Reinstated, Not Rehabilitated

It was late, just after midnight on Aug. 10, when the woman took a call from a man who had no idea she was in cahoots with police. He wanted drugs, and she said to come on over, everything's cool. She was at the Ivanhoe Motel, three blocks from Disneyland in a low-rent district. The man who called her, according to Anaheim police captain Marc Hedgpeth, was Tony Phillips of the Anaheim Angels. His team, in a pennant chase, had played a few hours earlier.

Drugs have run hot in that area for quite a while, despite arrests at that very motel, and the street narcotics unit was using an undercover operation to nail dealers. The woman, an informant, was key to this. She was a resident of the hotel, and she had agreed to help identify and set up dealers.

"We had an undercover police officer in the room with her," says Hedgpeth, chief of special operations. "Mr. Phillips showed up and made an order for drugs. Cocaine. Our informant went to another room in the motel and obtained the drugs, rock cocaine, for Mr. Phillips. She brought them back, gave him the drugs, and he immediately prepared to use the drugs. He put a portion into a pipe and was in the process of lighting it when some undercover officers came in and arrested him."

Phillips (right) was charged with possession of cocaine, a felony. (The dealer also was arrested.) Under Major League Baseball's drug policy, first-time offenders can receive confidential treatment through their team's employee-assistance program with no disciplinary action. When Phillips refused a team request that he go on the disabled list and enter an inpatient drug-treatment program, the Angels suspended him with pay, setting off a feud between two of the world's most powerful forces—the unfailingly virtuous Walt Disney Co., which owns the Angels and about two thirds of everything else in the Western Hemisphere, and the Major League Baseball Players Association, which could have gotten Manuel Noriega off with 20 hours of community service.

"We have a higher standard," Angels director of communications Bill Robertson said, in explaining Disney's position, "and we want to do what's best for Tony Phillips and the Angels." When the players' union challenged Phillips's suspension, arguing correctly that it went beyond major league policy, it was interesting to speculate as to which universe might prevail. (It was also strange to see the owners, whose executive council concurred that Disney had overstepped its bounds, line up on the side of the players' association.) But that contest of image, ego and will—which ended on Aug. 20 with arbitrator Richard Bloch upholding the players' grievance and the union mounting the head of Disney CEO Michael Eisner on its trophy wall next to Bud Selig's noggin—seemed a million miles removed from what is said to have happened at the Ivanhoe.

A man of celebrity and privilege, who makes $1.8 million a year playing baseball, allegedly risked his reputation, his career, his team's chances and even his life for a quick, cheap, mind-blowing thrill in a place where trouble costs less than a ticket to Disneyland. The circumstances do not suggest a sudden, aberrational fall from grace; Hedgpeth said this was not the first contact between Phillips, 38, and the informant. Anyone that sad, desperate or addicted, whatever the case may be, probably needs more help than he, his self-congratulatory union or anyone else can admit. For his sake, his family's sake (he has a wife and two children) and, yes. even for the sake of the game, a man in that situation is better off in a drug-treatment program than in a batter's box, which is where he was last Thursday night following his reinstatement.

Phillips is innocent until proven guilty, Hedgpeth agrees. But he adds, "I have a lot more knowledge of this case than most people, and I have to say I support Disney's position." In other words, Phillips ought to get help, regardless of what happens in any meeting of baseball officials or even in a court of law.

Two positive developments may come of the affair. The Angels vow to "work within baseball to develop a stronger drug policy." And Phillips, who has a Sept. 18 court date, said at a press conference that he'll do what it takes to avoid a recurrence of that night's events, because others have come out of similar situations "in body bags." He apologized to his family, the Angels organization and his teammates, and you can only hope he understands that all the apologies in the world, by themselves, won't be enough to save him.