The Long Goodbye: Tony Reali and the End of “Around The Horn”

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out.

I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

How do you say goodbye to something that is your heart outside of your body?

I'm

about to be showing people that in real time.

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I've never encountered this, but your armrest hit this and turned your mic off.

You are not the first person to say we've never encountered this before with something that I do.

Yet, if there's anybody whose voice

could overcome the lack of active microphone technology, it would be you.

Oh my gosh.

So wait, hold on.

Set this scene for me because you just finished.

So we just finished and we've got Kadon, who I haven't seen in five years.

We got Jamel on, who I haven't seen in three years.

And I want them to be able to have the experience that they want on this show.

I want them to, I want to play Remember When.

I want them to feel the love.

Because a big part of what the last couple of months have been for me is being able to say goodbye.

You don't always get the chance to say goodbye.

Life will not give everybody the chance to say goodbye.

That's a very sad part of people's lives.

Certainly not on air.

That too.

So a big thing I'm feeling right now is tell the people in your life what they mean to you, right?

And apply this to everybody across the world.

Do this at home.

These are homework assignments I'm passing out in the middle of our little sports banter show, right?

So we had all this stuff going on and I've, you know,

put in the work to make the show work for Kate and Jamel today.

And then they show me this video of the guy outside hanging up, you know, doing the sign thing and good morning, America, today show type thing.

It's got my name written all over it and hearts and all these things.

Thank you, Tony, around the horn.

That's my cousin.

No.

Dad.

This literally happened today.

I just left him.

This, his name is Eric Ingram.

And I said to him,

could you get a few more fantasy touchdowns for everybody?

But I don't know.

That landed.

And this was a day.

Again, Kay Fagan and Jamel Hill are in the show.

All my attention is making,

get to a place where they kind of.

Yeah, you're bringing back some of the old cast.

Yeah, and they have to be in a position to win.

And by the way, again, a scripted thing that is so well planned and sweetly thought out.

And then what do you see?

I see a guy holding that sign out there that they just dropped on me.

I had no idea.

And I said, And the sign says, Yeah, what does it say?

Thank you, Tony.

I love you.

Around the horn, A-T-H.

So

on white poster board.

On white poster board.

And the O is a target for our logo, which is well thought out.

He's holding this like John Cusack.

He is.

You're right.

So it's a say anything type feeling to it.

My say anything, I said something.

I said,

can you give me five minutes?

I'll run down there and get it.

And this is

one minute before we were ostensibly about to go on air for a live to tape show.

I mean, we're not on any time.

Now, I was not,

I mean, maybe I pitched it in a way that I was asking for permission.

I wasn't asking for permission.

I was going to leave no matter what.

And I was going to go hug this guy.

And I was going to go invite him back to the show.

Tony, I'm releasing you, but make it five.

No more than five, okay?

All right, all right.

This is a great moment.

All right.

I'm coming down, and I'm hugging that guy.

Oh, look at this guy.

Oh!

That is the coolest thing that's happened in

my three years doing the show.

That is amazing.

Yeah, that was really cool.

And it's his 40th birthday, and he's from Birmingham, Alabama.

Oh, my God.

Florida before that.

This is the most special day.

He already knew Jamel and Kate were on, so he's already prepared for this, Jamal Hill.

We got some great pictures.

I set him up with some good slice afterwards.

And I think he had a good day.

I think he had a good birthday.

And if we can have a good birthday, or we can have a good day, that's a good start.

We thought you were a paid actor.

We are thankful for that.

We thought you were my cousin for the first few minutes.

So we do have a couple of drifters staying in the studio at the moment.

And also people who are genuinely, in the case of the man who just texted me, Woody Page, someone

whose psychology requires the padded walls that you have provided for 20 years.

Absolutely.

I've been up there and watched them, and there's a lot more intercourse during the game between the coaches and the fans.

There's been more what?

There's been more discourse.

Yes, more discourse between.

Well, I recognize what that is, too, because Woody is now viewing the last two weeks of Around the Horn, I think, in an existential life sort of way.

And I need to be there for somebody who I care about in that way.

And so I just need to jump in here to properly explain what exactly is happening right now for all the people who are not already familiar with a television show called Around the Horn, which is, I'm not naive, is likely the reason a lot of you first discovered me.

Because I've been a part of this show and its family of panelists since October 2012.

But the show itself has been airing at 5 p.m.

Eastern on ESPN every single weekday since November 2002.

Meaning, I was watching this show for a decade before I ever spoke a single word to Tony Reali, aka stat boy from Pardon the Interruption, who had taken over as host from Max Kellerman in 2004.

And now Around the Horn is ending.

This Friday, May 23rd, 2025.

And so, what I just need you to know here, in case you didn't know any of this, is that very, very few television shows last for 23 years.

And exactly one of them, actually,

has asked its host to personally score the arguments that his panelists have on screen, handing out points and congratulating a winner and literally muting four often Hall of Fame journalists who are beaming in from newsrooms all across America.

I'm looking at the Around the the Horn Wikipedia page where the panelist statistics are updated by somebody every day.

By the day, I don't think it's the same guy with the sign, but also can't rule it out.

An investigation is ongoing.

More on that later.

But maybe the most surreal part of Around the Horn's history, even more surreal than Woody Page's league leading 687 wins, is what happened on March 4th when ESPN announced publicly that the show was going to get canceled.

And it wasn't getting canceled for any explicit reason in particular, by the way.

Our bosses in Bristol, Connecticut, simply wanted to do something different with that time slot.

They wanted to evolve it.

And while this was breaking news that day in March to millions of sports fans, it wasn't to the people behind the scenes.

So I've known.

We were going to be saying goodbye for now eight months or so.

And maybe the first report I didn't know was coming.

So then I'm on vacation.

And then I read it.

And then, you know,

that's a fun vacation.

And you know, and it was terrible because Courtney or Frank were hosting the show, Cronin and Isola.

And, you know, that's the job of the host to be the one out there to say, I know there's stuff coming out about our show.

We don't know anything, but we're happy to be here today.

That's the job.

That's my weight that I should carry.

So I felt bad about that.

But to be clear, this wasn't just Tony's weight to carry as much as he felt that way.

All of this also fell on our coordinating producer, Aaron Solomon, and producers Josh Bard, and Jeff Weiner, and Caroline Willett, and Tierney Corrigan.

Not to mention our directors, John Dercy and Miriam Leger,

most of whom, incidentally, have been working quietly on around the horn out of Washington, alongside pardon the interruption at Ride Home Projects for two decades now.

Only to realize now that this clock was ticking and ticking and ticking

down to one final goodbye.

But even with that, I operated for months thinking, well, we'll do good shows.

We're still on in 120 countries.

We're going to perform and we'll change their mind.

I'm a, we'll change their mind type of guy.

The pace has not abated.

It's been, I think, undeniable how you've hosted.

I mean, I'll tell you this.

The day I got the meeting, the meeting now, and I'm being told to my face that, you know, the show is going away.

It was an hour before I went on air.

And then...

You think you could see it in that one?

You could see it.

No, absolutely not.

And that's my point.

And the next day was Career Day at Enzo's school.

What does Enzo want to be?

A sportscaster, not just a sportscaster, the host of Around the Horn.

Okay.

And then that night, I'm hosting an event for the network.

Big event, conference, people paid money tickets whatever super well and i'm hosting the yeah

and this is the timing of it all and this is life this is what i mean to show everybody this is life and you got to still do the job you got to perform so i think then i found out and i still don't think the press release came out so then you go back to another day when a press so now i've known for months and now you know we're still doing the show we were doing good things and there were a number of times when we went viral for certain things and the show was rated there were days where our ratings ratings were better than every show, but PTI.

Yes.

You know, and as has been the case, as has been the case often.

But so it was nothing new, but I just made him.

Somebody's going to change their mind here.

It's, you know, right?

I mean, that would only stand to reason.

We're doing good stuff.

And then, you know, the press release comes out.

And now, you know,

it's really out there.

But this is where it got me.

Just inundated with just love and nostalgia and 6 million views on an ESPN PR release.

You know, Timothy Chalamet is doing something amazing on College Game Day and it's getting a great number, six figures, whatever.

And we're at 6 million because the show, which had already been out there, rumored, but it is now official.

And that made me think, this is a long way to tell you that there is gas in the tank.

There is a place, even for old videos and old shows, people asked me about.

Wherever I go next, and this is still TBD, dad's got to find find the job.

But the larger thing that you're describing is one of the

most profoundly impactful and truly weirdest families

that has been assembled with you as the

again, when you're here, your family.

Like, this has been only with real Italian food.

Of course, just the highest standard Italian food that I know that you definitely co-sign when I make the reference.

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But just the idea of

me being somewhere on a list in which there is some element of.

Yeah, you and I grew up with this too, right?

I talked about how we just feel for the elders in our life, but I interviewed Bob Bryan when I was at Fordham, 20 years of age, on a radio call-in show that had no business being broadcast past the five meters of the studio,

but it was a 50,000-watt station in New York.

And Bob

was magnanimous with his time and came out and did an interview with a kid.

And I got to work with him thousands of times after that.

And pay it forward, I did that for Clinton Yates.

I was on his radio show when he was at Miami of Ohio.

And then I got to work with him thousands of times on television.

You have been elbow to elbow in probably locker rooms and clubhouses or press boxes with.

some of the people then you got to, you know, you shared bylines, not maybe the same story, but in Sports Illustrated with Jackie McMullen.

And then there you are, you're on the show with her.

It's an amazing part of this industry.

And it's something that I think this show, more than any other show, really put in the forefront.

And

we celebrated what that was.

I affirmed it.

I was intentional about how I affirmed it.

You know, Tony and Mike would have worked with their five good minutes guests on any occasion, but I was wanting to show how the thread of something we believe in, sports journalism,

won't go away even if newspapers are going away.

I marvel at a lot these days in retrospect, including the fact that somehow I have done this show 604 times.

By the way,

as a side investigation on this episode, I'm looking at like who's been making these updates, just so you're aware.

Every day, there's a guy whose username is Trekkie ELO.

That's.

ELO is a band I kind of dig, though.

I'm down with that.

I don't mind Star Trek.

I like the Chris Pine ones more recently, but ELO I can get down with.

So if you look at this guy's log of just like edits he's made to pages, it is around the horn overwhelmingly, just like every day, updating the panelists' stats because.

I need one more, though.

I need something else to show me a breadth of expertise.

And he has made edits the following pages in addition.

Number one, El Dorado, the Electric Light Orchestra album.

He made a change to the British musical film from 1974, Son of Dracula.

So he's just very on top of it.

This is art form.

These are art forms he's working in right now.

And also the page for pork tenderloin sandwich.

Hey, you know, recipes?

Good.

This conveys, this works for me.

That absolutely works for me.

I think that's a wide breath.

Food, music, theater, and the art form of around the horn.

It's really something that...

I say that because people laugh when I say that.

This is how I've dealt with it in my head for 23 years, Pablo.

I elevated it to something that it clearly wasn't for some people in my head.

It was.

It absolutely was.

Every day was a movie.

Every day

was

something that I was trying to give,

turn it up to 11 on.

And that's not my energy.

I have to lower my energy to do.

Yeah, you know, you're naturally.

This is one of the things I learned early on.

Yeah.

But

every show, I was trying to have an imprint and elevate it to more than just what it was the day before, whatever that was.

Yeah.

So like right now, we're talking in the tense of the present and we are looking ahead to the conclusion, the

series.

The series finale of Around the Horn.

I am not ready to think about that yet.

We will in this episode, I think, what that finale would, could, will be like.

But I just need to ask you before I subject you to this,

when was the last time you watched your first episode?

I have not watched my first episode.

I don't think I even allowed myself to stay in the room when it was taken in for the 10th anniversary.

Right.

And then the 20th anniversary, I was not in DC.

So no, I have not watched my first episode.

You're going to play it now, and I'm going to watch it with you.

Let's do this together.

I am going to

make you do this because I need to find out what that was like.

Where am I looking here?

We're about to stare into that television together and look into what day?

Can you give us a date line?

Yes, February 1, 2004.

Now, this will be my first time hosting as full-time host.

I think that's what you have, not knowing what you have, but I had appeared seven times as a panelist.

Right.

And won two shows.

Good winning percentage at something, the high 20s.

Oh, you're on the Wikipedia page.

And then I hosted it probably four times in those first 200 episodes as well.

Season one.

Max had a sty in his eye one day.

I literally wore his clothes on TV.

So that happened once.

There may have been two or three other opportunities that I hosted the show.

So this is not the first, first, but this is definitely February 1, 2004, the day after Patriots-Panthers Super Bowl.

Very good game.

Won in the last minutes, as the Patriots did for all their Super Bowls.

Panthers scored a late score.

John Casey, the kicker, left-footed kicker for Carolina, kicked the ball out of bounds, which is a terrible thing to do in that instance, and then enabled Brady to have a short field and lead to a yet another game-winning Patriots Super Bowl.

So that happened, but of course, it's also known for the halftime.

Well, your,

I mean, statistical memory bank, which is, I believe, underrated and undercovered when it comes to stuff that you've retained.

I'm curious if you retain the vibe of this.

These four things I know are true.

Make no mistake.

Super Bowl 38 was the best Super Bowl ever.

I know Joe Montana and Tom Brady is, well, he's Joe Montana.

The Super Bowl MVP might have been Justin Timberlake and I'm Tony Reali.

JT saved me 20 bucks on the lingerie bowl.

How about that?

It's around the horn, the show of competitive venture.

Here's Tony Reali.

You sound like you've been hosting this show for a long time.

It's funny you say that.

I don't hear that.

I hear a lot of people.

A little bit of television talk that people try to drill into me to lose what was

my accent, right?

Okay.

So I'm from Jersey and I had a Jersey accent.

My parents are from Staten Island and Brooklyn and I took on some of that accent.

I've been thrown off radio in the Bronx, which is an incredible, I put that on my Wikipedia page.

WFUV, it wasn't necessarily, I just wasn't polished enough.

In the near future, for this young man here, he's going to be working with a voice coach brought in by Bristol to work on his accent or delivery or just polish.

But I'm hearing a little bit of this, you know, which is what a 25-year-old is trying to do to sound like other people want someone in that position to sound.

So this is the first window of imposter syndrome.

I'll say second is I don't wear suits.

I'll wear it at your wedding, but I'm not going to wear suits.

I mean, the job dictated that.

Dress for the job you like.

You did wear black leather pants for the record.

I will for your wedding, your wedding specifically and other weddings.

No, but I see a level of confidence.

I wanted to be on air for a living, Pablo.

I've said this as far back as I could remember.

I always wanted to be a sportscaster.

But you're going for it, but I'm going for it.

This is a 24-year-old going for it.

Yes.

Knowing that this at bat, in which, by the way, the rules of this insane television show must be explained to people who perhaps are tuning in for a post-Super Bowl analysis and are getting, I think.

It's the highest rated show we'll do all year.

They're getting a new host who they will know from the show after because I really nail 15 seconds a day.

So I'm about to do 30 minutes of the highest rated show that we're going to have at 5 o'clock in a network with...

Could go through the list now, but you know the list.

Why isn't Stu Scott sitting there?

Why isn't Linda Cohen sitting there?

Why isn't Kenny Maine sitting there?

They would have been phenomenal hosts because it was the Super Bowl.

Everybody was either in Miami or in Connecticut.

And it came very quickly that somebody needed to be in DC and couldn't get there.

And now I'm hosting around the horn.

That's how it happened.

This is sneaking in through the fire escape.

But you're telling me I sound like somebody who at least was faking it, then I'll make it.

If I'm watching this show, my first thought is.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

I grew very late.

And you know this about me, Pablo, but I was five foot 90 pounds well into junior to senior year.

Yeah, you were late.

So I looked like a younger 25 there.

School yearbook photos.

Right, that.

I hope some people post those in big glasses.

But the whole, you know, still having acne and that sort of thing, you know, that was me at 25.

I mean, 28-inch waist.

I barely was filling out, you know, those shoulders in that suit, I'm sure.

It's a time machine back to 04 also, in which I'm like, oh, my God.

By the way, the topics.

After 24 minutes of painfully scoreless football, the Pats and Cats turned it on.

Jake Deloeum and Tom Breddy led two supposedly vanilla offenses back and forth like Clinton Eastwood and Charles Bronson, out-tupping, out-gunning, and out-cooling each other.

Until Brady and the Pats were the conquering heroes and Deloeem and Carolina, the valiant but beaten runners-up.

Guys, was Super Bowl 38 the greatest Super Bowl of all time?

Around the horn, we go to Woody Page.

After celebrating all night with my friends from New England, I have given this careful deliberation on the trip back to Denver, and my answer is an unqualified no.

It's not even in the top five.

Buddy, it's 2004.

It's for the masses.

The Super Bowl is for everybody.

It's about an entertainment extravaganza starting with halftime, like it or not, and then you build up to this great rush at the end.

What more could anybody want?

Jay, Jay, you're right.

It's about entertainment.

The first 27 minutes of the game were the most boring Super Bowl ever.

27 minutes without a point.

20 penalties, bad special teams.

I think it was the greatest Super Bowl ever.

Three 80-yard drives by the Panthers Panthers in the fourth quarter.

You can't beat that.

Next topic.

So just to get a sense of like what the show is,

it's fast.

Oh, that's high octane.

It's a lot of voices.

And if you're not already versed in the rhythm and just like how to sort all that in your head,

it's scary to 99.9%.

I want to run through a wall right now.

I know about you.

I mean, I feel, yeah, that, that, so these are maybe things that fits me.

That feels natural to me, what we just witnessed.

Absolutely.

That is probably close, except for the reality.

I'm going to make my ruling at the end based on my opinion.

This was the greatest Super Bowl ever, which I can't imagine I felt at that time.

And I was probably thinking, make TV, or I was probably thinking it needs

an exclamation point at the end of it.

But put that to the side.

That's my pace.

That's my energy.

At that stage of my life, that was enough conflict for me.

That's something I would be craving.

Because if you went back and I've done interviews for the last month, if I went back and thought about it, I would have said I needed to evolve the show to fit me a little bit better because I didn't want to be as abrasive or I didn't want the show to be around these four things I know are true, which is how we started.

I want it to be about these four sports raiders.

And I believe that.

I believe that in my heart.

But in this first show, I'm definitely selling the show that we got.

And also, everybody on screen, you can hear it, let alone see it if you're just watching or listening.

It feels like this is very important to them.

It was important.

It is important.

We're on in 120 countries.

This is a pep talk I give everybody.

We're on in 120 countries right now.

And I could have said at any point, I don't really ever focus on ratings.

The ratings, by the way, have been great for 23.

For 23.

But yeah, but I never made it about that, but I just made it about this is.

Somebody said six months ago, they told you the show is getting canceled.

You know, are you going to, you know, walk away or something?

I got a chance to do international television for the next 100 episodes.

I'm still going to do that.

I mean, I like that.

But also, the energy is fundamentally contagious.

If you, the host, are setting the pace at a certain level and everybody is trying to fit in, the natural human instinct is a bit of like the sympathetic nervous system is,

man, we are after it right now.

And by the way, it proceeds out of bounds, where it's all inbounds and today all nude.

Easy, Woody.

Janet Jackson made every jaw in America drop when she allowed Justin Timberlake to unbear her right breast as the halftime show ended.

Yowza.

The NFL and CBS were quick to run from the incident.

Timberlake called it a wardrobe malfunction.

Guys, besides your animal instinct, what was your reaction to 2004's leading TVO moment, Jay?

Well, the NFL was punked.

I mean, this is Janet getting attention.

It's the oldest trick in the book, but you don't do this in front of all these people.

And I thought about something Plashke would as a moralist.

I thought about kids for a minute there.

But then I also realized kids watch MTV.

They're more accustomed to this than we think.

The NFL's at a crossroads.

They got to figure out what they want to do in future halftime shows.

Jabroni, you and Reverend Bill used to sneak around with Sears catalogs and National Geographic magazines.

Sears catalogs?

Sears.

National geographic.

That's a long time ago.

We're talking about a country that needs to catch up with the rest of the world and stop being so prudish.

So that's the biggest story in the world at that moment.

The day after a thing that, by the way, like for

to fast forward to the present tense for a second, like that story and who's responsible and Justin Timber like finally owning up to any amount of it, it took decades.

It took decades, but I was there as a 25-year-old in my first show parroting things that, you know, maybe I would not want to say right now.

Sure, but that's

the point being that there is something closer to a representative conventional wisdom in what it was like to to react to that at the time.

I remember it at the time.

It was impossible for me to

kind of not wince at that.

I'm okay with it, of course, because I said it on national TV.

I think it was such a big story and there would be no way to avoid it.

I mean, that is the dawn of YouTube.

The dawn of YouTube came about because on the Super Bowl on international television, we had that moment.

And then the next day, people were like, how can we see it?

How can we see it?

And they literally invented YouTube out of it for that one clip.

So now I'm on TV and my first show talking about it.

I was happy to say we evolved out of that.

So it's the time capsule dynamic.

It's a time capsule.

You got to live with it.

You did it.

I heard my voice doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

I did hear and see some Seinfeld in that.

Yeah.

What's the deal with that?

I also can't believe how mean I was to Plaschke over and over again.

The mutes were firing in fast and furious.

Ukraine knows the whole country.

I don't really care exactly.

Everybody is winning.

37 points in the fourth quarter.

What a finish on a kick.

Oh, outstanding game.

I think it was.

Wait, hold on, hold on.

You hold on.

You know, there was a lot of traffic up.

I'm proud of that.

I can bring that back for the last episode if we want.

I can go like that.

I mean, why did I evolve as a host who went a different way?

The scoring changed to not be as high scoring.

People got more time to cook instead of less time.

I don't know.

A lot of it was intentional.

I wanted more space to breathe.

You know,

I always say it's not just having an opinion it's proving why your opinion is the right opinion in that moment that's the actual way i think of the show and what i would tell somebody if they were going to appear for one day well look i always considered the mute button to be a love language

yeah me too the mutes come with smiles just like the murderers come with smiles you know that was a man who walks around

phone case

yeah yeah

i got this after he died felt very sad you know, how people's lives touch you.

I got hats, t-shirts, and cell phone covers of Rayleigh Oda.

Man.

I want to go to Showdown because I want to see what that was like.

Okay.

Yeah, this was, I think, do we still do trivia?

I'm not sure.

Let's see.

Next topic.

Davis Turner, I wonder why the league is losing money.

That's why.

People take their money to come watch it after he's playing.

They try to take over the finger.

Shaq, we're on live.

Even after scoring 36 points on Sunday, evidently Shaq was not happy with the way officiating was and the Lakers win over the Raptors.

Meanwhile, LeBron James went for a career high 38 points Sunday against the Wizards.

What was the most overlooked performance this weekend?

15 seconds each.

Bill, go.

As a man in LA with children, I think Shaquille Neil needs to apologize to the city of LA for those profanities.

That aside, his was the base performance because it's the best game of the year and it shows he's back.

He's surly, he's nasty again, he's yelling about the referees again.

All good for the Lakers.

A huge one.

This weekend was one big weekend of indecent exposure.

I don't want to talk about Shaq and his foul mouth.

Give him soap.

Janet Jackson, the rest of it.

How about appreciation of the break?

He's a girl, Janet Jackson.

We haven't talked about LeBron in weeks.

He has a great game and not a soul in America has it on the list.

Not a great game against the Wizards, all right?

Come on.

Point to Platzky.

It's a sweep.

Shaq is back and the winner is Bill Platzki.

15 seconds of yours.

Good.

I'm going to mention one person we haven't even mentioned on the show so far, Adam Vinatari.

How come he's forgotten here?

He may be the greatest pressure athlete of any sport of our era.

I don't care.

I want to see Tiger Woods win the Masters with a putt, 40-foot putt, with everybody yelling at his face, doing it twice in three years.

I want to see Michael Jordan do it.

Vinatari is a great athlete.

Folks, we're on a 23 and a half hour break.

See you Tuesday.

Around the horn.

I told you that last week.

Around the horn is a presentation of ESPN, the worldwide leader in sports.

No paper toss.

No paper toss.

Oh, that's fine.

I grew into that one a little bit.

I am stunned.

That's watchable.

I would put that on a YouTube page right now.

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I want to go to a place where there's a community

reach as well, where I'm talking to the people who saw this show for 23 years and have always told me I want to do around the horn with you.

Well, I want to do it with you.

Couldn't do it on ESPN because I could understand why they would want professional sportscasters.

But wherever I'm going next, there'll be a community forum where I'll go around the horn with you guys.

I'd love that.

I would love that opportunity.

You know, I hadn't heard you say all of that.

And of course, you would.

Yeah.

Of course, because you give more time to sports fans, strangers, than any person I've ever met.

That was the job all along, honestly.

I've worked for ESPN for 25 years, and I feel in my bones, even

despite, or maybe they've tweaked the company line now, meet sports fans anytime, anywhere, or something like that.

Used to be on like the business cards.

It's on the business cards, and then every five years you get a new company slogan.

I was doing that before.

That's in my heart.

That's who I am.

That's the only way I want to do whatever it is I do.

Meet people absolutely where they are.

And when you find me there, I'm going to be exactly who I was on TV.

I want to actually ask about that, about looking ahead to the last show, how vividly you are trying to imagine it?

Are you trying to imagine what it's like to you?

I've thought about it.

I've written scripts.

starting five months ago.

Is it possible?

I'm going to bring a call back to one of my favorite things I've ever done on television.

It's a a surreal feeling.

So, how do you say goodbye to a show?

I've watched how shows have said goodbye.

This is talk about

Frasier.

For 11 years, you've heard me say, I'm listening.

Well, you were listening too.

And for that, I am eternally grateful.

Good night, Seattle.

And cheers.

You know, we're closed, lights turn out.

Sorry, we're closed

i think there's beauty in finale i'm almost too actively thinking about it but i've been a little bit strapped because i've said this before dad's got to find a job and i'm i'm taking i'm taking all the opportunities now to imagine what the future is and not you know i want to go out on my terms on horn but i have uh i'm red panda right now I'm spinning plates.

I am spinning multiple plates at one time.

And I'm recognizing, and people in my life are also worried about that.

Are you burning it too much right now?

I am one of those people just because I know your approach is going to be with the energy level that was established on that show that we relived.

And

it's also, of course,

something that if I had ever

faced what you are dealing with, which is basically saying goodbye for months to something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's an odd feeling, isn't it?

Everybody who does this show is blown away most

by the people who come up and talk to you about it.

Still,

that's their point of reference on you.

Because one of the things you can't recreate at this time in human history is the scale, the accumulated tonnage of people

who got...

truly welcomed into a community

that was every weekday for yeah and I felt that more than anything.

I valued going to work every day and putting in the number.

I love that number.

4,953 is where we sign off.

That number is more than the Oprah Winfrey Show,

and that number is more than Late Night with Letterman, and that number is more than Jerry Springer.

That means a lot to someone like myself.

What I want us to recognize is that what you oversaw is something that is so

massive in ways that cannot be replicated today by anything that replaces it.

A, and that we need to acknowledge that as much as you can measure it online in ratings, it's the human

of like this person who devotes their life to editing the Wikipedia page, the people that stop you on the street still today, that will stop you on the street without knowing that the show is gone.

Yeah, and you know that's coming too long.

Oh, yeah, I know that's coming too, yeah.

Right?

And this is the collected audience that can only come around when you hosted anything 4,953 times.

Yes.

Yeah.

And so the thing on my phone that has survived since I'm going to just make sure I get my own dates right.

God, October 23rd, 2012.

Right.

This is 6.37 p.m.

I'm walking out of the set of PTI.

I am.

Just had Kornizer and Wilbon probably complaining about something.

And then I'm like, oh, let me call Pablo.

I am somebody who has done some television, but is terrified by the call that.

You send me straight to voicemail.

You've admitted this.

Let's say it again.

You pick up the phone.

I was on a block in Williams.

There are other people who that goes a different way.

I didn't answer the call.

You literally didn't answer the call.

I didn't answer the call, but

I did listen to what you left immediately.

And I heard this.

Pablo, this is Tony Reali from ESPN.

Got your number from my producer, Aaron.

And I just wanted to call you and tell you how excited I am to have you on the show this week.

And I was going to give you the rundown of how we do things and how much fun we have and how much you can enjoy working with some of the guys we have.

So we can talk.

We cannot talk till Thursday.

It's no big deal.

All right, buddy.

Take care.

It was the voice that I think of when I think about Ernestly, like the thing that absolutely changed my life.

Yeah, we all have those calls in our life.

It's amazing that you have it saved.

I don't have

a key during the Super Bowl, you know,

that I got it.

I kept it.

And that's a wonderful thing that you do have that time capsule.

I think, you know, one thing I always want to be aware of is that

that was going to be a moment for you, right?

You were going to be on TV.

You're going to be on ESPN and your mom was going to be watching.

Your pop was going to be be watching i was going to i was i was imagining superimposing myself onto you know the the what felt like the fighter pilot cockpit that is woody page in denver or tim callishaw in dallas or jay mariotti in chicago or bill plaschke in this case from the remote set of the super bowl it was terrifying and it ended up being one of the single greatest things that ever happened to me that proved to me you have shown me this love and i know i know you want to get it out of your body

you don't have to tell i need i didn't save this voicemail because i was like one day 13 years from now this will be a good podcast

but it is the thing that everybody i know who i am now friends with who came to my wedding who i still I mean, you're right.

The underrated line in that voicemail is, you're really going to like the people that you're going to work with.

And it's, it's, yeah, maybe that.

It's a family.

Yeah.

They remind me of that.

But the thing that comes through that has always come through every time you do an April Fool's episode, every time I am being muted to minus.

I love those special episodes.

All of the special stuff.

It's a reminder of something that I have

I have taken and been inspired by, which is to take the show seriously, but not yourself.

I think every show likes to.

feel that it does that, right?

It was a big part for me, self-deprecating, you know, in some ways, but that was also built into the PTI fabric as well, wonderfully.

You know, Tony's getting dressed up.

So we didn't invent any of that, but I definitely pushed it.

I wanted to push it, you know, again.

So that's part of it.

And that will also be evident in the next place.

I am

going to briefly bring it back to Ricky.

Vendel II, a.k.a.

the man who seems to be behind as I have been doing my investigation, Trekkie E-L-O.

He is followed by one person in common with me or you, I must imagine, and that is Woody Page.

And I asked Woody,

are you the mole?

Hi, Woody.

It's Pablo.

Do you have any idea who Trekkie E-L-O is?

And he responds, no idea, Pablo.

But we've all met 50,000 people.

Yeah.

I will see and get back to you.

I've got three birthday parties and a Shriners Parade schedule.

And I don't, as always, I have no idea if any of that is a joke.

Well, that stuff is the other part of it, right?

Kalasha had the great line where he said, I'm still not familiar with what show he's doing, but we're doing around the horn.

And

that's great, you know?

And

I always appreciated that we had,

you know, somebody who wanted to be a little performative in a cartoon character and somebody who wanted to be a professor of journalism or, you know, is now like Blackstone.

And somebody who was as dry and hilarious as Kalisha.

I loved him.

I know.

I loved him.

It's remarkable

the bonds I will have for the rest of my life.

It's the most obvious thing to say that I brought you on the show to say thank you for changing my life, for being my friend, for being somebody

that has been unrivaled in sports television, that has not simply

diversified national sports television, but also like found just,

I don't know,

ways to do this

in a way that feels humane, which is

all underrated

at the moment in which we live.

But mostly,

mostly, I just wanted to find out how you feel.

How I was doing.

I know.

People are just checking in and being like, how are you?

I mean, it is.

So I know I put myself out there in ways and I've shown, you know,

you know, the ability to be vulnerable on camera, which, you know, it's, I don't even mean to say on camera, just vulnerable in life, right?

And people, you know, are just like, yeah, how you doing?

You know,

I'm, you know, I, I am,

I'm going to be surprised about how I, how I am on TV that day, I think.

I am, because I have no idea.

I don't think I'm going to be a mess, but my kids are going to be there and I'm going to be, you know, trying to, trying to have the best moment possible.

How do you say goodbye to something that is your heart outside of your body?

I'm

about to be showing people that in

real time.

So at this point in the episode, you might be noticing, in case you are a longtime fan of Around the Horn, exactly how much we haven't even gotten to yet.

I mean, there's an entire section we could have done about just the the times we all got to learn from Hall of Famer Bob Ryan.

In between segments, by the way, not even on air, including earlier this year.

And you know what other word is misused?

Dynasty.

Oh, yeah.

The point is, there's only been one dynasty in American sports, true dynasty, and that's the Yankees from 1923 to 1964.

And the other one is.

The Celtics don't even have to be Canadians?

Celtics?

No, because the point being, you have to have a handover of power.

It's not the same people involved.

See, this is Celtics where Donald Russell was there for 11,

but not the first 11.

We also could have talked about the time that Lil Wayne was a panelist back in 2009.

Here I am, for all my years and days, I've been afraid of one player.

This player is Mr.

LT.

But now, Mr.

L T Lawrence Taylor has agreed to be on Dancing with the Stars.

Today, I announce I am no longer afraid of

L T

Little Twinkle Toes.

And then there's also the time that Woody Page mounted a last-second horn-beating comeback to knock out J.A.

Adonde in a debate about Tiger Woods back in 2011 with Michael Smith and Bomani Jones both cheering this odd.

I'd like to make six points here, starting with number one.

That was a better field than people would think of at the end of the year.

The fact that he finished strong on 17 and 18, the fact that he's got his confidence back after the president comes the way he's oh

the way that he could go into next season.

I know

what he's going to make

him get him.

Yeah, so he was coming back with one of them.

That's a 95-yard driveway.

All of which brings me to one more final bit of tape.

One more voicemail, actually,

that I did need to play for you today as we sound the horn on this investigation that I told Reali was still ongoing when he was visiting me in our studio.

Because I'd like you to meet Trekkie Ello.

Hi, Pablo.

My name is Rick Vandel II, aka Trekkie ELO, whose family is from northern Indiana, Chicago, and I used to live in SoCal.

And I'm the one who's been updating the Aranawan Wikipedia page for the last 8 to 12 years.

I've been watching ATH and PTI since 2003.

Thanks producers, Tony Reali, Way Page, Bob Ryan, along with all the other panelists.

I'm humbled by your words.

After 35 years I've been feeling like life has passed and left me behind.

But whenever I get into something, especially if it's sports related, I'd always delve into the statistics and history.

That's just one reason I'll miss around the horn.

And make no mistake, Rick Vendel II, aka Trekkie Yellow, is not alone in this sentiment.

He is an avatar for it.

Not unlike Eric from Alabama and his sign that he brought to the seaport, these are the people who help comprise this enormous and unusually devoted community of people that Around the Horn has built, mute by mute, over 23 years.

And it's really hard not to think about them at the end here.

Because when people ask me what it is that I find most confusing about Around the Horn going away like this, what I find myself most mystified by is the fact that you would take a show, a brand, that lots and lots of people know about, and discard it.

Particularly because we do live in this insanely fragmented era when it is so hard to ever achieve anything like that level of scale again, let alone favorability,

let alone family.

Which brings me back to my conversation with Tony Riali

and what it's going to be like to say goodbye.

So what this is telling me then, because I will be there, whether you want me there or not.

And we're going to find out together.

We're going to find out together.

So that, if that is the overarching, Pablatory finds out, we're going to have to have to say he finds out that day, May 23rd.

Which is a hell of a tease.

A hell of a promo

for 4,953.

My God.

Tony,

I'll see you there.

I'll see you there, man.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out, a Metalark Media Production.

And I'll talk to you next time.