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It all started with a swing and a diss.
A baseball coach cheering a little too loudly when his son struck out an opposing coach’s kid during a pee-wee game sent a Long Island dad into a spiral of rage that saw him stalk and threaten his rival’s family for months, authorities said.
Robert Sanfilippo, 45, who coaches the aptly named Long Island Vengeance, allegedly sent scary messages to rival coach John Reardon, including pictures of Reardon’s wife and 10-year-old son, via an untraceable phone, Suffolk County police said.
Reardon says following the strikeout, during a Memorial Day tournament for 10- and 11-year-old boys, Sanfilippo threatened to beat him up.
“We had just won the game. My kid was pitching. His kid was hitting,” Reardon, 47, told The Post. “My kid struck his kid out to win the game. I got excited. I said, ‘Hey, great job.’ I was cheering him on. He got upset with that.”
The two exchanged words in the parking lot, but Reardon thought it was over and done with.
Then in August, Reardon says he got frightening text messages that included a picture of his house with the words, “I know where you live,” and another with an image of Reardon’s son at the bus stop and the caption, “Maybe I’ll pick your son up from school next week. Tell him not to talk to strangers.”
That’s when Reardon went to the police.
Sanfilippo was arrested Friday night at Baseball Heaven, a large, private baseball complex in Yaphank, LI, on 20 counts of aggravated harassment and one count of stalking. He was released yesterday on his own recognizance.
The two dads were once on the same side — their kids played together on the traveling Long Island Infernos. But Reardon claims Sanfilippo fumed when Reardon’s son edged out his boy for playing time.
“He ended up quitting the team,” Reardon said of Sanfilippo. “He started a new team called the Vengeance. Like he was out to get vengeance against me or something. This is kids’ baseball. To me, it’s just crazy.”
Reardon claims the Vengeance has been unable to beat the Infernos, further stoking the flames of discontent.
“I guess he was frustrated,” Reardon said. “When the police told me it was him, I was shocked. Why would this guy go through all this trouble to harass me?”
While being walked yesterday to a Suffolk County court for his arraignment, Sanfilippo snarled at a Post reporter, “I didn’t do anything.”
His lawyer, James O’Rourke, said there’s no evidence in the case — and that Reardon is the one with the bad reputation.
“I suspect this case will not go anywhere. There is nothing linking my client to these actions,” O’Rourke told The Post. “Perhaps the police have failed to understand that there are a number of people who have a quarrel with [Reardon].”
Reardon denied having a problem with others in the youth-baseball community and said he was just excited when his son won the Memorial Day game, nothing more.
“Maybe I was a little over the top. I wasn’t saying anything bad. I was just excited,” Reardon said. “It wasn’t a big deal to me. I guess it was a bigger deal to him.”
Additional reporting by Selim Algar and Victor Alcorn