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Feb 8, 2010 7:30 pm US/Central
Former Mets GM Speaks Out About Infidelity
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Former New York Mets General Manage Steve Phillips. (File)
AP
For the first time, Steve Phillips is talking publicly about the sex addiction scandal that cost him his job and more. In a candid interview, the former ESPN Sportscaster said he knew he had a problem two months before he was fired, reports CBS station WCBS-TV in New York City.
"I recognized in August that I had a real problem, that I was a sex addict and I needed to get help." Phillips said he called facilities to set up treatment, but it wasn't until late October, when his affair with 22-year-old ESPN production assistant Brooke Hundley became tabloid fodder that he made the decision to go to the Pine Grove Behavioral Health and Addiction Services Clinic in Mississippi. It's the same clinic where golfer Tiger Woods reportedly went.
Phillips, a married father of four, said Monday morning he wants to take ownership for what he did. "I think it's the compulsion where you can't stop yourself, where you understand the consequences. The first step of the 12 steps is that you're powerless over the addiction and your life gets unmanageable," Phillips said.
For the former Mets general manager, it was a mess with Hundley contacting his family at their Connecticut home. At one point, his wife called police, saying she was being stalked by her husband's mistress. "I have a crazy woman who is involved with my husband and she's come to my house to harm me and my children," Marni Phillips said.
"It wasn't anybody else it was me. I couldn't stop myself from doing the things I was doing, even knowing the consequences. Married, great job, great career, and I risked all of that, risked all of that to act out the way that I did," said Phillips.
Manhattan psychotherapist Timothy Lee said the first year after rehab is critical for a sex addict. "The minimum suggestion is two 12-step meetings per week and group therapy and individual therapy."
Phillips and his wife Marni have four children. He says they're in therapy as a couple and he doesn't know if it can be saved. He also declined to say if he has any words for Brooke Hundley, saying all of that is in the past, and his focus now is moving forward and trying to save his family.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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