Busted: The Steve Phillips Story

Sometimes we have guest posts. And sometimes we have awesome, laugh-out-loud funny guest posts. This is the latter. Bryan "The Dog" was with Jay and I on our sports talk radio show for WBRS, "Double Overtime". During my sophomore year, Bryan was the Freshman that did the overnight shift which followed Double OT. One day he showed up and was talking sports with us. The next year he became part of the sports department. He was the contrarian view. Bryan is a Red Sox/Mets fan (though not old enough to remember 1986, thankfully for his fragile mind). He's a Kings fan. He has a soul patch (or did...I haven't seen him in a while). He was easy to make fun of. And he laughed it off. It is that good sense of humor/knowledge of good insults that led him to give us this guest blog post/highly plausible conspiracy theory. Warning: while it may make you laugh, it does reference Steve Phillips' penis, John Kruk's testicle, and a fake mustache. One needs to be forewarned of such things. Without further ado, here's the guest post by Bryan "The Dog" (image courtesy of The Big Lead):

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A tale of seduction, deception, scandal, and “Really? Her?”

Well, at least we get some more insight into how the Mets traded away Jason Bay and acquired Mo Vaughn. Steve Phillips will never be remembered for his good judgment, and recent events don’t speak to the contrary. Phillips, ESPN Analyst and former New York Mets General Manager, was recently suspended by the network (even though he discovered David Wright) for the scandal associated with an extramarital affair with a twenty-two year old production assistant. However, there is more to this story than a mere quickie with an ESPN staffer. Now, perhaps Phillips merely wanted a woman whom he could pass off as his son if he got caught, or Bill Belichick and him have a bet going to see how can sleep with the most women working in the sports, assuming Phillips thought that if he traded quality, he could boost his quantity quickly. Harold Reynolds sure as hell isn’t hugging her.

Nonetheless, these are idle quips; I have no interest in angering this young lady if she may stumble upon this post (you won’t see me signing my full name to this post…). Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and I believe that goes doubly so when the woman scorned is reportedly batshit crazy. Be it the Facebook friending of Phillips the younger to grill him for family information, or the car accident inducing letter drop off (she drove into a pole during her getaway), Steve Phillips has engulfed himself in a story for the ages, one that plays like a Hitchcock film. The woman, Brooke Hundley, in a letter dropped off for Phillips’s wife, displayed uncomfortable amount of detail regarding their children’s daily activities, told the Mrs. that the Catholic Church will understand if she gets a divorce so her and Steve can be together, and graphically described birthmarks on Phillips’s crotch (much to all of our chagrin) to prove her story. Additionally, Hundley called and left voicemails and sent texts to members of the family, finally prompting police involvement, Mrs. Phillips filing for divorce, and ESPN, ultra-sensitive to these issues, having no choice but to suspend Steve Phillips.

Yet in every great film noir, the love affair is only half of the story. The other part of the tale deals with the evil mustachioed man behind the scenes, pulling the strings in order to effectuate his wicked plan. Enter that mustachioed rogue (even if it was a fake mustache). In this story, our villainous scoundrel may be none other than the once-disguised Bobby Valentine, former New York Mets and Chiba Lotte Marines manager. Phillips and Valentine’s tenuous, if not volatile, relationship in the New York Mets organization ended unceremoniously after the 2002 season when Phillips fired Valentine after leading the team to a 75-86 5th place finish in the NL East. There was clearly no love lost between the two. Nonetheless, ESPN signed Valentine to do playoff baseball on Baseball Tonight when the Marines made it clear that they would not be bringing Valentine back for the 2010 season. Valentine, a former ESPN analyst, would be returning to the United States, and could work for ESPN before committing to managing a MLB team. And ESPN loves Bobby Valentine. However, this raised a certain dilemma for ESPN, who would have the two archrivals both signed on to work together on the same show, potentially cutting out the regulars of Peter Gammons, Tim Kurkjian, Buster Olney, Orestes Estrada, Eric Young, and Dave Winfield from the show even more often (sadly, John Kruk isn’t going anywhere), and making the room more awkward than when Kruk brings up his one testicle.

Enter ESPN’s escape clause. By using the affair as an excuse to suspend Phillips, for a situation where he is actually the victim, ESPN is able to slot Valentine in until the end of the playoffs, when he will undoubtedly be picked up by a major league team. At that point, they can reinstate Phillips, avoiding the mess they’ve gotten themselves into while not losing an analyst for good, as happened when they felt they needed to fire a skilled analyst in Harold Reynolds. The MLB network isn’t complaining. So like a true evil genius, Bobby Valentine has benefited from Phillips’s mistake, and in turn gotten his revenge on the man who fired him so many years ago. Not by some outright plan, but by subtly slotting himself into the job that Phillips loved oh-so-much and taking advantage of his enemy when he’s down. Beware the mustachioed gentleman.