The 2021 baseball season took an ugly turn.
A first-place team is in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
And a Major League Baseball legend just got sued in this ugly sex scandal.
Omar Vizquel won 11 Gold Gloves and made three All-Star teams.
Vizquel teamed with Roberto Alomar to form one of the all-time great double-play combinations with the Cleveland Indians.
But now Vizquel is facing allegations of sexual harassment from the bat boy for the Chicago White Sox Double-A affiliate, the Birmingham Barons, who filed a lawsuit against the former baseball legend.
The Athletic reports:
A former batboy for the Birmingham Barons, the Chicago White Sox Double-A affiliate, is suing Omar Vizquel for sexual harassment. The former batboy, who has autism, alleges that he was “targeted for sexual harassment because of his disability.”
The complaint states that in 2019, Vizquel, then the manager of the Barons, “repeatedly exposed his erect penis to [him] and forced [him] to wash his back in the shower.”
The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Alabama, also names the White Sox and the Barons as defendants. According to the complaint, the worker said that his supervisors and Vizquel’s former coaches “laughed at the sexual harassment, further compounding the trauma and humiliation” he experienced. The lawsuit, which alleges violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, states that he was “constructively discharged” from employment following the harassment.
Baseball fans know the Birmingham Barons name because that’s the team Michael Jordan played for in 1994 during his retirement from the NBA.
But now the team is facing an ugly scandal involving its manager.
Sports with Balls will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
