Love in the Locker Room?

Aug. 5, 2005 — -- Last season, pitcher Derek Lowe was shattering an 86-year-old curse when he helped the Boston Red Sox win the World Series, but now it's his marriage that's shattered by a locker-room scandal.

Lowe is leaving is wife of seven years and their three children amid reports he's involved with a Fox Sports reporter he met on the job.

While Lowe and reporter Carolyn Hughes are keeping quiet about their suspected relationship, their scorned spouses are pulling no punches.

"I just fear that he's making a horrible, rash, hasty mistake," Trinka Lowe told Los Angeles radio talk show host Tom Leykis.

Trinka Lowe said she was stunned when her husband, who currently pitches for the Los Angeles Dodgers, announced he was unhappy in the marriage.

"I love my husand and a lot of people may say, 'Well, you're just a fool. How could you stay with him after what he's done to you,'" she said. "That's easy to say until you're actually in the situation facing someone divorcing you and raising your children by yourself and losing the love of your life."

Hughes' husband, a restaurant manager, told "GMA" in his first television interview, he suspected his wife of having an affair and filed for divorce before he learned Lowe's identity.

"There were certain nights that I would go home and I would lay in bed and I would say to myself, 'Did I do the right thing by leaving?'" Hughes said. "What if it was just me being deranged -- a deranged husband under suspicion because she's in locker rooms and she's around these multimillion-dollar athletes?"

"When she confirmed that there was something definitely going on, and she knew it's been going on for a while, it was kind of justification. It was validated."

Carolyn Hughes was taken off the air while Fox Sports executives investigate her relationship with Lowe.

Some female sports journalists fear this incident might hurt the reputation of women covering sports, but they emphasize that a player-reporter affair is practically unheard of.

"I know hundreds of hard-working professional women in sports media who've never dated a player or coach and they never will," said USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan.

That is little comfort to Trinka Lowe.

"I hate that my family is being torn apart," she said. "I just wish that he would see what he's doing, realize what she's doing and snap out of it."