Pythons, peppers, pirate flag raised. Behind scenes of Le Batard’s 24-hour marathon show
The 24-hour broadcast marathon ended with the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz family and crew as high as they could be on Saturday, literally and euphorically.
They crowded onto the roof of The Clevelander hotel, onto a makeshift pirate ship — the merry band both elated and exhausted.
A flag bearing the letters DK was raised on the ship, symbol for DraftKings’ three-year, $50 million sponsorship of the Le Batard show and Meadowlark Media, the content company formed by two ESPN expatriates, Le Batard and the Worldwide Leader’s former president, John Skipper.
WE SAIL, read a giant sign painted on the side of the South Beach hotel.
Confetti cannons blew and champagne corks popped.
“We’d arrived,” Le Batard said of the moment, as the revelry went on around him. “We’d arrived at something that was both a finish line and a starting point.”
Twenty-four hours earlier, as noon Friday approached, it all began with the show’s leader weeping in his small studio, trying to find his composure, minutes before the cameras would be live and the broadcast would begin.
“I was sobbing in the chair 10 minutes before we started,” admitted Le Batard. “There were no nerves. It was joy and gratitude. We’d arrived at something. It was important for me to have us be able to be a viable creative center in the city that I love.”
The continuous 24-hour show was unprecedented for Le Batard and therefore how it turned out could not be predicted.
“I’m really proud of us,” Dan said, as ocean breezes swept in and the celebrating went on midday Saturday. “We did high and low and sank into our mistakes and made laughter contagious. We exist in an intimate space in peoples’ heads and they invite us in.”
Though much of the broadcast on the Le Batard And Friends’ YouTube channel occurred in the very late or wee hours, DraftKings and Meadowlark hope the viewership might top 1 million when final numbers are crunched.
Just as Le Batard bet on himself in leaving ESPN in January, he bet on the fierce loyalty of his fans. He won there, too, as the army that made his show often the No. 1 sports podcast in the country ravenously consumed the marathon variety show of the 24-hour experiment.
It was an undulating roller coaster of sublime and serious, with heavy doses of ridiculousness.
I was there in the middle of it for all 24 hours, save for a few one-hour power naps, taking notes and trying to chronicle the chaotic chronology.
I tied Stugotz’s cummerbund in the back as he dressed in a white suit to begin the show by leading a marching band to nowhere. (It was the Miami Heat’s house band). Stu wore a red circus hat and held a white feather duster. (Or perhaps it was a toilet brush borrowed from one of the hotel rooms?)
Gonzalo (Papi) Le Batard, myself and Juju Gotti posed up on the pirate ship to reintroduce Anthony (Tony) Calatayud as a member of the Shipping Container.
Le Batard and Skipper shared a moment together in the main studio at 11:48 a.m. Friday. In the Shipping Container’s back studio Mike Ryan was blasting the show’s unofficial leaving-ESPN theme song, George Michael’s “Freedom.”
“It was one helluva ride to get us here,” Le Batard tells listeners as the show begins.
Chris Cote is quickly sent to the Tub of Leaking Confidence after an on-air flub.
Billy Gil is sent walking into the ocean.
Miami band Cortadito is playing downstairs.
Papi, myself and Amin Elhassan are manning a bank of fake telephones, telethon-style. Amin never seemed to be without a cup in his hand. (Odds are it never contained milk). Amin tells a caller who isn’t there that he guarantees Kawhi Leonard will be in a Heat uniform next season.
Rasheed Wallace phones into the show from a rented RV. The Shipping Container chants for him to honk the horn. He does. It is a poodle’s yip of a honk. There are 27,000 people watching live at that moment.
ESPN allows Mina Kimes to appear on the show playing a witch in a Roy Bellamy “Roy’s Realm” segment. Roy reveals his wife is expecting their second child, gender as yet unknown.
Bob Costas joins in remotely, on Zoom. Then Jim Rome does.
Zoo Miami’s Ron Magill arrives with containers holding a giant bullfrog, a large owl and a 12-foot, 100-pound yellow Burmese python.
I am goaded to hold the bullfrog. Expecting wet and slippery, I get dry and leathery. After handing it back over Magill instructs me to immediately go wash that hand before touching my eyes.
Jemele Hill and Michael Smith, two more ESPN expatriates, are on now.
Pat Riley is on and, meandering, lapses into a story involving life’s inspiration from Zig Ziglar.
Charles Barkley is on next, and unabashedly drunk on tequila.
(Travis Kelce was supposed to be next, but Barkley went long and Travis evidently wouldn’t wait).
Pat Sajak next! Watching from another room, I hear Sajak reference “Gunsmoke,” the’60s TV western. My wheelhouse! (I end up at a microphone talking The Andy Griffith Show with Pat Sajak).
There are hilarious appearances by Mike Schur and then Bill Lawrence and then Hank Azaria’s Jim Brockmire.
“Congratulations for whatever the hell it is you got going on here,” Brockmire tells Le Batard.
The prestigious 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. hour is given to our own Greg Cote Show podcast, which will be out in podcast form Monday morning — with a special bonus introductory.
The marathon show managed to have fun even when it was serious.
Kate Fagan and Tom Haberstroh, who both have dealt with ALS in their families, were on to talk basketball but also to raise awareness and money to fight the deadly Lou Gehrig’s Disease. (Fagan lost her father to ALS and just wrote the book, “All the Colors Came out”).
To help spur donations they pledged to eat a world’s-hottest Carolina Reaper pepper if the amount raised topped $44,444.44, because Gehrig’s number was 4.
Le Batard Show fans put the total almost triple that, over $116,000.
I promised to eat a Carolina Reaper, too. My wife saw that on the air. She pledged a $1,000 donation if I would not eat the pepper. (I have never loved her more).
Fagan tried to explain the feeling of eating the pepper:
“When I was in high school my appendix ruptured and I was rushed to the hospital. But this was more painful. It goes down your throat and into your esophagus and lands in your stomach, attaches to your nerves and makes them think you’re on fire. I was actually in the rest room for two hours trying to go to a different place.”
She more happily described what the 24-hour show meant to the fight against ALS.
“Trying to get awareness around ALS -- historically people don’t want to engage because it’s scary,” Fagan said. “So it’s hard to get that cool factor, to do a walk or raise money. What Le Batard was able to do was take their brand, which is infused with cultural cache, and lend it to the ALS cause. Them saying, ‘We’re pointing you here’ is a huge moment. ‘Oh now I know about that.’ Le Batard is cool and now supporting this cause is cool.”
At 11:23 a.m. on Saturday, there was a last-day-of-school giddiness around the second floor studios at The Clevelander but also a feel of exhaustion. For Le Batard it was physical, but also emotional.
“Carry me home,” he said on the air.
Forty minutes later he’s up on that rooftop, marathon accomplished, confetti on the floor, scent of champagne in the air.
The leaving ESPN. The pirate ship free agency. The windfall deal with DraftKings. It’s been a lot.
“You know me, I’m a sports writer,” Dan said. “The end of my destination was to be a columnist for the Miami Herald. None of this was planned. A lot of my friends have come to my rescue during a difficult time. Starting a business during a pandemic. I’ll never be able to repay what that did to me.”
The ocean breeze. The pirate ship’s flag at full staff on the rooftop. The friends who are the family he laughs with at work are all around him.
“The view from the mountaintop s always better shared,” he says.
This story was originally published June 5, 2021 at 4:49 PM.
