FanHouse StevePhillips

ESPN fired baseball analyst Steve Phillips Sunday after learning of his affair with 22-year-old production assistant Brooke Hundley (who was fired a day later).

Phillips, who had a history of infidelity dating back to his days as the Mets general manager in the late 1990s, has now entered sex addiction rehab treatment facility, according to his agent.

Steve Lefkowitz, who represents Phillips, told the New York Daily News that "This was planned in advance. It has nothing to do with him getting fired. He's trying to save his marriage."

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ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball broadcast will kick off its 20th season on the air in 10 days when it opens the regular season on the night of April 5 in Philadelphia with the world champion Phillies hosting the Atlanta Braves.

Play-by-play announcer Jon Miller and color commentator Joe Morgan have been fixtures in the booth for all 20 seasons, but the big change to the broadcast this season is that for the first time they will have company. Former Mets general manager Steve Phillips will join Miller and Morgan this season.

The crew talked to the media in a conference call Thursday afternoon, and FanHouse was listening in. The highlights are after the jump.

Tonight's Dugout represents a coming-together of every important Chicago-area story of the 2008-2009 offseason. If you click the jump to read more, you will learn why Lou Piniella and Ozzie Guillen have been having trouble on the telephone and why Lou Piniella hates Steve Phillips, and ultimately you will learn what is wrong with the United States of America. (spoiler alert, it is the democrats!)

Please to continue.

Following Kosuke Fukudome's first season in Chicago was a bit of a roller coaster ride. He seemingly endeared himself to Cubs fans forever when he hit a home run on Opening Day and continued tearing pitchers apart through the first two months of the season. Then June came around and Fukudome began struggling mightily as National League pitchers figured him out.

This is when the fans turned on him. Nobody likes having a reserve outfielder with a $48 million contract, so Cubs fans will no doubt be overjoyed when they hear that manager Lou Piniella is holding the center field position and the two-spot in the lineup for Fukudome.

For no particular reason at all, you begin to walk. You walk to the end of the road. When you get there, you keep going to the end of town. You walk and walk and walk. Sometimes people recognize you and wave, sometimes they don't. It's all the same to you.

As you walk and walk and walk, people begin to follow you. The real crowd picks up in D.C., as you pass through on Inauguration Day. You're not sure what to make of these people. They just walk with you. Every once in a while someone tries to talk, but you never respond and eventually they get the hint.

After a while, you get bored of just walking, and stop from time to time. You help a girl get her cat out of a tree in Kansas. You spend a short amount of time fighting crime in a tight-fitting spandex uniform while the papers scream about the "Bat Man." On another pass across the country, you play detective and solve a murder in Nashville. Just for the heck of it, you stop in a random library in what you are almost certain is Nevada and just read a book to a bunch of kids. They're disappointed when it's not about baseball.

One day in Western Pennsylvania, you find some batting cages. You go in and swing. You start lacing pitching machine balls all over the cages. A crowd bigger than any of the ones that follow you on your walks springs up. When you're done swinging, you walk out of the cage and sign autographs. Lots of autographs. You even think about returning to the league.

When you walk past a TV store later that night, you see Baseball Tonight is on. John Kruk and Steve Phillips are talking. You don't understand what they're babbling about at first, but then you realize that it's you. Somehow, word of your batting cage excursion became national news in less than ten hours. You feel a little sad. THIS was why you retired. THIS is why you've felt empty for so long.

And so, with nothing else to do, you just keep on walking.

THE END.

(Not sure how you got here? Start Choose Your Own Adventure: Manny Being Choosey in Free Agency from the beginning.)

The people at ESPN know what they're talking about. I'm pretty sure Peter Gammons knows more about baseball than anybody else in the world knows about anything else in the world. If you put his baseball knowledge end-to-end it would reach Jupiter. But as I get older I become more and more aware of what ESPN is doing with their sports coverage. I hear them regularly condescend on bloggers and then do exactly what bloggers do - report the news, and make sure to unnecessarily editorialize everything you can.

So when I use my "blog" here to equate Baseball Tonight's editorialized, non-news related commentary to chimps hurling dung at each other and then screaming at their food, please understand that I'm only doing it because of my place in life and the hopelessness of my chosen profession. Without ESPN I wouldn't have known about the last 25 years of my nation's home runs.

After the jump, today's Dugout watches Baseball Tonight, makes a sound like "blergh," and then runs to its computer to anonymously put them in their place.

LeBron James knows better than any of us: There is no way the Cleveland Indians can overcome the dynastic onslaught of the New York Yankees. I mean, even if we win all of the games they're still moving on in the playoffs, and everyone in Cleveland will have to go back to watching Drew Carey and dying in the burning river or whatever it is we do here.

I, for one, support our new ant overlords. More after the jump.

It's not just our man Larry Brown who thinks Steve Phillips is way off base when it comes to Barry Bonds breaking the all-time home run record at home -- it's San Fransisco Chron columnist Bruce Jenkins, too, who rails against Phillips in his latest blog post:

Like most everyone with common sense, Phillips believes that Bonds should hit his 755th and 756th homers at home. That's how it should play out, for the sake of Bonds, his adoring San Francisco fans, and posterity. But Phillips takes it a step farther. He says the record has to be broken here, and that if Bonds remains short of the mark when the Giants leave next week for a six-game road trip through Los Angeles and San Diego, he should sit out the entire trip.

I'd like to see Bonds make history at Mays Field, just like the majority, but I also think it would be bitterly appropriate for him to do it in L.A. or San Diego. He has a long history of damage in both stadiums; some of his most impressive moments have occurred there. If the fans are booing -- hey, isn't that the story here, that people question the legitimacy of his record? Many will cheer, because they just can't help themselves. Many will bring cameras, flashbulbs going off like crazy. Many will boo. Some might get a little bit nasty. Isn't that a lot more authentic than performing at home to unadulterated worship?

While I'd argue that Jenkins ought to tread lightly when invoking authenticity in the same breath as any discussion of Barry Bonds, he makes the important designation here. Yes, it'd be great if Bonds broke the record at home, but he doesn't have to do so for the record to be worthwhile, as Phillips insists. After all, it'd be nice to inject some semblance of pragmatism into the surreal saga that is this home run chase.

Earlier in the year, I was asked in a radio interview what I thought about Steve Phillips' proposal that the Giants sit Barry Bonds out for road games so he can break the home run record at home. I thought Phillips' suggestion was idiotic; the owners were growing tired of losing, while GM Brian Sabean's job was in question. To me, there was no way the Giants would choose to sit their best player for several games and increase their chances of losing, risking fan alienation, and people's jobs.

Well, Barry Bonds will have seven games at AT&T Park in San Francisco to hit three home runs and surpass Hank Aaron's all-time home run record. If Barry doesn't, the team will be back on the road for another six games. Which brings me to Phillips, who once again on Baseball Tonight, suggested that the Giants sit Bonds on the road if he doesn't hit three home runs in the next seven games:

This has to happen at home...he better get the three home runs at home, and if he doesn't, I think the Giants have to sit him on the road against both the Dodgers and the Padres. You think about everything that's going on -- this is about history right now. This is bigger than the game. This is bigger than this pennant race so far this year. It ultimately comes back to what are the clips, what are the sound clips, what are the video clips, you want for history's sake to look back on this. If you look at the worst-case scenario, if Barry Bonds has to break this on the road in Los Angeles against their biggest rivals, what will that be? That will be booing, that will be people throwing things on the field, that will be people possibly coming on the field. The worst-case scenario could be very very ugly here. I think ultimately, the fact here is they're playing the Dodgers and Padres, so it's not going to impact the integrity of the schedule for that division race. And I know the knee-jerk reaction for everyone to say you're crazy, you can't do it, but for baseball's sake, this is exactly what has to happened.

He was then challenged by John Kruk who was shocked that Phillips could just discount the Rockies and Diamondbacks from the race, making it less fair from them. Phillips continued:

If you were dying to hear John Kruk and Steve Phillips' indecipherable mutterings on the All-Star Game live and on location this week, you will be sorely disappointed: the Baseball Tonight set has been banned from the All-Star Game by Major League Baseball.

The reason? ESPN went ahead and reported the All-Star rosters before TBS, who had exclusive rights and a show set up specifically for the breathless revelation that Prince Fielder would indeed be the starting first baseman. Now, the Baseball Tonight set will sit idly in the outfield, being utilized by photographers with hair presumably far more voluminous than Krukie's.

Leagues and organizations do this all the time -- one way of dictating news coverage is by carefully negoiating who/what organization receives access to your events. In a way, this is a routine way for Major League Baseball to control its product. But the fact that it involves ESPN -- making clear that the leagues, and not the networks, still maintain the head spot at the power-brokerage table -- sets a precedent here that many ESPN-bashers will love, and the pro leagues will certainly appreciate. Check the nametag, grandma: you're in MLB's world now.