Published 2009-11-04T00:00:00Z”/>
Tony Faccenda
An early 1900s baseball player, a gambling coach, a recently fired ESPN employee and drunken driving have a lot more in common than you may think.
Steve Phillips may be the headline sports scandal of the week, but he’s just another figure in the troubled past of professional sports.
Phillips, a former ESPN analyst and New York Mets general manager and his mistress Brooke Hundley were fired by ESPN shortly after Hundley revealed Phillips’ affair with her to his wife and the media.
What Phillips did was not justifiable and he shouldn’t have cheated on his wife. But the way Hundley made it public seemed desperate.
Not only was Hundley admitting more than what needed to be said to the only innocent one in this scandal, she was rubbing it in the wife’s face.
Hundley sent Phillips’ wife a letter explaining how the two had been “sexting” and how his third and fourth kids were a “Band-Aid” on a more serious problem.
Phillips tried to end the affair but Hundley began threatening him in calls and text messages and even went to his house and told his wife “we both can’t have him,” according to an article in <a href=”http://www.usatoday.com/sports/default.htm”>USA Today.</a>
It may have been more of a last ditch effort to save whatever she had left with Phillips, but it goes to show celebrity affairs can backfire in an instant and can ruin their credibility and image.
I liked Phillips as an analyst and would trust his opinions, but his taste in women could be a lot better.
Most scandals are the result of athletes using poor judgment when they should be focusing on protecting their public image, especially because they are put under a microscope by the media.
Scandals in sports are a reality and no sport is immune to them &- especially not baseball, which has had more than its share of controversial issues.
“Say it ain’t so, Joe,” said a shocked child after the Chicago “Black Sox” baseball scandal in 1919, according to an article on <a href= “http://sports.espn.go.com/espntv/espnNetwork?networkID=18”>ESPN Classic.</a>
The child was referring to all-time great, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson after he and seven other players were banned from MLB for deliberately throwing the 1919 World Series in a gambling scandal.
The significance of the “Black Sox” was it marked one of the first well-known sports scandals but it wouldn’t be the last by any means.
Jackson is one of the best to ever play the game but, because of this scandal, he is left out of the Hall of Fame along with Pete Rose, who was also involved in a gambling scandal.
Jackson may have known about the fix, according to blackbetsy.com &- a site devoted to getting Jackson off the ineligible list. It’s not fair to say he threw the series and it’s especially unfair to ban him from the Hall of Fame.It’s debatable whether Jackson was even part of the fix. He had a batting average of .375 in that World Series.
Besides, inducting him into the Hall of Fame may be the only way to stop the ghost of Jackson from haunting Kevin Costner’s farm.
The all-time hits leader, Pete Rose, was banned from baseball for life after betting on the Cincinnati Reds, while he was the manager of the team.
Betting on baseball while you’re a manager is dumber than my prediction that the Phillies would win the World Series in last week’s column. But can you really leave out the all-time hits leader?
What’s worse is steroid users could possibly be inducted into the Hall of Fame while these two legends will be left out, but I’ll save that for next week’s column.
Scandals aren’t just limited to betting and sex. The more important aspect is, despite their “homegrown” personas, athletes aren’t like everyone else.Aside from being physically gifted, athletes are held to a higher societal standard that brings scrutiny to every move they make and causes people to harshly judge troubling actions.
Anything they do will be tried in the court of public opinion &- and sometimes the court of law.
Just because these athletes make millions of dollars doesn’t mean they’re invincible when it comes to the things like driving drunk.
How can an athlete be dumb enough to get arrested for drunken driving? These people make millions of dollars but can’t find the money to take a taxicab home or even have a hired driver?
I’m a poor college student and still find the money to take a taxi home instead of risking a DUI. What’s worse, a cab ride home or losing your license and getting fined thousands of dollars?
You think it’d be an easy decision, especially with more at stake for a public figure. Maybe athletes could have used that extra education they missed by skipping out on a college degree to go to the pros.
I wouldn’t be on the front page of my newspaper the next morning after getting a DUI, but these athletes will be in the paper and on every major sports Web site.
Athletes and sports celebrities need to wise up and start realizing if they screw up, everyone is going to know about it.
Tony Faccenda can be reached at <a href= “javascript:void(location.href=’mailto:’+String.fromCharCode(116,102,97,99,99,101,110,100,97,64,116,104,101,111,114,105,111,110,46,99,111,109)+’?subject=re%3A%20Scandalous%20behavior%20not%20terribly%20uncommon’)”> [email protected]</a> ? ? ?