steve phillips

Steve Phillips’ Today Show Appearance: “I’m working my tail off to save my marriage”
Steve Phillips went on the Today Show to talk about his 45-day stint in sex rehab. Phillips, a television pro, dominated the interview and wouldn’t let Matt Lauer pin him down on any dirty sex rehab specifics. It was a masterful job by Phillips. Among the highlights:

* Phillips has been “allowed back home” by his wife (this according to Lauer; Phillips would only say he’s “working his tail off to save his marriage” and that they went to therapy together and he doesn’t know “what the ultimate result will be.”

* Phillips admitted he “had a real problem” and claims he was “calling facilities in August” well before the story broke. There’s no way for anyone to prove that short of pulling phone records – a nice move by Philips. “I was going to get help, I knew I needed it.”

* To his credit, Phillips didn’t duck anything: “I want to take ownership – I made some mistakes. I’m fully responsible for everything I did.” [Roger Clemens should have used this line a long, long time ago.]

* Phillips has not spoken to Brooke Hundley (who, in a video that looks as if it were culled from Facebook, appears to have lost considerable weight. She says to whomever is filming – a friend? TMZ? – “I was 22. I made some mistakes. If I could take them back, I would, OK?”)

* Lauer dropped a bit of a surprise when he said that Phillips had previously been to a sex clinic, but Phillips quickly corrected him and said he “got some local therapy” but didn’t get into a program back in 1998 when he was GM of the New York Mets.
Steve Phillips was on the Today show this morning, opening his heart about his treatment for sex addiction. No word on if he was angry about being totally overshadowed by Tiger Woods in that department, but there was a lot of remorse and apologies to his family and things of that nature.

Which is good, because for as much as I've ripped Phillips in the past, I feel bad for the guy. Not for what he did to himself -- he dug his own grave with the job and the publicity and all of that -- but for the fact that there's a really good chance he's going to lose his family over this and that even if he doesn't, their relationship will forever be altered. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, and just because his wounds are self-inflicted doesn't mean they aren't wounds.

On a lighter note, the article says that Phillips' program was an AA-style 12-stepper. Anyone who knows about those knows that a key part is making amends. And the amends don't just have to be things the recovering party did while specifically subject to the addiction in question. Which means that, sooner or later Mets fans, expect Phillips to call you up and apologize to you for the Mo Vaughn, Roberto Alomar, Pedro Astacio, Mike Bordick, Bobby Bonilla, Rickey Henderson, Kenny Rogers, and Jeromy Burnitz deals.