After he was cleared of choking allegation, ex-Russell County coach gets new job
Tony Rasmus, the championship-winning baseball coach who was legally exonerated after being accused of choking a player in 2021, has another job.
He confirmed to the Ledger-Enquirer that Lakeside School, a private institution in Eufaula, Alabama, hired him as its head baseball coach. Rasmus coached a Phenix City all-star team to the United States championship at the 1999 League World Series and Russell County High School to the 2005 Class 5A state championship and No. 1 national rankings.
“It’s a great feeling,” he said. “I kind of hold my head down when I walk most places, hoping nobody will recognize me and say, ‘Oh, that’s the guy who choked a kid.’ I didn’t do it. But it don’t matter. They always say perception is reality.”
Rasmus received only one interview out of the approximately 15 coaching jobs he applied for during the year and a half since he was found not guilty of the choking allegation. He was found guilty of harassment and subsequently suspended. Being hired to coach baseball again has turned his frustration into vindication.
“You really can’t describe it,” he said. “… To feel like people believe you spent years trying to coach kids and turn good men out and good dads out and good husbands out, and to think that people would actually believe you would choke a child in the name of a baseball game, it’s mind boggling.
“Have I been hard?,” he continued. “Have I been tough? Sure. Demanding? Yes. A strict disciplinarian? No doubt about it. But choke people? Holy moly. There ain’t no coaching benefit to that Mickey Mouse mess. That’s ridiculous.”
Rasmus said the accusing player’s father told him, “I’m going to ruin you. You’re never going to coach again.”
The alleged incident occurred in the dugout during a game in February 2021. Through five court hearings over two years, Rasmus has been trying to clear his name.
“Everybody didn’t buy into the story,” he said. “All I have is my word. … In today’s world, if you’re accused of something — if a woman accuses you of something or a child accuses you of something — you’re guilty, brother. You don’t have the slightest presumption of innocence. You’ve got to start digging yourself out, and you may never do it.”
Rasmus said he will keep his teaching position next school year as the monitor for the web-based credit recovery program Edgenuity at RCHS. He needs to teach one more year to reach 25 years in the Alabama public school system to receive full retirement benefits. Lakeside School is 30 miles south of RCHS.
Tony Rasmus welcomes challenge at Lakeside
Lakeside’s athletics program was decimated last fall, when seven students who played football, basketball and baseball were expelled after six teens were arrested amid financial fraud charges stemming from stolen credit and debit cards.
Four years after winning a state championship, Lakeside’s baseball team went 2-16 with only 10 players — all but three of them younger than 10th grade — this past season.
Rasmus welcomes the challenge. He compares it to the situation at Russell County, where the baseball program never had a winning record before his first season as the head coach in 2001. He led the Warriors to 590 wins, 17 area championships and a No. 1 national ranking by USA Today, Baseball America and Collegiate Baseball.
“I love teaching the game, and to come in a situation where you have kids like a dry sponge, they want to be good, and they are going to be there to soak up everything that’s coming their way,” he said. “… It’s like Russell County. When I took this job, everybody said, ‘Oh, my God. Why are you going to that dump? They ain’t never won anything. They ain’t gonna win. The kids don’t care.’ I heard that from day one.”
Now, Rasmus intends to prove naysayers wrong again.
“Maybe it’s an opportunity for me to get back in there and help some kids reach their dreams,” he said. “That’s my plan.”
And that’s the plan for Lakeside athletics director Tom Clements.
Why did Lakeside hire Tony Rasmus?
In a phone interview Monday, Clements explained why Lakeside hired Rasmus.
“He’s well-known for baseball, especially around here but all over the country,” Clements said. “We’re interested in getting our program to be an elite program, and we feel like he’ll be the guy to get us started.
“We had an unfortunate situation happen where we lost a pretty good bit of our older athletes, and our junior high kids had to play the varsity schedule this year in all three of the major sports,” he explained. “We’re really low in numbers right now, and we feel like Coach Rasmus will be able to help us get our numbers back up. We’re hoping it’s going to benefit all of our athletic programs.”
Asked why he believes Rasmus is the right person to coach Lakeside’s baseball team despite the controversy surrounding him, Clements said, “First of all, as human beings alone, none of us are perfect. We’re not Jesus Christ. We’re coaches.
“I don’t know where I would be or any of my other coworkers if we weren’t given a second chance at some point with any type of incident. … You don’t have his type of success by being a bad person.”
Clements declined to be specific about Lakeside’s due diligence, but he said the school’s athletics committee “looked into it thoroughly” regarding the choking allegation against Rasmus.
“There’s a key ingredient within Coach Rasmus that’s a winner,” Clements said. “It’s obvious that he’s promoted many players that have gone on to be successful, whether it’s the next step in baseball or even more in the real world.
“We think those things outweigh (his legal trouble), and we feel like he can be a good influence for our kids here in the school. … He seems like he’s really interested in the kids. That’s the main purpose we serve as educators and coaches, and if you have that talent and ability, then you should be working somewhere.”
Rasmus has said he helped 70 players earn college scholarships, with 25 of them in NCAA Division I, and Major League Baseball teams have drafted 19 of his players, including four in the first round.
He played three seasons in the minor leagues during the 1980s. Three of his four sons played professional baseball.
