A veteran Long Island high-school baseball coach yesterday filed a $10 million lawsuit against two parents of his players – claiming they conspired to destroy his career because their sons got cut from the team or were warming the bench.
Bob Dell also filed a $5 million notice of claim to sue the Massapequa School District for “wrongfully” suspending him, said his lawyer Robert Bard.
Dell, a coach for 42 years, said Massapequa HS parents Anthony Fiore and Christine Keuchler engineered his suspension in the wake of the scandal sparked by some team members’ visits to a strip joint in Florida while on spring training.
Dell said the exposure of the topless-bar visit and the resulting punishment of the students was because certain parents were angry over “lack of playing time” for their kids.
A source told The Post that Fiore’s son had been cut from the varsity team – until a school official ordered Dell to keep him on the squad.
The source claimed that Keuchler delivered a letter to the school board president about the strip club escapade – signed “Outraged Parent” – that demanded action be taken against Dell and his assistant coach, who has also been suspended.
The letter, which threatened to alert authorities and the media, also included an obscene photo and a separate “review” of the Cocoa Beach, Fla., club, that claimed some of the women at the club performed sex on patrons.
Dell and Bard said a newspaper account that erroneously quoted Dell’s assistant coach as saying a parent took the boys to the club, created an atmosphere of media frenzy in which authorities suspended Dell.
The lawsuit claims Fiore and Keuchler, who could not be reached for comment, knew that charges against Dell in the letter “were false and untrue or were published with reckless and wanton disregard of whether they were false and untrue.”
School officials declined to comment.