This week on the Sports Media Podcast, one of ESPN’s best voices, Clinton Yates, joins the show to talk about his daily podcast, the state of DC sports and more, along with SBJ’s Austin Karp.
Yates, the third host of “ESPN Daily” who took over from Pablo Torre in March, talked about his approach to the show, including “elevating his friends” and highlighting the areas they cover at the network (and beyond). He also detailed what he considers to be his most impactful show, a conversation he had with Roy Wood Jr. about the MLB’s Willie Mays tribute game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama on June 19. He was planning the show while watching a minor league game at Rickwood when he heard the news that Mays had passed away and called producer Alexander Hyacinth in tears, asking what he should do. Hyacinth told him to report whatever came to mind on the field, so Yates recorded about 30 seconds of whatever came to mind on his cell phone. He used that to frame the discussion he had afterward about the Wood Jr.-Rickwood game.
Yates also said the Rickwood game shouldn’t become a “Willie Mays Classic” or annual celebration, pointing to Reggie Jackson’s painful experience playing there. “Maybe we shouldn’t reopen those old wounds in Birmingham,” Yates said. “We learned a lot from Rickwood, it’s not about celebrations, it’s about baseball telling its own story. … There are things we need to work on before we rip off the band-aid.” The All-Star Game would be a better way to honor Mays, with Ted Williams saying, “They invented the All-Star Game for Willie Mays.”
Yates, a longtime reporter in the Washington, DC area, also spoke about what’s been going on with his local pro teams. He talked about Ted Leonsis’ attempt to move the Monumental teams (Capitals, Mystics, Wizards) to Virginia and how it was a “failure” and “failed.” He said the ideal new owner for the Nationals would be “someone who really loves baseball,” drawing parallels between what’s happening in nearby Baltimore and David Rubenstein’s purchase of the Orioles. Yates also talked about why “Around the Horn” is so special to him, why he enjoys it so much, and how he plans to get to the bottom of an incident that caused such a stir at the Paris Games.
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