South Beach Sessions - Tony Reali

Summary

Summary of "South Beach Sessions - Tony Reali"

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz features a heartfelt and in-depth conversation between host Dan Le Batard and Tony Reali, marking Tony's departure from ESPN after nearly a quarter-century. The episode delves into Tony's personal growth, vulnerabilities, family challenges, mental health struggles, and his enduring friendship with Dan.

---

1. Introduction and Tony Reali's Departure from ESPN

The episode begins with Dan welcoming Tony Reali, highlighting their over 20-year friendship and Tony's significant contributions to ESPN, particularly his role on "Around the Horn," one of the network's most successful sports shows.

Dan Le Batard [01:27]: "Tony Realy is leaving ESPN. Has left ESPN after almost a quarter of a century."

Tony Reali [02:42]: "Me at the moment, right. Because I'm still with ESPN and I'm just... I want to continue to see how the next couple of months of the summer play out."

Tony acknowledges his departure but expresses uncertainty about the exact timing, emphasizing his desire to observe the unfolding months before making definitive plans.

---

2. Navigating Vulnerability and Imposter Syndrome

Dan and Tony reflect on their early days at ESPN, discussing the common struggles of imposter syndrome and self-doubt they both faced while establishing their careers.

Tony Reali [03:52]: "We were both going through something, imposter syndrome, right."

Dan Le Batard [05:18]: "You never told me that."

Tony shares his experience of unexpectedly filling in for Max Kellerman, a responsibility that tested his confidence and deepened his connection with Dan.

---

3. Family and Fertility Challenges

A significant portion of the conversation centers on Tony's personal life, particularly his and his wife Sam's struggles with fertility. They candidly discuss the emotional and psychological toll of IVF treatments and the heartbreak of losing a child during childbirth.

Tony Reali [12:13]: "I'm godfathered to six. And I would want to have that many kids."

Dan Le Batard [14:26]: "It is a real test of any relationship. And all parties can feel inadequate with."

Tony recounts the tragic loss of Amedeo during delivery, highlighting the differing ways he and Sam process grief—Tony through writing and Sam by keeping emotions closer to her chest.

Tony Reali [24:08]: "We lost Amadeo in delivery, in a ruptured intestine in his little body."

---

4. Mental Health and Coping Mechanisms

The dialogue delves into Tony's ongoing battles with anxiety, stemming from family dynamics and personal experiences. He emphasizes the importance of communication, therapy, and being present for others battling similar struggles.

Tony Reali [76:13]: "Feelings are your superpowers, but they still need to be addressed."

Dan Le Batard [80:46]: "The stuff that hurts is coming from the people who know you, right? And they have sharp criticism."

Tony discusses the societal stigma around mental health, drawing parallels with prominent figures like Robin Williams and Anthony Bourdain, and underscores the necessity of addressing and expressing one's emotions.

---

5. Strength of Marriage to Sam

Tony shares the love story of how he met Sam, characterized by a serendipitous moment at a restaurant in Washington, D.C., culminating in a memorable proposal at LaGuardia Airport after a series of mishaps.

Tony Reali [96:43]: "We go out drinking, dancing all day. Dominican Day parade. We found the bag. So I propose right there."

He lauds Sam's inner strength, cultural background, and her pivotal role in supporting him through professional and personal upheavals, especially during his transition away from ESPN.

Tony Reali [105:58]: "I respect and admire her for her career and for intellectualism and for foxiness and for parenting."

---

6. Personal Growth and Future Aspirations

Reflecting on his tenure at ESPN, Tony expresses a desire to evolve beyond his established role, seeking new avenues to connect with audiences on a deeper emotional level. He acknowledges the challenges of stepping away from a long-standing position but remains optimistic about future endeavors.

Tony Reali [62:05]: "I think of myself then as a TV host. But now I am receiving that back in how the show, the response of the finale of the show and the last six months of the show."

Dan Le Batard [73:59]: "I am legitimately proud of the maturity that I have seen of you."

Tony emphasizes the importance of intention over habit, aiming to authentically connect with people and foster meaningful interactions in his future projects.

---

7. Closing Notes and Enduring Friendship

The episode concludes with Dan expressing profound admiration for Tony's maturity and the strength of their friendship. They reminisce about past experiences, shared vulnerabilities, and the unwavering support they've provided each other over the years.

Dan Le Batard [76:49]: "You've done the work. And I will say to you now, publicly, something that I haven't said to you privately, but I'm sure that, you know, I am legitimately proud of the maturity that I have seen of you."

Tony Reali [75:20]: "I feel like I'm in that place."

Both hosts reaffirm their bond, underscoring the depth of their relationship and the mutual respect that has sustained them through personal and professional challenges.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Tony Reali [05:23]: "I was 25. I was 20, probably 23 when I was first on TV."

• Tony Reali [10:13]: "I have to say this, too, that was on both ends."

• Tony Reali [25:34]: "Does that make sense to you?"

• Tony Reali [40:36]: "Mental health is simply health."

• Tony Reali [76:13]: "Feelings are your superpowers, but they still need to be addressed."

• Dan Le Batard [89:24]: "She's a badass."

---

Conclusion

"South Beach Sessions - Tony Reali" offers listeners an intimate glimpse into the life of a seasoned sportscaster grappling with significant personal and professional transitions. Through honest dialogue, Tony shares his journey of overcoming anxiety, navigating fertility challenges, and cultivating a resilient and supportive marriage. The episode not only celebrates Tony's accomplishments but also highlights the strength found in vulnerability and enduring friendships.

Transcript

[Dan Le Batard]

You're listening to DraftKings Network.

[Tony Reali]

Now more than ever, Lowes knows you don't just want a low price, you want the lowest price. And with our lowest price guarantee, you can count on us for competitive prices on all your home improvement projects. If you find a qualifying lower price somewhere else on the same item, we'll match it Lowes we help you save price match applies to same item current price at qualifying retailers. Exclusions and terms apply. Learn how we'll match price@lowe's.com lowest price guarantee.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of.

[Tony Reali]

45 for 3 month plan equivalent to.

[Ryan Reynolds]

15 per month required new customer offer for first 3 months only.

[Tony Reali]

Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Taxes and fees extra.

[Tony Reali]

See mintmobile.com.

[Dan Le Batard]

All right, we already started. Welcome to South Beach Sessions. This is Antonio Giuseppe Reali. Anthony Reali. We have been friends more than 20 years. He's a, a monster talent.

[Tony Reali]

And you're still reading it off the, off the list for.

[Dan Le Batard]

I wasn't reading it. I have plenty of prep here, but I was reading nothing because you castigated me earlier this week for at 56 years old, having atrophied so much that I have to use the notes now I have to use notes.

[Tony Reali]

You look better at 56 than you did at 46.

[Dan Le Batard]

Thank you. And I was more inflated at 36 as well. I just want to give people some of the history here before you take over the proceedings with.

[Tony Reali]

I will not today with your likability. I will not host this.

[Dan Le Batard]

He has been a friend for more than 20 years and he at least is a friend in part because he's more comfortable than most with sharing his vulnerabilities. Most of my friends in my inner circle, you can let go of my hand.

[Tony Reali]

See, I'm not going to let go.

[Dan Le Batard]

Till you let go at any point. Okay. I think we should hold hands throughout this interview.

[Tony Reali]

I don't have to stop being a teammate. I'm not being trying to do this and I don't want to do this. All right.

[Dan Le Batard]

So Anthony Realy is leaving espn. Has left ESPN after almost a quarter of a century. And I believe this is news to.

[Tony Reali]

Me at the moment, right. Because I'm still with ESPN and I'm just. Yeah, I want to continue to see how the next couple of months of the summer play out. But yeah, I mean, you're being paid.

[Dan Le Batard]

By ESPN but you're not on Egypt television show. And you had around the Horn, one of the more successful shows they've ever had of any kind at espn, one of the more successful sports television shows there have ever been. And I wanted to just talk to you about your growth and your life because as I said, More than 20 years I've known you and I'm pretty sure I was there either the day you got the job because you happened to be in Pardon the Interruption studios and Max Kellerman had just left and they needed an emergency substitute so they went down the hall. If I wasn't there that day, you.

[Tony Reali]

Were there within the first month. So how we came to know each other, we both found each other in moments of vulnerability and moments of doubt. Self doubt. Why am I here? You had done TV. Just enough standups for SportsCenter everybody. Oh no.

[Dan Le Batard]

But I was scared. I was scared.

[Tony Reali]

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but we were both going through something imposter syndrome, right. I had 30 seconds of airtime a day that I loved on Party Interruption where we first worked together. And I was stat boy and that's a sidekicks role. And I got a phone call the night before a show saying fill in and carry the show for 30 minutes and it's the show after the super bowl and Janet Jackson's boobs coming out and be an adult in the room and be the host of a show and be funny and brilliant and all these things. I had brazen confidence, but even that shook me a little bit. And you were one of the first shoulders I turned to in that first month because you had then filled in for Wilbon at PTI and we were spending time together and I remember asking you and your response was, I'm going through it right now, man. I'm hosting PTI and I'm. I'm writing three times a week for the Miami Herald. That's my career, that's my job. This is now an add on. And we were all navigating that.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, how old were you? Because I remember at about that time, I just so specifically remember because you can fake confidence, you're better at faking confidence than I am. But I remember walking around my neighborhood at 4 o' clock in the morning practicing the words Pardon the Interruption. But I'M Dan Lebatard. The first words of the show.

[Tony Reali]

You never told me that.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, no, I was scared. Like, I didn't. I don't have any television training.

[Tony Reali]

I heard the most amazing things from people in the last month. Not to put that to the side for a second, but we had a panelist on around the Horn say he was made fun of by the tone of his voice by one of the other panelists and started smoking that week. This was news to me, too. And it just goes to show, you don't know what's going inside. Everybody said, but you do know there is doubt and skepticism, and you are practicing the lines to say, welcome to the show. Alone in a parking lot.

[Dan Le Batard]

Not alone. Just walking around my neighborhood in the dark. But you're one of the best I've ever seen.

[Tony Reali]

I didn't process it like that. No, I think I did the rosary before it went on the air the first time. You know, I mean, I was a good little Catholic boy.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, how old were you?

[Tony Reali]

I was 25. I was 20, probably 23 when I was first on TV. I was 25 when I was carrying the show. And I felt the weight of that. That's a weight I felt for all 4,953 episodes, though it didn't change. Right. I felt the weight, but I knew I was stronger. I was self conscious about some things, but it wasn't like I was embarrassed that people would make fun of me. I never felt that I was more in a place of. I didn't earn this seat at the table. That's what it was for me, you know, the way I grew up. Joe Realy, my father, doing everything by the book, first in his family to go to college, turned out to be a lawyer. Thought he was brilliant. Is brilliant, of course. And just knowing this is the way you do things. And here I was. This is sneaking in through the fire escape. This is. We just had a phone call on a Sunday night. You're the only one within 3,000 miles. Can you fill in the show? So, wow, I didn't earn this. So now that's where my neuroses really hatched. It wasn't about, I don't think I can do this. It was like, I shouldn't be doing this well.

[Dan Le Batard]

But I remember, though, how it is that I came to like you when you talk about your neuroses, because I'm noticing the difference and I hadn't seen it in anyone before you. Okay. The juxtaposition of this person is so affable. So likable, so warm, so seemingly confident in his every interaction action publicly. But secretly he's a roiling tempest of anxieties that's hiding behind a smile a little bit. And I don't know where along the path you became comfortable and adult enough after 25 to be talking about all of that stuff with people. Have you always been like that? Sort of.

[Tony Reali]

I was somebody who needed to communicate what they were feeling. You know, you don't know it at 25, but it's. It becomes your path in life as you go through the highs and lows, and specifically the lows. I want to get this out there. My wife and I went through the toughest days of our life and we process it completely different. Why are you doing it this way? She said to me, this is just what feels natural to me. But I would say as a 17 year old and then even earlier 12 year old, I was a big feeler and I felt things differently and I knew I liked talking about it. And I sensed simpatico with you in that as well. You know, I wasn't getting that from Koenizer or Wilbon, but when I felt somebody could do it with me. And that was what drew me to you when I was first navigating TV and you were first navigating tv.

[Dan Le Batard]

But your anxiety's not easy to see. You had to volunteer it. It's very well concealed. You have developed a hell of a camouflage.

[Tony Reali]

Well, energy will do that, right? I mean, you can demonstrate gusto and enthusiasm and that's it. But that's my role in my family. And this is a lot of the unpacking I did through talk therapy and beyond, in that once you demonstrate to people you're all right and you're doing all right, that's enough. And they stop. Not that you need to be worried about even checking in. Like, Anthony's fine, Anthony's fine. You know, and I felt like that was my role in my family, to always be fine. So when things weren't fine for me, that's when I had a hard time even expressing that to the closest people in my life. I have had deeper, more heart to heart. And then you feel guilty about this, deeper, more heart to heart conversations with you or Israel specifically, than I can get to with my brother. And that is a huge source of heaving anxiety for me. Right. And I just had a wonderful. We've had a wonderful couple of years, me and one of my brothers, and it's in a great place right now. Comparative, but it's still not in the place I aspire to be. And with even. You know, sometimes this is such a silly thing to say. You can be closer with the people that you aren't closest to. And I'm sure you felt this, too.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes, and I felt a lot of what you're talking about. You mentioned getting stronger. I didn't realize my strength until I got to 50 years old. It had never been tested. So I didn't realize that I had some strength until I had to go through some hardship. You've gone through some hardship, and you just mentioned your wife, Sam, who I want to talk about your love of her because she's a real source of strength for you in a way that's wildly admirable. But you mentioned going through something with her and you experiencing it differently. We'll get to the details of what you went through with her, but when you say she looks at you, you're built very differently, very different. And so when she says you experience this, what are you talking about? What are you thinking of when you're saying there was a situation that you were involved in where you handled it one way and she was handling it another?

[Tony Reali]

You've known me for 20 years, and she's known me for. For just a bit longer. But anybody who's known me my whole life, before sportscaster, before anything, those. That's a guy who wants to be a dad.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's the first thing I remember about you. Like, you were talking, you were talking in your early 20s about, I want kids, I want to be a dad.

[Tony Reali]

On the first night I met her, I was a thunderbolt. I got hit by the thunderbolt. It was love at first sight. And, I mean, I was proposed that night, but I'm just saying. But I felt comfortable enough in the first night to be talking about, I want. I don't know what number I put on it. And I would do it probably for a joke at that point. Seven kids, five kids. I'm one of five, you know. So I did this. And what I wanted to demonstrate was how much I love children and how much of a family man I would be. This is what you're saying to a woman you're meeting for the first time. So you're just trying to stress that this is the type of guy who I am. Right.

[Dan Le Batard]

But it's also who I knew you to be.

[Tony Reali]

Everybody knew that about me.

[Dan Le Batard]

But it seemed an odd thing for you in your early 20s to desperately want kids. I want kids. I want a farm. I want a farm of children.

[Tony Reali]

So I'M godfathered to six. And I would want to have that many kids. So. So this is now along with, I want to be the best sportscaster and the happiest guy in the world. I want to be a dad with kids. And I say this to then the navigation of our relationship and marriage, which has been wonderful through it all, but in order to have kids, became a challenge for us, as it is for many couples. Right. So now I, unbeknownst to me, put a pressure upon our relationship, with which I thought was a positive expression of how much I love you. Love life and love family. And I remember writing notes to every wedding, have kids, lots of them, not even knowing what I might be projecting upon somebody else, just thinking it was a positive. Like, I mean, who wouldn't want it? For sure. Yeah. I'm writing this to people I don't know, you know, biologically, I don't know, mentally, I don't know their relationship with their parents, you know, But I was so filled with an enthusiasm to bring life and how great would it be to have kids that I pass this on to people. Why pass this on to my wife, first and foremost? And now we're married, and now we're into years of marriage and we can't conceive. We can't conceive. And doctors are telling US it's a 1 to 3% chance, which is echoing in my ears at a volume I wasn't expecting when I'm in that room. And now I'm not even trying to get into her head, and she's gonna be. It's echoing in her ears like. Like, I just told this woman I love who loves me that there's nothing in the world I want more than this. And a doctor is telling us, ain't gonna happen for you guys unless you get really lucky. And now she's thinking, I'm letting him down. Right. That would be a factor.

[Dan Le Batard]

I have a lot of friends who have had fertility issues. It is a real test of any relationship. And all parties can feel inadequate with.

[Tony Reali]

And I have to say this, too, that was on both ends. However, I'm an honest person, but this is complete honesty. I'm not trying to. This was on both ends, and I did the work, too. And I'm like, why biologically, am I not operating at the level that the doctor would say it's above 1. So 1%. So now we're going through this, and it's been years of now we're into our mid-30s. Right.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, it's such a mind bleep. To want kids that badly.

[Tony Reali]

So at 43, when I met her, the day I met her. So now we're 12 years into her knowing everything about me. And then maybe I've even said things like, I'm at this moment older than my parents were when they saw me graduate college.

[Dan Le Batard]

And Tony, I'm telling the audience now, I have never had or known a young person in their early 20s who wanted kids as badly as you do.

[Tony Reali]

So now. So. So. But I'm just saying my parents started young and now I'm at an age, you know, I've got young kids now that I'm older. When they were already. I'd already gone at 30 through college. And we're years now, and we're into IVF and we're. And we're not getting positive tests out of that now. The psychological toll of ivf, while my psychological toll had been going on for years. Can't conceive now we're injecting a concoction. I mean, I do believe the doctors. It's amazing. You've given people the possibility for life. That's. I mean, of all the great inventions of all time. That's breathtaking to me. And I had to unpack a lot of things from my Catholic side going into this. And we could talk about that, too. I mean, my mother and father, you know, that was a tough conversation. And it only got to sentence three or four, and then it had to stop. We're trying IVF here. Do you know? We're trying it, believe me. Do you believe we are taking the proper thoughts? This is coming from the right place, the heartful place.

[Dan Le Batard]

You've got religious parents who think this is unnatural.

[Tony Reali]

Correct. And I'm dealing with this. Is this unnatural? Should I be, you know, replaying God on some level? Did God want me not to have children? And then, I mean, so now I'm unfortunately wrapping these things that there are never going to be answers to. But I will believe in something I will now broadly call a primacy of conscience, which is part of religious teaching in the catechisms, as we say. I was somebody who grew up in the Catholic faith, went to church, still in the Catholic faith, goes to church on Sunday. But I grew up in, educated by Christian brothers and then Jesuit priests. These are two of the more, I would say, progressive sides of the Catholic Church. And that's certainly what people have told me I am part of after I've had many of my beliefs, you know, just the way I operate.

[Dan Le Batard]

I was taught by Jesuit brotherhood in high school. And I know what that is, and.

[Tony Reali]

We know what that is. But you question things, maybe in a way, other parts of the greater Catholic faith. I mean, you're constantly looking inward and saying you're debating yourself. So funny that I've worked on a debate show all these years. What are we doing? We debate ourselves. Maybe this is why we are the way we are. It was in our upbringing. I say all this. A primacy of conscience means in the end, God gave you free will. God gave you a conscience. Go with what you feel is truly in your heart. And this was truly in my heart. That's how I arrived at the decision. But now there is a total thing that is outside of the man's position in ivf where you're not even getting injected with anything. There's no hormonal thing. You go into a room for five minutes and they give you whatever you need. And it's.

[Dan Le Batard]

I don't need to hear about this.

[Tony Reali]

You know what this is?

[Dan Le Batard]

I don't need to hear the details about what the magazines were.

[Tony Reali]

25 minutes. You're in there for an hour, an hour and a half. And the point is, you can't understand what your wife's going through. You just can't. It's an impossible thing to know hormonally, what's happening.

[Dan Le Batard]

We don't have access to what's happening there hormonally.

[Tony Reali]

And you can read books on it. You just have to be there. You just have to be full support. So now, not having positive tests through the first, the second, third, you're talking about emotional distress. You're talking about financial things. You're talking about all these things. And then, yes, there's hormones in a body injected into a body that are also then creating a spin here that it's so easy to spiral out of control.

[Dan Le Batard]

I have known you to help Mike Ryan. He's talked about it on this show. You have been a source of inspiration here for a lot of people who didn't know the challenges.

[Tony Reali]

Nobody talks about this. Nobody talks about this. They don't really talk about the challenges of IVF because it's still clouded by so many distresses. Yes.

[Dan Le Batard]

And you've been publicly vulnerable about this in ways that have helped people. I remember. I don't know if you remember this being totally ill equipped. You went to Colorado at one point.

[Tony Reali]

Yes, yes.

[Dan Le Batard]

But I just remember being totally ill equipped to want to be helpful to you. Here you were in a position of, like, crying out for need. And I just didn't have any tools to be helpful.

[Tony Reali]

Yes. So I saw you the week after, a month after we got back from Colorado. We were playing in Bug Shiambi's softball game. I remember this very well because I had talked to some of my friends, but you were right there, and we went through it. Find me the greatest doctor, whatever. You know, I mean, we were, you know, that's where we were. And then natural took over.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, so the original question, though, you and Sam experienced something differently. You were describing. I don't know whether it was related to this IVF or something else, but you were saying you and her are very different. I've. From what I've studied of your relationship. And it feels sound and healthy and strength in the right places where you have weaknesses.

[Tony Reali]

Yes, that's. That's the key.

[Dan Le Batard]

But you are the emotional one or the less stoic one. And so you're just two very different people. Talk to me or explain to me what the love is and what she was telling you or how it is you were different in the experiencing of whatever it is that you're thinking of when you're saying her. And I handled X very differently.

[Tony Reali]

So through the navigation of having children and through it all, you know, the IVF was different for both of us. I wanted to talk about it. She kept that one very close to her, and I couldn't even read how she was feeling through all. We have the natural childbirth the first time, and then we commit again to ivf. And what I'm talking about is losing a child in stillbirth, in delivery, when we were carrying Enzo and Amedeo and losing Amadeo in the room, you know, and even before that, you know, when we're in a doctor's appointment at eight months, right? Seven and a half, eight months. And it gets quiet in that room. There's no quieter room than a doctor's room when they are listening for a heartbeat and they're hearing a troubled heartbeat or a lost heartbeat at that moment. So we are having a great, healthy twin pregnancy and feeling wonderful about a life that we dreamed of. We are going to get to have more children. And at this moment, we may have been looking at twin carriages that day. And this is going to play over and over and over again over the next. Well, still till to this day. And we lost Amadeo in delivery, a ruptured intestine in his little body. And there's nothing you're really going to do for that. It's not like there was, you know, but Enzo was able to be delivered early. And we weren't sure at the time, but at the pretty clear was he was going to be okay. He went into NICU for the time that he needed to. But we then began saying, what just happened? How are we doing this? As he's being carried away. And we had an opportunity there to hold Amedeo. And this is the first instance where we're saying, wow, okay, this is a heavy. Do we want to hold on? Do we want to remember this feeling? Right? And we even approached that differently. I held Amedeo and I touched his foot, but he's wrapped and swaddled. And I'm thinking in that moment, I'm going to remember this for the rest of my life. This feeling is the one chance I have. And Sam went even further. She opened up the swaddling and she looked at Amedeo. She felt that was part of her process. And they took the baby away. We buried Amedeo in a Catholic cemetery. Four babies born still. And we do visit. But that was at that moment, the last time Sam was really able to. It took a while for her to even start talking about it again, whereas I. All I could do, I started writing thoughts immediately. I wrote a eulogy immediately. About what? This. Now I didn't know what I was writing. I was really trapped in the physical holding. I've come to find out certain things about me. I was. I'm looking for fullness in the experience. Not just grief, not just mourning, not just sadness. And this is something I've tried to impart to other people. Just my experience. Not. This is the secret to move forward with time and work. It take always takes time and work, right? What is the work? We time we got covered. It's going to go by. But if I still just lived in that moment of holding on Medeo, I would be stuck. That's a paralysis, right? Because that's my only moment with him. I have imaginations. Remember being trapped for a little while with like I was the two strollers. Anytime you see twins for the rest of your life, you're going to be in this place. The Minnesota Twins are in a script. And around the horn two weeks later. Twins Only goes to one place in my head right now. Right? We chose Amedeo. A special name in Italian means, you know, for the love of God or God's love. But it's also a name you're not going to see at a pizzeria. Amadeo's Pizza. It doesn't happen. Right? So that was intentional but the constant reminders of loss can be anywhere for anybody at any moment. I knew to be intentional somehow innately in me that and communicated about it. I was going to make the experience more full and not just this one thing. Does that make sense to you?

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, the one thing sounds like it would be quite the dark to hold onto forever. You want a palate. I would assume, knowing what I know about Sam, it's unsurprising that she wouldn't be forthcoming with all of the emoting or that you would be different this way and that you would need to talk about it.

[Tony Reali]

I mean, we talked about it. I'm pretty sure that night or the next night. Remember you have your family in town because you're, you know, you're giving birth and Enzo's with us. Right? Oh, man. I just remember because we had to tell Francesca, you know, and how much. Again, this gets back to those notes I used to write to people, you know, have kids, lots of them. Because it's all positivity for me. Right. You know, I'm gonna, you know, make, you know, you're. Are you sure? You know, some people are nervous about having kids. Why can you be nervous? It's all positive. You know, it's happened a trillion times before in the history all these things, you know. Well, now this is a young four year old, three year old, four year old. And she's only expecting one thing. And how do you even begin to have this conversation? You know, I remember it. Pick her up at school. I had to leave the hospital to go tell her before, you know, that either that day or the next day had to be that next day because it was late at night. You know, I got to say it face to face. And she's of course not understanding. And I just remember taking that experience. I found a priest in the hospital that night. I just wanted to talk to somebody. I don't think it was necessary. It was just me talking. It sounded like the priest on the other end really had anything to say. But I just felt the more and more I talked about it, the more and more it got better for me. And this became what I took from the experience or what I've added to the moment. You can talk through some of these things and it's going to feel like the valve is going to be opened up a little bit and the pressure is going to be released a little bit. Knowing my wife wasn't wired that way took more navigation and we talked that night. I think I just. I was starting to tell you this you know, and I said, I gotta release this valve.

[Dan Le Batard]

You know, the way you are, you always, almost always have to release that.

[Tony Reali]

You have to particularly release when you keep that inside. It has a way silence breeds. You know, things get gunked up. Things in silence get. They metastasize into. Sometimes some things, they're not even that. You have now created a bogeyman. You know, not every birth, you know, someone's birth needs to do I need to attach these, you know, oh, my sister's pregnant now. This is. Oh, boy. Holding my breath for seven months like this and living a life. My grandmother, my father's mother lost a sister in, you know, early adulthood over a car accident when she was coming home late at night. And I feel this is what is now used and said as generational trauma. Her posture was like this. My father's posture's like this. I look at my fists raising for impact is how I would describe it. You know, I remember as young kids, my father staying up and would never go to bed before we got home.

[Dan Le Batard]

You think your anxiety is hereditary this way?

[Tony Reali]

I think my brace for impact was hereditary this way. Right. I think my churn and my willpower certainly are practice learned things. I think my posture. I mean, there's scientific evidence to corroborate this. You know.

[Dan Le Batard]

It'S not even hereditary. It's just patterns.

[Tony Reali]

Right.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's just family. Yeah. It's what you grew up around.

[Tony Reali]

And so I know that to be true. But talking through it in talk therapy, I just remember, why am I so anxious? I am a highly functional. I'm working great. People like me. I've never been broken up with in my life until two weeks ago on an international television show. That was the first time I've ever.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's the first rejection you felt?

[Tony Reali]

First rejection I've ever felt. There has to be a rejection letter from a college.

[Dan Le Batard]

What? A run by the.

[Tony Reali]

I was never. I was never. I mean, if I applied to another college, I was only going to the one college I went to because of the broadcasters that went there, Fordham University. So I didn't say, oh, I didn't get to that college. I feel rejection. No, never, Never. I wasn't, you know, no relationship like that. Never. I mean, you're gonna find there gonna be people maybe who, of course, I'm not their cup of tea, but maybe we were. It was never rejection. Absolutely not. So that was the first time was when they told me, don't come back to around the morning.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's crazy. So you just got done Saying though, you said things I've learned since then. Since things I've learned about myself since then. I don't know how soon after that you decided to do therapy, whether you were doing therapy beforehand or. But what have you learned?

[Tony Reali]

I was doing therapy beforehand. Also related to parenting. My anxiety as I knew it to be aware. To me, you know, let's say you were maybe aware. This guy's got some. I would have said that was performers anxiety for a long time. You know, I'm doing a high end job.

[Dan Le Batard]

I would not have known you were anxious if you weren't volunteering.

[Tony Reali]

You knew it when I started writing and I turned to you for a mentor's hand here in writing a column for a newspaper. Right. You remember these days.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, I remember the insecurity of writing. That's different than just the way you bounded through life because you always had a spring in your step. The only evidence I had that you were an anxious person is you volunteering it with your mouth. It wasn't in any of your behavior. I'm telling you, it was really well done.

[Tony Reali]

I was trying to make every part of life be the greatest moment ever. I'm still trying to do that for others, for everybody involved. You know, I was going to be the happiest person in any room at any moment. The most energetic person in any room in the moment. I would walk into our newsrooms in a way where I would make sure everybody knew things just kicked up a notch. I just did it on the street with you. It's a must.

[Dan Le Batard]

Perpetual effervescence. It's a champagne bottle opening when Tony Reali walks into a room. He I don't know if you have a need to be the center of attention anywhere. I don't know what the calling forward is.

[Tony Reali]

Therefore I want to. The need was to please you guys. The need was to please people. So why was Robin Williams winning every interview he ever did? The cooking show, you know, I don't know, but I was Robin Williams ing my way through walking into the newsroom every day of PTI with a slow clap and a come on guys, let me hear it. Every day. That was no way to go through life. So these are things I was learning about myself. And you can't do that with parents. I mean, I'll give you another example. The pandemic was a place where everyone realized I have to operate at a different speed now. Right? Things are not allowed for me to do. I can't do all these things. Or I was giving my kids 110% before the pandemic. And now I get no breath. No breath. I didn't age a day. I was 23 until month three of the pandemic. And then I became a 40 year old overnight because it was just like I hit a wall. And a good 40. A healthy 40 year old. Fifth 40 year old, but that was it. I've got people I gotta take care of. I gotta get them through. I mean, we're not even through breakfast yet, you know, and they need my energy to be at this level the whole time.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, you've been helpful to people, though, by talking about your anxieties.

[Tony Reali]

And that was my process. So, yes, here's where it was. We, Barry, Amedeo and I do a eulogy, which is not required. Right. But I was talking through my experience, the duality of life and why I was struggling with how we could have a healthy child and we could have a deceased child in front of us right now. And would I be trapped? Would we be trapped every time? You know, I was just, you know, struggling with that reality of my existence and knowing I have a microphone in front of me on a TV show that's about sports. And I'm not trying to intertwine the two, but even applying other parts of life that I can reach people in this way, and I know that makes me feel good. I spent time in the NIC unit talking to the other parents. Because now, while we were dealing with loss, we were also now dealing with Enzo being healthy, but still just being in an incubator or whatever device is at that time. And other parents having a different experience in nicu, the full on vacuum bubble, which suggests that there is something now in their lives. They're going through something more difficult than I am at this moment, because so now we're talking about what that is and just providing. I wouldn't call it support, just providing existence next to another human being. That's sometimes support enough. So you brought up instances of people we know who I've talked to. Once again, my relationship with them was not what it is with my best friends or my family members. Yet still I felt more open to being in that place because I was in a position similar where existence and being there, I don't want to overstate what it is, but it's so important. It's so important and it's the least you can do, but it's the most you can do.

[Dan Le Batard]

And you find comfort in community. What is this need? How do you do being alone?

[Tony Reali]

Because your need for comfort in community I definitely do. I don't know when am I alone? I haven't got there yet, Dan. I really haven't. I haven't. I mean, I think I would enjoy learning a little bit more about. About myself. You know, just in how I. How I breathe and how I move. I want. I'm constantly tweaking and working that whatever became from. From when you knew me younger, which was an exercise addiction because I wanted to grip everything and go so hard to now doing the exact opposite. I do something called functional patterns. But I know you were navigating this too. You were trying whatever massage and Rolfing you were.

[Dan Le Batard]

Oh no, you were trying to. I'm doing right now acupuncture. Three times a week I'm doing. Is it called naet like the strangest thing where the doctor puts vials in my hand that are grief, joy, neurotransmitters, an assortment of things with acupuncture. Because I don't know what. I don't know about how it is.

[Tony Reali]

These are unknown unknowns. I love the way you say that.

[Dan Le Batard]

But to try and lose lubricate what have been lifelong repressions on wherever it is that I push down feelings like the alternative medicine I'm doing right now would suggest that repressed feelings are the reason that I have had a 3 centimeter rock in my gallstone that threatens in my gallbladder that threatens to surgery that I'm trying very hard to avoid by doing assortment of natural things that are about lubricating my emotions so that things don't stick.

[Tony Reali]

When you first hear that stone was.

[Dan Le Batard]

There while my brother was dying. So I've got this happening. I've got my brother. I'm spending 10 months near his deathbed daily. I've got my mother goes into surgery after falling down. So hip problems and broken hips are hard for 80 year olds and usually the last step on death. And now I'm going into surgery and my cortisol levels are so high with my brother that I'm too high of a weight. I'm not healthy enough for surgery.

[Tony Reali]

Are you afraid of surgery going into a hospital?

[Dan Le Batard]

I'm afraid of starting the practice of medicine so that you take one organ and you tell me it's okay. But now we've got a lifelong set of issues that come from whatever I don't know about how that organ came.

[Tony Reali]

Out of being in David's position.

[Dan Le Batard]

Not only am I afraid of being in David's position, I'm getting a call from a doctor. Listen to this story. Okay. My brother's on the bed and, and he is non communicative. I don't know at this point, as nurses from all over run in. There were a dozen next to his bed. And we are trying to resuscitate my brother. He's been out and is non responsive for minutes. And I'm thinking I've just seen my brother die. He finally gets resuscitated and I get a call from a doctor I've just met, just met him because of what I'm going through. And he says to me, without knowing any of my circumstances, knowing what this medicine is, that is the practice medicine that earns a lot of money but is not alternative medicine. He says to me, don't let them torture your brother. And my brother had three surgeries after that. And what they did was. And this. They were just doing medicine, practicing medicine. They tortured my brother like he had three surgeries that his body could not withstand because he was trying to stay alive. And a lot of things were going wrong. But that's where it started. A doctor of alternative medicine. And they've tried to get me on and they have gotten me on a different path where they've dissolved this gallstone with an assortment of things that I simply don't understand. Like, and will live all my life without understanding. Because what they're trying to do is lubricate my feelings because of where it is and how it is that the body holds on to whatever it holds on to. When you hear those stories about people doing yoga and they hold their emotions in their hips and all of a sudden they're sobbing for 30 seconds in a, in a yoga class because they don't know you believe this. Well, it's not. I'm open minded enough to know that I don't know everything I need to know. And so even if I'm agnostic, I'm still trying to avoid. I believe this is a surgery and I believe that these doctors. I'm working with three different acupuncturists. I think that they know an assortment of things that I have no idea about. And so I'm just going in and trusting them and I feel better. And they're helping with an assortment of different things that include grief. Like it's, they are trying, it has to.

[Tony Reali]

I mean, you've heard me say mental health is health. Mental health is simply health. Talk about mental health. We talk about sports and athletes like a strained hamstring would. Right. But I apply that to everything you just said, that our feelings are simply health. Just like a Bone, just like a muscle in your body. So I believe we can injure our feelings to a certain way. If I could speak broadly, like this is a talk I give to high school kids, you know, or something like that. Feelings are your superpowers, but they still need to be addressed. I am comfortable going through life knowing I needed to address feelings, relationships, like with my brother or with Amedeo, or they would have put me in a position where I would have been ill in this other way. I believe that to be the case. I believe there needs to be release of that help the audiences that are kinked up. We, Dan, we have not. You and I talked about David, you know, phone calls, things we haven't. I had David's phone number right next to yours on my phone. I haven't taken it out. You know, that's something I wanted to tell you because I just told you how easy just being there for somebody can be and how important it is. And I don't feel I was there for you.

[Dan Le Batard]

Oh, don't. Don't do that.

[Tony Reali]

I know this is not about that. This is not that. But I'm just saying I know you have people who are there for you, but I also know that you're still dealing with.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, my brother was deeply private. Didn't want me to tell anybody about. Didn't. Didn't particularly want to tell me, really. Like it was his friend, it was his best friend who ended up telling me because my brother didn't want to. Didn't want to burden us. The number of things that I learned throughout all of that worst experience of my life. And I'm also hugely grateful for it.

[Tony Reali]

When you just mentioned precisely the fullness of an experience, and if that's what I mean, this is just really heavy stuff. But that's what I wanted to impart to you yet again, I want to even draw the line on that. Do you feel a fullness to losing David that you know that you can help yourself and help others? Because that's his spirit, let's say, even be more literal. His spirit carries through you in a way that he's now effecting good, positive change in the world?

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes, I do feel his presence in a way that's hard to articulate and isn't being conjured by me, hopefully. But I just thanked Valerie for this the other day because she, my brother and I were going through an assortment of issues before he got sick because he was not behaving clinically, sanely. There was a lot of stuff going on that just didn't make me recognize who he was. And he was acidic and he was mean in some spots to me in ways that I didn't feel like I deserved. And my wife, who believes and has told me since the beginning, weirdly, that she's here to help teach me about death because she has suffered grief. And at this point, I'm not thinking of my brother on death, right? I'm thinking about my parents because he's my little brother. She pushed me in a way that she hasn't done before or since into go be by that bedside and eat whatever you gotta eat to be by that bedside so that you get all of the things said before he goes and get the healing that I have gotten. And I started sort of practicing grief before I had arrived at grief. Because I'm, you know, every time I'm kissing him on the head or smelling what he smells like, like, I'm remembering that soon it'll be gone. And the eulogy. When you mentioned the eulogy that you gave, I remember walking up in front of those people and saying out loud on my way to the podium, this is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. To get up in front of people and give.

[Tony Reali]

You feel there was a benefit in doing it?

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes. I feel like I'm stronger because of all of it. But I wasn't doing it. Sort of like I needed a fullness of experience. I didn't know what to do, how to do it. I just know in having done it, I arrived at the stages of grief and guilt's not in there. I don't know. There are a lot of other things in there, but guilt is not one of them. Because at the end, I held up my shot as best as I could. And we talked through some of the stuff with forgiveness that required forgiveness.

[Tony Reali]

Well, that you were able to do that. I do believe that there. Some people think the process of grieving publicly is medieval and almost like something that shouldn't be done. But I do believe there's a reason why there is almost a routine to it.

[Dan Le Batard]

You'll laugh at this, though, Wilbon, when you mentioned. This isn't the conversation that I would have with Wilbon. Wilbond sat in that seat, and I remember talking to him about his late father, and he started crying. And the thing that he said while he's crying is like, I'm sorry. Sometimes when I fly, I get misty. And he just sort of tried to shroud it because of whatever his stuff is about not wanting to be seen publicly that way. Like you know, that's a general.

[Tony Reali]

Oh, absolutely. This doesn't surprise me. It's a generational thing on some things. It's cultural things. On another level, that's when you look in the mirror as you age and you see your father's face in you.

[Dan Le Batard]

I don't see it physically. What I see in a way that. Valerie, now this is uncomfortable when you talk about.

[Tony Reali]

That's what I'm saying. It is a real one.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Chris, remember when last week you tried to describe a bar as a local watering hole? It's how an establishment where you enjoy beverages should be called. It should feel like a local watering hole. It's a local watering hole.

[Tony Reali]

Even if.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Even if it's like a chain, it's still like. It's not a one off bar. No, still your local watering hole. As long as it's within a couple of miles. Me and you have been to many a watering hole. Yeah, we have shared some Miller Light. Actually, we did that this weekend. We watched the Panthers game together and there's nothing better than pair with it. Ice cold Miller Light. That's right. Miller Light is going to be everywhere around our party. Sometimes you get the draft. I know there's a lot of options, but I love the can. The sound of that pop.

[Tony Reali]

Oh, I could just.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I just got goosebumps. Jeremy. It's sort of like the day. Bow.

[Tony Reali]

Bow.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Can you believe this? Miller Light turns 50 this year. Doesn't look a day over 30. Nothing like an established brand like that. Looking that good. No. No work done. Just looks great. Letting the grays come in right around the temples. That gold and then that gold look. The golden years of Miller Lite are just ahead. That's five decades of cookouts, laughs and ice cold moments that never miss Miller Lite great taste. 96 calories. Go to millerlight.com beach to find delivery options near you. Or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer. Cheers to 50 years of Miller time. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

[Tony Reali]

The NBA Finals are in full swing and DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NBA, is pulling out all the stops to make this one unforgettable. Whether you're riding with the favorites or backing a comeback, DraftKings has you covered every step of the way. Here's something special for first timers. Your DraftKings customers bet $5 to get $300 in bonus bets. If your bet wins, don't miss your last chance to Bet on the NBA this season. Download DraftKings Sportsbook app and use code beach. That's code B, E, A, C, H for new customers to get $300 in bonus bets. If your bet wins when you bet just five bucks only on DraftKings, the crown is yours. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER in New York, call 877-8-HOPE-BY or text Hopeny at 467-369 in Connecticut. Help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org Please play.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino and Resort in Kansas.

[Tony Reali]

21 and over. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Bet must win to receive reward. Minimum minus 500 odds required bonus bets.

[Tony Reali]

Expire 168 hours after issuance.

[Ryan Reynolds]

For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkng.

[Dan Le Batard]

When you talk about sharing vulnerabilities that are in the deepest places that you find the deepest love. The thing that has happened recently with my wife that has been hard to have pointed out by her is when I'm behaving like my father and she's not, she doesn't know what the behavior of my father is. She's just telling me you're, you're reacting poorly to me criticizing that you need to wash those blueberries before you put them in the smoothie.

[Tony Reali]

Of course that's what it's about.

[Dan Le Batard]

And, and, and I'm see father react poorly to my mother's helpful critique that is meant to make their life both better. But instead he's being stubborn. So it's behavior that I recognize of my father. It's not physically looking like my father. You see physically your father in the mirror.

[Tony Reali]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. Or my brother, you know, that. That catches me especially when, when I was worried about him. That seems like that was almost like a trigger for me. You know, I was going through an experience where I was creating an idea because I couldn't reach him in the way that I wanted to reach him. You know, you create. You imagine you Jurassic Park DNA code, you know, you had a frog DNA to create something, you know, so it's complete. But then in the movie, you know, things spiral out of control because you've just absolutely made something up.

[Dan Le Batard]

It turned out poorly. Your parents were right about don't do that unnatural stuff with silence Science.

[Tony Reali]

Very, very interesting.

[Dan Le Batard]

Dinosaurs will destroy the earth.

[Tony Reali]

So. So in the absence of communication in that relationship or in the absence of Knowledge in that relationship, you go on what you just imagined to be, you know, and that isn't reality. So that's an important thing that you need to come to grips with. Like how do you know. How do you know what your dad is feeling right now about your relationship? You know, maybe he's just thinking.

[Dan Le Batard]

He's just thinking about black beans. He's not thinking about, should I give him more?

[Tony Reali]

Should I have been able to show things? Should I have patterned behavior in this way? Is, are Dan and Valerie, you know, living a marriage? Because I patterned marriage with, you know. Right. Is he thinking about that? Who knows?

[Dan Le Batard]

Not really.

[Tony Reali]

But am I thinking about that? Am I making him proud and how I'm showing married life to be right? You're thinking that. Cuz that's, that's a, that's a real part of, of how humans are wired.

[Dan Le Batard]

I still fall in the pothole of somehow wanting my father's pride approval.

[Tony Reali]

And of course it's not a pothole, though. It's not.

[Dan Le Batard]

I mean, it's a. Look, man, I'm an adult. I'm 56 years old and I've done enough therapy and heard enough talk about.

[Tony Reali]

Therapy on international tv. He was proud of you. He was stopped and recognized at Heat games for the rest of his life. I walked outside yesterday to a man wearing a shirt of your father's face on it.

[Dan Le Batard]

You did that well. But he has not acknowledged at any point that that is something he likes or enjoys, which has made the gratification of feeling the pride off him slightly difficult because mostly he complains about having had.

[Tony Reali]

So you're in one of the more stressful moments of your early life. Here. They're about to launch a TV show based around you, right? You and your father fly to Washington.

[Dan Le Batard]

D.C. you call me, right? You called me right before we were going to do that and you were excited for me because you said, dan, our people have built you a better sport car.

[Tony Reali]

Yes, that's my expression. Exactly. Exactly. But more than that, your father came with you to Washington D.C. we were sitting next to each other and this is just row stuff at the screen. What's going to work? And I sat there next to a man who I didn't know yet.

[Dan Le Batard]

We're auditioning and we're failing and flailing. I know we're failing and flailing, so I'm sweating. He doesn't know we're failing and flailing, so he's funny.

[Tony Reali]

And ride home and Kelleher and the greats and we're all in There. And I'm playing a mock stat boy character to see if stat boy type character would work in this moment or to see how we can deliver Poppy in the best way. Honestly. That's what we're trying to say.

[Dan Le Batard]

They discovered after building a show for me around me, that the star was my father in that first pilot where I was terrible and he was great.

[Tony Reali]

Well, it wasn't because you were terrible and great. It was because that was a dynamic thing. By dynamic, I'm using the definition of like, there's a dynamic in play that is envious in the production of art, I would say, or any type of TV production. Right. You're going to give viewers immediately a relatable dynamic. That's just like me and my dad, or I wish that was me and my dad. Or in my case, Anthony, why didn't you do this first? You know, like that. My dad said nobody would watch that, Pop. You know, he wanted that.

[Dan Le Batard]

Did you. Did you arrive? You have arrived at your father's pride and what, your relationship.

[Tony Reali]

Well, I've always had that, you know? You know, I think that.

[Dan Le Batard]

What's that like?

[Tony Reali]

What's that like? You know, I mean, it's always a work in progress, so I know they're proud of me, but I may, you know, if you asked me point blank, and I guess you are, you know, I would have liked to have them at the last episode of around the Horn, you know, and. And. And they, like. I was like. You were. You surprised me. I had. I had again. I was wonderful to have 20 or 30 people there. Some of my best friends and some of my not best friends. My trainer showed up. Amazing was that, you know, I would have liked my mom and dad to be there. You know, they were. They were a couple hundred miles away, but not. Not so far.

[Dan Le Batard]

Wait, that sounds like hurt.

[Tony Reali]

Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's hurt. I think it's a realization that. That I have to still unpack that Anthony's okay. We don't need to worry about Anthony. They send me notes. I mean, it comes with the script you're reading. Sometimes it sends me. Their focus is on, let's get Anthony a job right now, now this moment. Right. Anthony doesn't have a job. Okay. And you're gonna get a great job. People gonna see you for what you are. You know, they get really upset when articles were written about. I didn't do media for a long time. I didn't want to do interviews. It's. While I am brazenly confident And I love talking to people. That was one note there of I gotta be humble. It's gotta be full humility. I'm not gonna talk about myself. So then what happened? When the show was being canceled, the announcements came out and my father got very upset. Max Kellerman's name made it into the second paragraph of every article because no narrative was written since the first year of the show and I had done 97% of the episodes.

[Dan Le Batard]

But you're saying humility, that's optically what you had to project. Anger and denial would be the things that I would assume are there, that you're rapping in humility. Because you have to put on the brave face of taking the high road and saying the right place.

[Tony Reali]

Okay, Approaching it from this way. My parents are fighting dearly for me in their own hearts and with my own head for me to get the recognition of what this show was. Why is Max's name in the second paragraph? You know, he got his chance, he got up and left, didn't come back. You took over the show. You didn't take a day off for eight years. You know, you did the show, the ratings went up. Ratings are up now. How come nobody's writing that? And then I started doing interviews, basically on the advice of pop reality, of all people. You know, I mean, so. So I know what that, that's love, that's pride, that's a lot of things. But then it's the same moments like, you know, and then I got four other siblings. And then their current state needs to be put up immediately in that conversation to balance out as seesaw, four person seesaw, because they can't, even though, you know, it'd be pretty obvious to say they are giving more attention and time to the children who need it in that moment. But my moment is not at that level for them because they know I'm gonna be okay. And I know I'm gonna be okay. I just did 24 years of TV and I'm gonna get another job. Because the 24 year veteran of television for a show that was as successful as his is in a phenomenal position. I don't have the anxiety about that. I know you were worried about me getting to that place six months ago. I'm here to tell you right now I feel like I'm in that place.

[Dan Le Batard]

The only reason I wouldn't say that I was worried about you. I was simply keeping an eye on you because I know that I underestimated.

[Tony Reali]

From talk to me about what that is. Cuz I told You I've never been broken up with before, and this was my first rejection. And you went through a rejection that was modified differently and kind of, you know, put into a different spot.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, mine is totally different. Just because over the course of time, I've always turned my employers into my father. Because I'm trying to please father. So the relationship is always good with the employer. I'm pleasing and making the father look good. The father's patting me on the head and telling me that that's really.

[Tony Reali]

That's how you see you're genuinely thinking you're a pleaser.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'm. Well, in this case, an employment pleaser. Right. Because I'm thinking of all the bosses. Paul Anger, Jorge Rojas, John Skipper. I'm always trying to. Gary Honig. I'm trying to make them look good and doing so. So I'm getting the reciprocal rewards of actually pleasing the father figure. But I had this con with Dan Patrick about. Dan Patrick comes home from ESPN after being sort of, you know, I mean, they had the biggest show in television for many years that made a lot of money for Disney. And he gets a take it or leave it offer from an executive who he doesn't have, you know, much use for, and he decides to leave the offer. And when he comes home and he's done now he's just decided he's done at espn, the safety of espn. His wife looks at him and says, you didn't think they cared about you, did you? And he's like, well, yeah, I kind of did. And so I, at the end, because I'd never had a rejection from an employer before, kind of thought at the end that there would be some caring involved or at least enough caring to not fire my mentor's son without telling me. And so I ended up getting hurt by that. But the reason that I reached out to you and it wasn't concerned. I just know how lonely it felt after having a lot of confidence doing a thing for a long time, to suddenly be in a position where there was some doubt about what the future would look like. And so I was just reaching out to you to make sure that the turbulence wasn't unsettling to you.

[Tony Reali]

Well, you put me in 100. I went 180 after. I mean, let's be honest, we talked multiple times. Multiple times. And I did get to a 180 place. I mean, I'll be honest about the TV show around the Horn. I could not say goodbye because of, again, maybe a faux humility. And I loved it. And I felt fulfilled in some ways. I wanted and was going to do and will do more. I want to show other sides of my personality. And I wasn't worried. The show was going to go on forever. And it was going to be the only job I had. I was just gonna have to adjust how much energy I was giving that show and add on other things. But I was always prepared for them to say the show is gonna end. It wasn't like I was disappointed. I was surprised because of how successful I feel the show was and I know how profitable the show was and all these things I've talked about in the past. It's not about that for me right now.

[Dan Le Batard]

I would assume you think it should still be on and you should still be doing it.

[Tony Reali]

To have a show like as successful as around the whole Hornets. Absolutely. I think the network, espn, that I've enjoyed working for all these years, should want an expanse of shows many, many different. They should want many, many different voices. They should watch shows to get great ratings. They should watch shows to not have controversies. They should watch shows and then they can have other shows that could be more performative in some ways. And this show could be more feeling in this way. And you can say this show became one thing or not too serious, more whatever. Less about stars and more about journalists. And we didn't want journalism.

[Dan Le Batard]

What it became is more and more yours. And you were fitting within the confines and the limitations of television. And I don't know what.

[Tony Reali]

And I was pushing it, too. Cause I wanted to push it. I wanted the show to. I thought there was value in being a differentiator and having a show was.

[Dan Le Batard]

Obvious in every way on the show. Your adult growth as a creator and as an adult was obvious on that show in many different ways over the 23 years. 24 years.

[Tony Reali]

23 for the show. Yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah. That was fun to watch, interesting to watch. Interesting to watch your imprint on the show. But when you say you've done a 180, I don't know what that 180 is. I would just tell the audience that what I was impressing upon you again, and it wasn't cheerleading, it was the Dead's honest truth from someone who was just a little bit further ahead on this particular path than you. They did you a favor. They've given you an opportunity. They've given you an opportunity to stretch in a way you never would have stretched if you had stayed within the safety of those contests.

[Tony Reali]

So as much work as I'd done on myself, I was still harboring feelings of what is it that I do, what is my skill? Right? Cuz I have been and called myself a sportscaster my whole life. I dreamt of being a sportscaster my whole life. And now I am a sportscaster. I've got this dream job and I host a show and I work with journalists. I would not call myself a journalist. When I do my job, I'm trying to get up to their code of journalism and they're not committing daily acts of journalism on our show when they're debating sports. But it still is a show about journalists and that's a wonderful thing. So most of all, I thought of myself then as a TV host, right? I started to adapt and I was. Am I a sports host? Well, I'm dealing with people, I'm dealing with feelings, and we're talking about sports topics. But I gave more comfortable thinking to myself, okay, now I'm a TV host. But even that I don't think was getting to the crux of it because you can be a TV host and you can be A to B, get through. I was still doing something that was more connective to an audience in my mind. But now I am receiving that back in how the show, the response of the finale of the show and the last six months of the show. But in the absence of me really allowing myself to talk about myself and be seen for a while, I'm sure I processed those feelings. Around the Horn, which was first hosted by Max Gellerman, or Around the Horn, which is produced by Eric Reinholm, or I'm like, those things are factual sentences. But if someone knows the story, it's your show.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's your show.

[Tony Reali]

That's not the story, it's your show. It wasn't until I started talking. How do you. Right around the Horn is going. Possibly. This is how I found out. I was on vacation in California with the family. Around the Horn possibly looks like it's gonna be canceled in the summer of next year. How is that not next sentence? Not. The show's ratings were up 5% this year. Because if you're writing that article as a journalist, you'll be like, oh, Ryan, the horn's getting canceled. Let me look at the ratings. Oh, it's up 5%. Oh, that's an interesting stuff.

[Dan Le Batard]

Nobody cares about you the way you care about it.

[Tony Reali]

The show's getting canceled. It's currently hosted. Currently hosted by me was first hosted by this other person. And then the next one is expendable and overpriced. And I don't Know which one I was more insulted by? Because neither of those are true. I was like, wow. So to have those things written about you. I recognized they weren't coming from nowhere. Somebody was feeding this. I'm like, okay, so I get this game is being played.

[Dan Le Batard]

So the second I started talking, I read on my birthday, I'm on my balcony drinking with my wife, and I read the news LeBatard show going to be replaced by Mike Greenberg's and everything else because someone leaked it. And I'm like, what is this? What is this? Because I didn't think it could possibly be true. And then I called and was told it's not true. And then it was true.

[Tony Reali]

I was told that was. You heard. We don't know where that's coming from. You know where that's coming from. So. So the point is, there are any moments in your life where you know what's true about yourself. This is social media for me. I don't have the same opinion everyone else does. I get it. It's a negative place for a lot of people. And all these things. I know it's true. Those things bounce right off me because I know. I mean, somebody's telling me something about the show. I can take any type of feedback and criticism. This show got too blank for me. Yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's real maturity, though, from you. That's not the person I met.

[Tony Reali]

It's not the referee who's telling me I had a traveling violation. I'm telling him that's not his call. That's. That's referee's call. So you can't possibly.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's the reality I met. Furious with referees, unable to control his anger during basketball games.

[Tony Reali]

Yeah, Right. So what's Dan, you're alluding to is that we had Pardon the Turnover. A wonderfully named recreational basketball team for PTI and around Horn won't bring any.

[Dan Le Batard]

Attention to you at all as the star player of Pardon the Turnover.

[Tony Reali]

And I was. I approached it with a lot of gusts. I was still the youngest one on staff, and I was fit in ways. They just wanted a little bit of exercise. I wanted, you know, to qualify for the Olympics or. I don't know what I wanted to do.

[Dan Le Batard]

There was a little arrogance there. You were getting a lot of success at a very young age.

[Tony Reali]

Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I don't.

[Dan Le Batard]

I mean, that's really young, Tony, to be nationally televised as part of a daily sports lineup on the worldwide leader in sports. When you're the youngest person on television.

[Tony Reali]

Right. But I don't know if I ever processed that as that arrogance. Honestly, you know, I didn't. I didn't.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'm just talking about the. If I give you. You look. Maybe it's a temper problem, whatever it is, to think that you're in your early 20s, that you've got enough confidence in who you are and what you are, that it's okay to publicly berate a referee whenever, multiple times. When everyone, everyone on this, on the court knows that's television's Tony Reali. That. That seems arrogant to me.

[Tony Reali]

I think my brother does the same thing and he's not television's.

[Dan Le Batard]

But I don't think of arrogance as real confidence. I think of arrogance as something that is a barbed wire armor around insecurity. The most arrogant people I've ever met have this.

[Tony Reali]

I remember somebody wrote a blog that got picked up that were saying, I'm a jerk playing intramural sports, sports. And that hurt me.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, but you grew out of it.

[Tony Reali]

Well, I stopped at cold turkey. I took that out of my life. I stopped playing sports publicly, which you might say, what. You didn't need to do that. Well, that's how I decided to address it.

[Dan Le Batard]

You developed in 24 years or 23 years an immunity that is legitimate. I don't think it's bravado when you say this criticism now bounces off.

[Tony Reali]

I know most of the time it's about that person who's talking. I know. I like using social media as a tool and as a. I like to model what I aspire to be or model good behavior or model fair exchange, good faith exchange. I like to do that to show people I would respond to eggs and retweet it. And people are like, you do know. Absolutely. No, but I wanted you to see it. And I'm on tv. I'll re air my episodes. I don't care. I'll retweet this out to demonstrate that I had intention behind what I was doing. Why did the show talk about this way? Well, first off, you're right. Maybe I missed that one. But here's what I was thinking in the moment. And I know what I was thinking. So I'll put this out there and you guys can give me feedback on whether I was right or wrong. But there was intention behind it. For me, life has become about intention, not habit. Right. If we wanted to distill how did I mature in the way. You just. You said maturity. Right, Right. I started to get away from doing things habitually, routinely. I gotta work out every day. Because that's how I'm wired. Because I got this energy. You were obsessive compulsive about running or CrossFit, and not even CrossFit, but in CrossFit, cheering everybody else on and collapsing at the finish line and then getting up and then cheering them as they.

[Dan Le Batard]

Collapse and also injuring yourself.

[Tony Reali]

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my man. During CrossFit, I was pulling. My body was probably closer to the top of a tuna can, right? Both in a wiriness, but also like a muscles about to pull out. You know, I was. Why? Why do I have neck pain? Why do I have hip pain? You know? You know why? I mean, whatever.

[Dan Le Batard]

Because you were staying fit with CrossFit, and you'd also stay fit if every day you wrestled a bear for an hour. But I wouldn't recommend it for your body.

[Tony Reali]

I was consuming the PTI and around the horn crew will tell you, you vast quantities of spinach juice and kale salads and all these incredible.

[Dan Le Batard]

You're obsessive compulsive, not addictive. Right? Or you were.

[Tony Reali]

I would say I was obsessive compulsive, not addictive. Right. But I was, but it wasn't. I mean, this is. Now, this is haphazard diagnosing, but this is knowing my willpower, like, okay, I'm gonna live the cleanest life I can live. I was consuming so much juice that I gave myself kidney stuff. Stones. How do you get kidney stones? The calcium oxalates is what it was for me that were basically in spinach. I was trying to be Popeye, but they never show you Popeye's kidneys. They only show you his biceps. And now here I am at kidney stones. And what am I doing when I get kidney stones? I'm getting surgery. And what am I doing? I'm doing around the horn that day while then going to the surgery immediately after. Or I'm doing around the horn the day my house burns down because I don't want anyone sitting in my chair. I didn't want Pablo to. One of my best friends in the business sitting in my chair because I knew he was so good. Right. That needed some maturity, that needed some reality checks. So this is. I know you appreciate Norm MacDonald.

[Dan Le Batard]

That was smart, by the way. Pablo would have stolen your chair and.

[Tony Reali]

Would have told you, I don't feel like I'm off here.

[Dan Le Batard]

He wouldn't have looked back either. Would have. He would have ghosted you as soon as you started calling, trying to figure out why he had so much easier on your job.

[Tony Reali]

He's got privilege. Norm MacDonald's line that really resonates with me is, you know, we use the expression surreal often in life. People say this is a surreal feeling, and that's quite the opposite. It's actually a real feeling that you're not open to experiencing because you've created everything to be routine and habit. Okay? So this is part of what is maturity for me, recognizing, don't do that, do that just because you do that every day. Don't do routine, don't do habit. In the same way there's gonna be a routine to life. There has to be. Of course, you know, and you have. There's a reason why you have an A and a B and a C block on your radio show and all these things, right? But intention is the planning that comes in advance, that demonstrates you're at least giving it the inward debate amongst yourself. Back to how we were schooled, you know, or at least intention is the planning that proves my heart is behind this. So whatever it is, at least I made an active decision. I had a primacy of conscience. These are, again, phrases that I've used already in this interview, but I'm showing you I was intentional even in those moments.

[Dan Le Batard]

You've done the work. And I will say to you now, publicly, something that I haven't said to you privately, but I'm sure that, you know, I am legitimately proud of the maturity that I have seen of you, because you have lived over the last 20 years a life that has some depth of experience in it, some depth of pain in it. And the man who stands in front of me now knows himself, knows his strengths, knows his weaknesses, and is a mature human being who has gotten what he wants from life with a sprawling family life where you are a father above all, I think. And it's just. It fills me with an immense amount of pride having gone through pieces of this journey with you. The difficulties in childbirth, the difficulties at work, the difficulties we have in family life, the difficulties with your anxiety. You have grabbed these things and you've turned them into tools that help others with your learning.

[Tony Reali]

That was important. That was, again, intentional in that way. If I'm going to go through something, well, maybe I could help the next person go through something. And you have modeled this for me as well. But to me, me, I build in public, which is an expression people have taken to using. Now, it's literal for me because I was on a TV show for many times, and I had an opportunity. But there is something. It's not a matter of how many you could help, how you could help somebody. It's how many you can help when you're. It puts it in a particle accelerator. But the responses I got when we signed off the TV show that told me, nobody gets that. That was the right move, Tony.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, yeah. Nobody gets the goodbye you got.

[Tony Reali]

Yeah. And then that's why you helped me take a 180. But then that, that sealed the deal for me. You know, I felt that there was value and fulfillment all along, but, you know, it was not. It continues to be nice to do it and it will be nice where I do it next, you know, because I will always reach for that connection. Because I see how that again, puts it in a particle accelerator. It just makes it. You're the next person, that next person does it to the next person. You just see it. It compounds.

[Dan Le Batard]

You asked out loud the question of what am I good at? What is my skill? Obviously you're good at television. I think I'm okay at television. You're good at television, period. But your skill is you're likable. Like, that's your connection point. However it is that you arrive at likable. You are a person on television who people like, even if they don't like your show, even if they don't like your opinions. And I don't think your opinions were so strong as to be obnoxious or abrasive. You know how to be likable. What do you think your skill is? What do you want people to say about you? What would you like for them to say about you? And what. These are three questions. And what is the criticism that can get to you? The criticism that will wound of your public work?

[Tony Reali]

I mean, it comes down to feeling for me, you know, I want to be true to those feelings inside me. But then I want to be able to impart that to demonstrate to people they should be feeling. So. So there's the expression that's overused and I use it again. But people forget what you say, People forget what you do. People remember how you make them feel. That's what I think my skill is that I can remember not how necessarily maybe I make them feel, but how sports makes them feel, or how this game show makes them feel, or how being a brother makes them feel. I think that's my skill. That's what I see. Again, gets back to dynamics.

[Dan Le Batard]

Is that what you want seeing?

[Tony Reali]

Like what? Look, I want people to understand those moments in life that are real. What I was just talking about, not surreal. That's a Feeling. Knowing that this one right here. I'm going to allow myself to feel the reality here. I'm not going to build a wall in front of this experience and make it feel like something else. Comparative thing. We do this in sports all the time. This person's this. No, they're actually just this. They're themselves. You know, they're not. They're not. You know, the next version of. You've already now created a dino DNA from Jurassic Park. So. So I want to. My skill in TV is to make people feel. Now, that's gonna be with, you know, comedians do that and. And. And actors do that and sportscast.

[Dan Le Batard]

But feel good. It's not feel bad. It's not just feelings. It's feel good, I think.

[Tony Reali]

Feel good. Yeah, yeah, of course.

[Dan Le Batard]

Because I make them feel bad, too.

[Tony Reali]

No, I'm not.

[Dan Le Batard]

No, I make them feel bad. Look, I'm okay with that.

[Tony Reali]

If you're watching me feel uncomfortable. No, no, don't do this. Don't. Don't describe. This is. This is a bad, bad thing that came out of Howard Cosell many years ago. People hate watch. Hate watch of it all. All.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'm not trying to be hated. I'd like to be liked. I'm just saying that in the cases where I'm not liked, I understand that there's.

[Tony Reali]

Well, we even did this on pti. And I regret being even part of the hateable. Dan Levitt.

[Dan Le Batard]

Oh, yeah. Ride Homes apologized to me about going.

[Tony Reali]

He has.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, yeah. He said he thought he did that too much at the beginning, so he.

[Tony Reali]

Certainly did too much. But I mean, even. Yeah, well, because I'm happy to hear that. Good. Okay.

[Dan Le Batard]

I was weighing.

[Tony Reali]

Is that not. That was weighing on me. I mean, but that was like. That's not how I would produce TV today. And I understand there's so many silly comments every time you're hating them, but you're watching them and the ratings are up. That is like, I don't know. I want to make a comparison to what it is, but that is just too cheap. You can be smarter about it. You have the job to be good. Right.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's a byproduct, though, of. I'm understanding after 30 years of this, at least in part part, that some of the criticism doesn't have anything to do with me. And so if you're just not indifferent.

[Tony Reali]

If you're feeling about making people feel uncomfortable.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'm just talking about making people feel. You were talking about.

[Tony Reali]

You want to be known as someone making people feel.

[Dan Le Batard]

Right.

[Tony Reali]

But you wanted to make them feel good.

[Dan Le Batard]

You want them to make them feel good? Yes, I'd like to make them feel good. But if they feel bad, I'm not going to take responsibility. If, if they, they feel bad because they didn't like my position on Damian.

[Tony Reali]

Lillard, feel uncomfortable, which it may happen, I want to, to be there and steward and escort them out of that uncomfortable feeling to a reality of that this is a real feeling. So I'm not trying to just shy, to just be blissful because this is what got me in trouble. Blissfully feeling good, trying to make everybody feel good. Right? That's me 10 years ago, 15 years ago. That was why it was so hard to say goodbye to pti, but because I needed to say goodbye to pti. Right. Cause I was walking into a room every day, you know, clapping and cheering and doing that. That's trying to make people feel good. I can make people feel. And if it's uncomfortable, we can get to a space on why that's a goal. That's the goal. That's the goal for the next show or for the future of my career. What would wound me? What wounds me most? What?

[Dan Le Batard]

Criticism. Right, A criticism. For me, it's criticism. It's also helpful. But the stuff that hurts is coming from the people who know you, right? And they have sharp criticism. People whose opinions you respect, who show you things that you didn't know about yourself. Like I found myself over the last five years asking an assortment of people who are honest with me that way. Huh? I'm that. Yeah, I'm that.

[Tony Reali]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I struggled in this last nine months because I'm not the. As much as I love people, the hand glass, glad handing and talking, being political in the office and trying to get that job. And then I started talking about other people's jobs. Right. We had a conversation about this and I wounded myself in the pursuit of trying to put myself out there. Right.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, we don't need to get into the particulars of this, but you felt great remorse because in wanting to handle an unprecedented situation for you, public rejection, where you're going out there and saying things to tell everybody, hey, I'm here, look at me, I'm available.

[Tony Reali]

Shouldn't I be a valuable person in this marketplace? That was my first time trying to do that. And then I saw there were ways I was doing it, that I could have done this better. But I'm just saying. So I wasn't wounded by this. But when you're asking me what people said you gotta be better. You gotta get yourself out there. You love talking to people. Go in a room over there. Yes, I know I could win the room, but it's just like, come on. I'm talking, playing political games and trying to put myself out there. And this is something I despise of other people, let's say. Or that's the stuff I'm like, oh, man, look at this guy. Plays the game and he's. And he's. And he's putting himself out there to maximize himself in ways that I feel are not how I would do it. But what wounds me the most of all, I don't know. I mean, I've been. I am forceful and energetic. And when I still. This is terrible. I'm gonna put this on me. I allow that to come off in a way that people could feel. You know, I'm bullying. That's it. You tell me. You call me a bully. That's how you get to me.

[Dan Le Batard]

Bullying. Not inauthentic bullying. Like if people who think.

[Tony Reali]

Nobody has yet to call me inauthentic. Honestly. So, I mean, that hasn't really happened. But I do know how forceful I am.

[Dan Le Batard]

The reason I say inauthentic is just sometimes a personality is so affable, slapping you on the back, so good at small talk. And other people are so repressed around that and might project onto you. That can't be real. His level of happiness. Happiness can't. His level.

[Tony Reali]

Thank you for raising that. I never considered. No, no. Here's where I were with any criticisms of myself as a person, as a public figure. There was no wound other than when unneeded and overpriced. Maybe because that was something that was like. I mean, where did that come from?

[Dan Le Batard]

Disposable.

[Tony Reali]

Who told Disposable? Who told you that? I guess somebody had to tell you that because whatever. So that hurt. I've been in rooms with every type of person on the planet. I've got along with every type of person on the planet.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's a good one.

[Tony Reali]

So I've never. There's never been a time where it's just like, oh, that. You know when someone calls you woke or something.

[Dan Le Batard]

Woke.

[Tony Reali]

That was the most absurd thing to me when I. Some people started calling me that.

[Dan Le Batard]

Me. Which one hurts more, Disposable or overpriced?

[Tony Reali]

Negotiations are still going. I mean, the overpriced one just like, come on now. What are we doing here?

[Ryan Reynolds]

This episode is brought to you by State Farm.

[Tony Reali]

Sports are all about teamwork. And so is Insurance. Whether you need an in person or digital assist, State Farm is there to help you choose the right coverage for.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Your home, car and more.

[Tony Reali]

Get a game plan that helps fit your life and talk to State Farm today.

[Ryan Reynolds]

State Farm with the assistance.

[Tony Reali]

Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state.

[Dan Le Batard]

I want to, before you get out of here, to tell the story, the love story of you and Sam. Now it starts in the most uproarious way possible. It's you losing.

[Tony Reali]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, let me tell the story, man. Let me tell the story, man. So I told you. Thunderbolt hits me and I'm Love at first sight. I would have married her very quickly or at some point very quickly. I wouldn't have been foolish.

[Dan Le Batard]

Can you tell me about the thunderbolt, though? Can you? Or actually.

[Tony Reali]

Oh, sure. I think it's gotta be.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's gotta be a lightning bolt, right? Because a thunderbolt is just the sound.

[Tony Reali]

Technically, but that's a line from the Godfather, so.

[Dan Le Batard]

Okay, I'm sorry.

[Tony Reali]

It's right. Just step in. Step in there.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes. My bad, my bad. You have show people the back of your phone here just so that they understand how much you love being Italian and a mafioso. And there's Ray Liotta over, over laughing on the back of his phone in Goodfellas.

[Tony Reali]

Anyways, I got very sad when Ray died. Ray and Anthony Bourdain. Anthony Bourdain died.

[Dan Le Batard]

You delivered both of those newses with a bit of pep. Too much pep, too much excitement on. It didn't sound sad. It sounded like it was. It was wrapped in flowers and fireworks.

[Tony Reali]

Like I said, I. I bought hats, T shirts and cell phone cases. Again, why would you do that? When someone passes away. Anthony Bourdain, specifically. You know, I love Matt Kelleher once gave me one of the greatest compliments. He said, you write like Bourdain writes for tv. I was like, wow, that's a good thing. That's a great compliment, right?

[Dan Le Batard]

What is the connection with Bourdain? Is it the combination of authenticity with him tackling the mental health stuff?

[Tony Reali]

So this really hit me hard, though. And, you know, now let me just get back into a space here. He died the same week we lost Amadeo. I didn't, you know, know it at the time because I was really. I was in the hospital with Enzo, you know, and all this stuff. So he died in June 2018. So I didn't even think about. And maybe I didn't know for a month or something like that. That that's what it was. So. And then, you know, you're finally back reading the upper air and it's okay to be affected by the death of someone you don't know. I interviewed him once for Good Morning America. I did a silly game. I was trying to do rogue TV where I would have a second camera lens do it. And I had them play basically a charades game. So I'd been such a fan of his, I knew what I wanted to do. And then they had Nigella Lawson on, who was also pretty perfect. And I was going to have that them charade mime, eating a food. And then the other person had to guess what they were doing. So for Nigella Lawson, of course, I'm having her do spaghetti, you know, because you want Nigella Lawson making a kissy face. And then for him, I had him doing a dish called Ortolan. I hope I'm pronouncing that right, which was something he mentioned in his book. This is a type of quail that is like a baby bird where the French cook it in, like, champagne and they eat it whole, including the baby bird's bones. You've heard this before, and the story is you're supposed to wear a napkin over your face while you're doing it, because God should not even see you delight in something like this. So I had him doing all this. So we shared a real moment together.

[Dan Le Batard]

He hates interviews, or hated interviews.

[Tony Reali]

He hated interviews. And he was really schlepping it out there for whatever was the name of his TV show at the time. But it was 6 in the morning and I'm getting good Bourdain and I'm really around someone I admire. And he was doing his jujitsu at that moment. And he was wiry and he was cool. This is just to say I shared space and air with him once, but I definitely felt the loss of him months after he lost. And of course, it was a death by suicide. So this is an incredible gut punch to me in that somebody who is modeling in so many ways for me, somebody who's going through something like anxiety, but somebody who was navigating life's up and downs in a way that I felt was publicly showing people, you know, life's hard. We're gonna get through this together. And his life ended alone. Death by suicide, man. I mean, I've read everything about it afterwards. I've read the books that his producers have written, still trying to get to that person who was both. He went through different stages of the life where he's the meanest cook. And then he's the tattooed covered guy. And he's a celebrity. He doesn't want to be a celebrity. But the way he wrote, the way he saw it, the way he connected people, how can I connect with people? That started a nugget in my mind on around the Horn again. I'm not elevating this to art form. At ESPN at 5 o' clock, who you got, Panthers or Oilers? But still little bits of other stories, little bits of other parts of our lives. Can I open this up? And I think I tried to do that. And the next show, we'll try to be Bourdain for sports. Right? So Anthony Bourdain, a guy I admire too. You asked me for the thunderbolt.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'm gonna get to Sam in a second. But you made me think of something else. Before we get to the story of your matrimony, your wife. Just a majestic, majestic love. Yeah, it is, it is. But when you mentioned Robin Williams earlier, now you've mentioned Dane. When you mentioned Robin Williams, I remember sort of not being able to quite get my head. The mental health conversation wasn't as prevalent as it is today. So I had some difficulty getting my head around how someone that publicly giant would have the private issues that would surprise people. And my question to you about Smart Dan, you're right.

[Tony Reali]

You're getting to something here.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, I'm wondering if you've had any of these thoughts, first of all, because.

[Tony Reali]

I, I, this is something I'm still working on. You know, I have not had any thoughts. What I had was a very exact feeling around the time my first child was young and my wife was traveling globally where I've talked about this, but publicly. But I'm a little bit hesitant. It may have been called postpartum anxiety by a doctor and maybe I attached it to in the first interviews I did and may have just been generalized anxiety disorder with a postpartum moment or something like that. But I have had the scariest thoughts you can possibly have in that instance. And that's what prepared me and projected me forward into maturity and into talk therapy, into treatment and into Amedeo and everything like that. So that actually was. That is an origin story for me for being out of my skin at one in the morning with an infant in the house, my wife 4,000 miles away and online calling, calling. What is a phone number, not a hotline, but the TV host of me wants to make a joke. I called a hotline and the hotline wasn't There, you know, and having a sleepless night and calling the hotline that morning and talking and rapping. I wasn't too in the sand to know that men could experience anxiety around, around parenting and young birth and whether that's postpartum or not. Again, I'm not a doctor. I'm not even trying to define things. I'm just trying to explain the feelings I was feeling and going to therapy that morning and then doing around the horn. And then my parents did come that day or the next day or sometime at that point. And I was very honest about all that ideation. And now with Robin Williams and with Anthony Bourdain, clearly we're talking about a suicidal ideation, which is not something I have. I have fears of people in my greater family, you know, those were. Whether they were real or not. It is certainly something that has kept me up at night. I have worked with suicide prevention, specifically someone in my life who we know who has talked about it. And I have hosted events. I have a best friend who lost an uncle and I knew that uncle. That's how he's a best friend. Been to concerts with that uncle. And that has resonated. So death by suicide has been something that has occupied part of my headspace and my greater. You know, like, it's almost like. It's not that I'm thinking about it for myself or anything like that, just that this is like an impossible thing for me to get my arms around that it exists in the world that.

[Dan Le Batard]

The solution to your pain would be.

[Tony Reali]

Suicide would be to kill yourself for someone's solution to be at that moment. You know, this is now part of the Catholic faith too. Like what can be a lot of fates, you know, what can be. Can you get to heaven if you die by suicide? And so I actively the things in my life that's one thing. And the second thing is people who live life with disability, mental disability. I've surrounded myself with Special Olympics and things like that because it weighs on me to a degree. This is now transference. All right, if we want wanted to. Like, I feel these feelings in a heightened way that needs to be taken under control a little bit. Like I have to have a second breath in my head saying, now what you're doing now is you are attaching. Like I see a father with a middle aged person with a disability, a mental disability. And I am now into for that father that his life at 63 is still where it would be for someone. And I don't know if that father's Sad about that. I don't know. It may be a wonderful relationship that they have. It very well may be. But for a lot of my life, I could not get to that place. And then I'd done work with Special Olympics and I've done work with suicide for prevention, but specifically for someone like Bourdain or Williams, people I admire and I love the way they worked that room that. I mean, if I could definitely think I said the line, if that's where it ended for Bodain, what hope is there for anybody? You know, like something. A feeling like that. If he was that expressive about how his inner workings and the struggles he had and how the tools he used to get past his struggles, these were type of words that he would use. And it still ended with him in the middle of that night. To me, that is. There is so much sadness to that. Right. The mentor who was teaching people how to model not better behavior because he would never use those words. But one way that could work. Here's one way that could work. Well, it did not work for him that one night. This is something I've taken away from the families who I've been near in those. In events like that. You know, that was a moment. It was a moment. And there's an easy road to say that that defined their existence. I don't believe that to be the case. The ways people in my life who have struggled with things have demonstrated to me and what. And put good into my heart that then I project upon other people what. That's amazing value. So my hardest relationships, I alluded to, relationship with my brother specifically, has affected me in the greatest ways that I can imagine. Amadeo has affected me in ways that now I know I have reached people and what a positive thing that has been.

[Dan Le Batard]

Feelings and connection are important to you. So the thunderbolt story.

[Tony Reali]

I'm in Washington, D.C. for the second week since PTI started. I am in a foreign city. I don't know anything. I'm running through the mall because I got to get my exercise in underneath the Washington Monument. I look out and I see a flag football game that's pretty terrible. These guys need some help. They need an extra player. At least let me go be quarterback for them. Go have a fun game. Come meet me out tonight. Kevin says, Kevin, go out. And there's two women with Kevin at the moment. I walk into a double date. Unbeknownst to me, Kevin's a pretty cool guy. All right, I'm on a double date. Neither is Sam, but Kevin takes Us out on a double date. And it's pretty. There's a Starsky and Hush joke in here. Like, which one do you want? Which one? I don't either. I'll take either. You know, is. What is his. His vibe is giving me. Which I ever. You know, I'm like, neither for me, but thank you. You know. And he's, you know, still moving the night along. And we takes us to a restaurant. Buffalo Billiards is the name of the place.

[Dan Le Batard]

Bar where all the great romance are.

[Tony Reali]

Bar. Because he used to work there. So he can get us in and maybe. And Sam's the waitress. And that's where the lightning bolt hits me, you know, love at first sight, you know, her cheeks, you know, huge dimples in her cheeks, you know, and.

[Dan Le Batard]

You just melted.

[Tony Reali]

And so I. I go up to talk to her, and at that moment, she had already asked Kevin, what's. Who's your friend? So I went up to talk to her, and she already had her number written down on a piece of paper.

[Dan Le Batard]

Wow.

[Tony Reali]

Yeah.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah. She. She don't fuck around.

[Tony Reali]

No, no, no. She. That's not her personality. But I will say that without saying she already talked to Kevin, you know, but she says, come back at the end of the night. You know, I come back, but she's a waitress, so she's still closing a table. Seventeen men at this point, at three in the morning in Washington, D.C. and I'm drinking, you know, at this point, because I. I drank a little. I don't drink at all now, but I'm, like, trying to get the nerve. But that was it. That was our. That. So.

[Dan Le Batard]

No, no, but that's not the story.

[Tony Reali]

But just telling you. Okay, so we're together for all these years now, and I was. Want to marry Sam. And she knows this, and I'm pretty sure she wants to marry me. So we're already talking about rings, we're talking about the idea. Okay. And she tells me at one moment the type of ring she likes. Princess cup, moonstones on the side. Okay, sure. So that's what I'm gonna do. So I talked to my guy in D.C. you got a guy?

[Dan Le Batard]

You got a guy? You got a guy? That's some Ray Liotta shit.

[Tony Reali]

She wants a princess, comes with moonstones. Moonstones. You sure? Yeah. Not really, no. You want your ring to be the star of the show, don't you? You don't want to start the stuff on the side, so. All right. Moonstones. Let's get it. So he gives me the ring. I said, all right. Here you go. Okay, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Now I want to do it in New York, because I want to do it in New York. Now. It doesn't have to be anywhere specific, but I just want to do it on a nice getaway vacation. And we're happy to be going to New York for another friends and engagement party. So now I really cannot do it that night because you can't show up at somebody's engagement party with a. With your own ring. So now it's in a box, in a shoe, in a bag, in the safe at the hotel in New York, the Chambers Hotel. Very nice hotel that was on 57th Street. And we go out all day. Friday night, we have a great night, and I'm with my. My best friend at the top, you know, at the time. I tell him, you know, I got the ring in a box and a shoe in the safe, you know. You doing it this weekend? Yeah, I'm doing it this weekend, man. I'm doing it this weekend. So we go out. He's like, oh, this is hilarious. We go out Saturday morning, and I'm thinking, I'll do it Saturday night in the hotel room. And we walk down fifth Avenue, and you walk past Tiffany's, and you walk past Harry Winston, and, you know, we've talked enough, so now we're just. I'm not running away from these places. And if she. She says, oh, look at that one over there. That one looks great. Oh, that would be the type of ring I would want. It's the exact opposite ring I have in the box of the show. No moonstones, right? You wanted to start a show. So now in my head, I'm like, you know what? Yeah, that's the type of ring I'm gonna go back to my guy. We're gonna just change this up. So now we're in the city.

[Dan Le Batard]

You've canceled your plans.

[Tony Reali]

I've canceled the plans in my head. Whatever. Just go back and we'll just refit this, and that'll be great. So Saturday night, it's a crazy thing, you know, I got this ring in the room, but I'm not doing it. That's all right. Sunday morning. We still have some time before we fly home. It's the Dominican Day parade in New York, which is a big festival, you know, And I'm not gonna walk around with a box in my pocket, you know, as we're all dancing. So, my God, I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place right now, Dan. And I say to the Manager, a literal rock inside. If he could just lock this in the safe behind the desk. Yes, Mr. Reality, whatever you need. They give me a ticket, which is very comforting. I've got a t ticket now. I don't have the ring, but I have a ticket. So we're. We're established. We go out drinking, dancing all day. Dominican Day parade. We're feeling good. Yes, babe, let's just stop by the hotel. They got our bag. It's got our apartment keys, car keys in it. Yeah, yeah. Keep the meter running. She's in the cab. I go inside. Oh, Mr. Realy, good to see you. How's everything going? Yes, this is my ticket. Of course. They open up the safe. The safe behind them is absolutely empty. Okay, so now I have a. I have, you know, A1 steak sauce. It gets you here. It gets you right here. There's like a little pang of something in my, like, wait a second there, wait, is the ring. Wait a second. That's not insured. Wait a second. You know, no, Mr. Reality brought it up to your room. Funny story. I checked out of the room 12 hours, 10 hours ago. They go upstairs, they come back down empty handed. Now it's, you know, no, Mr. Reality, we moved it to the backup safe. Backup safe? By definition, a safe is supposed to be okay on its own. So now it's really clear to me. I gave the keys of a Maserati to somebody and said, all right, see you later, and said, come on back whenever. You know, they're gone, they're gone. Sam's also been in the cab. Now she's like, what are you doing? The meter's at like 50 bucks, you know, so now she could see, like, I'm sick. And she's just like, what? No, no, our car keys, our apartment keys, we can't get into. Why don't you go outside and move the flight bag just for a couple hours, see if we can get you. She goes outside and I say, okay, listen to me, and listen to me carefully to this gentleman. Inside that bag there was a shoe. Inside that shoe there was a box. Inside that box there was a ring. I've yet to fully engage myself with my girlfriend. She starts crying, which is not the greatest sign that we're gonna get this together. Mr. Realy. Go have a drink or something. I'm having a drink. I'm gonna start throwing up on the side of the street. I go outside, I'm getting ready to tell Sam. And out comes running the New York City porter who is central casting fat Italian Guy with a mustache that look like a walrus. He's running, and he's got the big belly. And we found the bag. We found the fucking bag. It's at LaGuardia Airport. LaGuardia Airport. Two couples had just checked out right before us. They gave them two tickets, or they gave them one ticket, and they gave them both bags in the safe. They got to curbside check in at LaGuardia, and they called the hotel, and that was the only hotel was looking for, like, underneath pieces of paper. And we got in the town car with the general manager, and the girls were making small talk. This is. This is a story of queens. There's a lot of. And I'm like. There's a lot of Greeks. Everybody knows that my head's out the window, like I'm, you know, a Labrador. And we get to curbside check in at the airport, and I see this couple from Iowa. And I always now associate people from Iowa as good people. And they said, is this your bag, sir? And I totally bowl them over. Just push them to the side. Rip open the bag, feel a little bit better. I see the shoe. Rip open the shoe, Feel a little better. See the box. Rip open the box. Pull Sam in between the men's and women's bathroom at LaGuardia Airport.

[Dan Le Batard]

Romantic.

[Tony Reali]

And I propose right there.

[Dan Le Batard]

Did she like the ring?

[Tony Reali]

She. She loved the ring. She wore that ring for many years. And we upgraded after. After a while, I. And. And we survived. And if you can make it through that, you can make it through anything.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, a closing note, though, because I want. I mean, I do love so Sam, to the degree I know her, I do believe she's a bit hard to know. She's just. She's got a stoicism about her. But explain to me the rock that she is to you, because I know her to be a rock friend.

[Tony Reali]

Yeah, I mean, it's about strength for me. I'm a strong person, and I feel that way. But my wife has an inner strength that defies exactly how she came to be. You know, she's a Peace Corps baby. Her mom, her family is half Moroccan and half white. New Jersey.

[Dan Le Batard]

The most magical of Africa.

[Tony Reali]

Morocco. The New Jersey of Africa. So Dad's in the Peace Corps. You know, mom is a teacher, but a villager family. You know, these are the Berber people of North Africa. The tribe. Right. And that was, you know, a wonderful union, of course. And also that's gonna have its problems. And that then became, you know, dad and now a stepmom and Mom Living close and all these things. And then she had spent time, you know, of course, with both. And then she had spent time back in. This was in Baltimore, Maryland, where she grew up. But then she spent time back in Morocco and then there was maybe school year missed and there was. There was certainly a disruption for any young person and the strength, inner strength to get through that. And then the intelligence and the brilliance is amazing. And, you know, speaks so many different languages and had an interest in investigative journalism, which I find to be.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, you respect and admire her for.

[Tony Reali]

Her career and for intellectualism and for foxiness and for parenting. And I needed that as a co parent. And, you know, the good times are great. The great times are the best ever and the stinky times are manageable. And that's a goal. That's now what I write on wedding cards. If you want a TV button there.

[Dan Le Batard]

I mean, I'd have my TV button. It's aspirational, the marriage that you two have. And I also think I have this right, although my information. I don't have enough information to surmise this, but I feel like you would need to lean on her more emotionally than she would need to lean on you.

[Tony Reali]

Right. I mean, that's clearly true and it has been true the last nine months as she used her business acumen most of all to figure out how does somebody like myself not be in the situation. It was in eight months ago when I got the news around the Horn was ending. And the same day I'm reading the Hot Ones is selling for millions upon millions of dollars. Great show, incredible host, aspirational host. And 200 episodes was selling for millions upon millions. And I was saying goodbye after 4900 and I didn't have IP at that moment, you know, so you're not gonna be in that industry instance ever again. And the literal sleeves rolling up. I mean, love the way she walks.

[Dan Le Batard]

She's a badass.

[Tony Reali]

The way she rolls up her sleeves and then like this. So now I am. I have taken 300 meetings in the last nine months and I've. I've enjoyed a lot of them. And I've loathed thinking about taking more as I win rooms and get incredible feedback about how those rooms were great. And I never doubted I could win the room room, but it's just like, here I go again, you know, But I'm not going again on my own. I'm going again with her.

[Dan Le Batard]

I will tell you, though, that I pulled her aside on your last day at around the Horn. I didn't need to say this to her, but I'm like, don't let anyone take his power. And don't. And don't let.

[Tony Reali]

She didn't need to hear that.

[Dan Le Batard]

No, she doesn't need to hear that. And I'm like, don't let anyone fuck him. And she doesn't need to hear that either. But what I remember about that day for you is the very real and palpable joy I felt seeing her with your kids. Knowing what. Knowing a fraction of what that journey was for you. Having that there in the center of.

[Tony Reali]

Your dad's work's not gonna be dad's work anymore, you know, because that's all. That's what they know for it, you know, And. And you'll know. I mean, I don't even think she saw the end of that show. She was with the kids and they were gone already. I mean, I think she's seen two episodes show. It's never. She's not a sports fan. I mean, it is nothing to do with our relationship. Relationship. Other than she knows that I love it and performing it. And I think she's. She's now. I mean, it's a little sickening that she's got awful announcing on her homepage now or some.

[Dan Le Batard]

It is. But. But. But I do love that while she might not have an interest in this, the ingredients you will find in love all the time. The best kinds of love are understanding and acceptance. And she meets you there on the things once.

[Tony Reali]

What a trivia Christmas party. Trivia at her work. As they were asking which country this is, she was working in emerging markets. Which country has an AK47 on its flag? And I said Mozambique. And I believe that's still correct. I believe it's still correct. And I won that in the West African business. So let's give some credit that I was also dominating her. Her work.

[Dan Le Batard]

I don't think that credit is necessary. I think that shitty punctuation.

[Tony Reali]

She held what we held that over.

[Dan Le Batard]

I think I'm gonna make you feel good again by doing this. No, I'm not gonna edit it out. I love you. You know I love you. You tower over me in a number of different ways. And my only regret in the entire time I've known you and this interview is that we didn't spend the entire thing holding hands like this. Two hours like this, we could have broken the mold on how these interviews are done. Intimacy.

[Tony Reali]

You are enough, Dan. You're just the perfect amount.

[Dan Le Batard]

I love you, buddy.

[Tony Reali]

I love you too.

[Dan Le Batard]

Thank you for spending this time with us. And thank you for being my friend for a quarter century. A quarter century. A quarter century.

[Tony Reali]

You look better now.

[Dan Le Batard]

I was so bloated, so inflamed. And I was introduced as the hateable Dan Levitar again. I will never forgive you. And ride.

[Tony Reali]

I was known for that. I certainly was. You know what? I was. I was a bit. I. I loved Perez Prado music. I wanted us to clear Perez Prado and then we had to come up with our own little version of that. That wasn't him.

[Dan Le Batard]

But I wish I could go lower than this. This is the lowest this chair goes.

[Tony Reali]

I assure you. You can go lower than you.

[Dan Le Batard]

I can. It doesn't. It doesn't go any lower. Goodbye. He's one of the best. Soon you will see him bigger, better than ever. Thank you, Tony.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Chris, remember when last week you tried to describe a bar as a local watering hole? It's how an establishment where you enjoy beverages should be called. It should feel like a local watering hole. It's a local watering hole.

[Tony Reali]

Even if.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Even if it's like a chain, it's still like. It's not a one off bar. No, still your local watering hole. As long as it's within a couple of miles. Me and you have been to many a watering hole. Yeah, we have shared some Miller Light. Actually, we did that this weekend. We watched the Panthers game together. And there's nothing better than pair with it. Ice cold Miller Light. That's right. Miller Light is going to be everywhere around our party. Sometimes you get the draft. I know there's a lot of options, but I love the can. The sound of that pop.

[Tony Reali]

Oh, I could just. I just got goosebumps.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Jeremy. It's sort of like the day. Bow.

[Tony Reali]

Bow.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Can you believe this? Miller Light turns 50 this year. Doesn't look a day over 30. Nothing like an established brand like that. Looking that good.

[Tony Reali]

No.

[Ryan Reynolds]

No Work done. Just looks great. Letting the grays come in right around the temples. That gold and then that golden. And look, the golden years of Miller Lite are just ahead. That's five decades of cookouts, laughs, and ice cold moments that never miss Miller light. Great taste. 96 calories. Go to millerlight.com beach to find delivery options near you. Or you can pick up some Miller Light pretty much anywhere they sell beer. Cheers to 50 years of Miller time. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.