Robbie Alomar Being Sued, Suit Claims He Has AIDS

The New York Daily News is reporting today that Robbie Alomar's ex is suing him, alleging that the future HOF'er knowingly had sex with her while infected with HIV:

"The court papers outline the couple's relationship, starting in 2002. A month after they began dating, Alomar convinced Dall to have unprotected sex and assured her he was disease-free, the suit alleges. In 2004, Dall says she noticed cold sores in his mouth. In 2005, after a physical exam ordered by the Tampa Bay Rays, he was diagnosed with thrombocytopenia purpura, a blood disorder sometimes linked to HIV, she claims. The doctor told him to have an HIV test and he refused, she says, stating he had been tested and was AIDS-free. In April 2005, Alomar told Dall he was suffering from erectile dysfunction and confided "he was raped by two Mexican men after playing a ballgame in New Mexico or a Southwestern state when he was 17," the suit says. It goes on to say that around the same time Alomar developed a persistent cough and was bedridden with extreme fatigue. He developed thrush, a yeast infection, and was told by a doctor to take an HIV test - but refused, Dall claims. "I don't have HIV," he told her repeatedly, the suit charges."

Like many lawsuits against professional athletes, one is tempted to dismiss this as a money grab?.until you see the number of presenting symptoms. Even if it isn't AIDS, and his lawyers are calling the accusations "baseless," Robbie Alomar is a sick man, and it's shame to see him struck down by disease.

And at the same time, I wonder why we don't see more of this.

MLB's ranks are filled with young men in the prime of their lives, with ready cash, and lots of people who want to know them, to be close to them. They've been told since they were 14 that they were destined for greatness. And the few that make it to The Show must feel that all the platitudes were true.

They must feel invincible.

It's a lesson to us all, really. And it is a cautionary tale of the worst sort. In his prime, you couldn't sneak a fastball past Alomar if you wanted to, and you couldn't knock one past him in the field, either. But one tiny virus sneaked through, and he never saw it coming. Alomar, it is alleged, "insisted on having unprotected sex." He refused to be tested. He didn't have AIDS. He was invincible.

Or so he thought.

And what about his partners? If the allegations in the suit are true, and Robbie was running about, shagging whomever he could, despite knowing he had AIDS, where's the moral outrage we witnessed with the A-Rod steroid allegations? A-Rod risked his life; Robbie Alomar risked the life of at least one other person, maybe more. If the allegations are true, what he did was tantamount to a attempted murder. AIDS is a death sentence.

But there seems to be none of this forthcoming.

By the time the A-Rod story broke, there were stories on every blog, MSM sports outlet, and sports radio show. And the outpouring of sanctimonious moralizing seems to be reserved for those that cheat the game. No big deal if a player had unprotected sex while infected with AIDS. It's just a sad story that they don't know how to respond to because the sports media are so fucking disconnected from themselves, and from any normal modes of humanity, that they can't see past the end of their own noses and recognize a real problem when they see it.

Imagine what would have happened today had Alomar been accused of taking steroids. Imagine the hue and cry. But the woman (or women) he put in danger of contracting a fatal disease receive none of the respect the BBWAA and the booyahs reserve for the sacred records of baseball.