Alright, well I'm sure most of you have heard about Steve Phillips and his impending dismissal from ESPN... For those of you that haven't...

Steve Phillips Suspended After Affair With ESPN Employee

Reports out of ESPN headquarters this morning say that (46-year old) "Baseball Tonight" analyst Steve Phillips has been suspended from the network, after an affair with a 22-year-old production assistant turned into a special edition DVD release of Fatal Attraction.

According to the New York Post's rather lengthy deconstruction of events, Phillips had a brief fling with a fellow ESPN employee named Brooke Hundley this summer. He ended it rather quickly, which did not go over very well. She allegedly began harassing Phillips, his wife and even his teenage son-who she friended on Facebook by pretending to be a classmate, and then grilled him for personal information about the family.

The final straw came when Phillips' wife arrived at her home to see a strange woman coming down her driveway and getting into a car (which she promptly smashed into a pole while trying to make a quick getaway.) The woman had left a very creepy letter in the front door, addressed to Phillips wife. The full original letter is available on the Post website [PDF], but here are some of the bullet points laid out by Hundley:

• She and Steve first slept together in a St. Louis hotel room, but he assured her that she wouldn't get pregnant because of his vasectomy.
• How and she Steve love to text back and forth with detailed plans on how they would like to sex each other
• An uncomfortable amount of detail about the activities of her children
• How the Catholic Church will totally understand if the Phillips got a divorce, so that she and Steve can be together
• She's 22 ... but not stupid!
• A graphic description of Steve's birthmarks (on his crotch and inner thigh), just to know she's legit.

In a written statement, Phillips confessed that he had three sexual encounters with Hundley and then broke it off in July. Almost immediately after that, the woman began making phone calls to his wife, leaving voicemails, sending inappropriate texts, and making even more inappropriate Facebook overtures to his son. He says he believes her to "obsessive and delusional" and police have become involved. Nevertheless, Phillips is suspended for at least one week and his wife has filed for divorce.

This is not the first time Phillips has run into this sort of trouble, nor is it the first incident involving the Baseball Tonight team. When he was GM of the Mets in the 1990s, Phillips had to take a leave of absence after an affair with a team employee. See also: Reynolds, Harold. There's a chance we won't see him on any ESPN network before this baseball season ends and then after that, who knows what will become of his tenure at the firm.

Expect a lot more on this before the day is over, obviously

Anyways... Apparently Deadspin had been informed of this about a 6 weeks ago, and was told by ESPN's HR/PR departments they would be wrong to run a story on it because there was no truth behind it... 

 

So now, after the Steve Phillips rumor has been confirmed and he's been suspended by the network, Deadspin has vowed to air out much more dirty laundry and begin turning their vast rumormill on its head... 

However, there are many, many, many other people employed at the WWL who have (allegedly) boned assistants, interns, on-air talent, executives, etc. However, it's a little unclear as to what lines need to be crossed in order for them to be suspended.

And since the tenuous connection between rumor and fact for accuracy's sake has been a little eroded here, well, it's probably about time to just unload the inbox of all the sordid rumors we've received over the years about various ESPN employees. Chances are, at this point, there's some truth to them. We'll just throw 'em out there and see how many "no comments" or, you know, actual comments or "you would be completely wrongs" there are about these situations. Consider this one giant all-day version of "Deleted Scenes" or something.

Coming up first...ESPN "personality" Erik Kuselias.

So, Bristolites, strap in — it's gonna be a long day.

So get ready, folks... Tune into Deadspin and prepare not to work this afternoon. LOL