battling life-altering illnesses. He continues to work closely with the Dream Center’s community outreach programs to help the hungry and homeless in the Los Angeles area. Turner’s work with the Dream Center has been so impactful its food bank has been renamed The Justin and Kourtney Turner Food Bank.
In 2022 alone, Turner’s charity golf tournament raised more than $650,000 for The Dream Center and Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.
“I’d always done stuff, whether it was in the minor leagues with the Reds, even back at Cal State Fullerton, getting out doing things with the Mets, getting into hospitals, visiting kids,” Turner said, mentioning former Mets teammates David Wright and Ike Davis and Dodgers teammates like Kershaw and Adrian Gonzalez as influences. “It never felt like a chore. It always felt like an opportunity to go out and meet people and try to help lift people up.
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“When it really kind of took off for us was in 2016 when the Dream Center came to us and said they wanted to open this Veterans Program and they needed help raising money and they wanted us to put on a golf tournament and call it the Justin Turner Golf Classic. That’s really how the golf tournament started. … It was a huge success. We raised a bunch of money and got to open the men’s program at the Dream Center and that kind of set a light bulb off like ‘Wow, this is amazing that our platform is capable of raising funds to support a cause that’s important to the city of L.A.’
“From that moment, we were like ‘We want to start a foundation. We want to be able to do more events like this. We want to be able to raise more money and impact more people on a larger scale than just when the Dodgers asked us to go do events.’ We wanted to be able to set them up and go do the stuff on our own. So we didn’t have to sit around and wait for someone to invite us to do these things.”
Ironically, Turner is now in the position of sitting around and waiting for the Dodgers to make a decision about his future.
The 37-year-old third baseman/DH’s contract expired at the end of the 2022 season, his ninth with the Dodgers. The Dodgers hold a club option for the 2023 season (at a $16 million salary) and have until five days after the conclusion of the World Series to decide whether they will exercise it.
“I’m as aware of my contract status as you guys are,” Turner said, describing it as being “just in limbo, waiting to hear what’s going to happen.”
“I haven’t heard anything. I haven’t had any conversations. So I guess I’m kind of in idle and wait-and-see mode.”