The Cardinals catcher, who tested positive for coronavirus in early August, posted a group photo alongside others late Sunday with the caption “f— covid” and a shrugging man emoji. Later, Molina would edit the caption to remove the “f— covid,” before removing the photo in its entirety from his Instagram feed.
On Monday, Molina reposted the IG photo with a new caption, explaining the whole ordeal in its entirety:
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Molina’s new and updated caption in its entirety:
A post shared by @ yadier_marciano_molina on Aug 24, 2020 at 11:00am PDT
And the original posts can be seen here:
The Cardinals, who incurred one of the longest shutdowns of the MLB season after an outbreak ravaged their roster, returned to play Aug. 15 after having 19 of their games postponed after July 29.
Molina was one of seven Cardinals players who tested positive in the initial outbreak on Aug. 3, along with Paul DeJong and other players and staffers.
While there’s no threat for Molina to pass along the coronavirus to others now that he’s clear of the illness, there’s no guarantee that Molina won’t catch the virus from others a second time, hence potentially spreading it to teammates or staffers along the way.
In fairness, there’s also no telling when this photo was initially taken, though his Instagram story shows him wearing the same outfit (and weird Broncos bucket hat) as he did in the post. Molina’s clarification shows that it was likely recent.
In any case, there was cause to question why Molina posted this — maskless, indoor group gathering — just a few weeks after the Cardinals’ season was put into limbo because of the coronavirus. Molina’s explanation certainly clears some things up, but he should probably be a bit more clear with his intentions from the jump in the future.
