For all the screaming I’ve done in my journalism career, my lasting legacy might be the number of times I have been shut up.
Would you believe roughly 1,758 times in the last 22 years?
It’s that damn mute button. It was invented by the originators of the ESPN game show “Around the Horn” and used with embarrassing frequency on me, arguably the most muted panelist in the show’s nearly 23-year history.
According to statistics tracked for the last seven years by Caroline Willett, one of the show’s smart producers, I’ve been muted an average of once per appearance, most among all regular panelists, each mute emanating from the host’s push of a button that vaporized my voice every time I said something stupid.
For more than two decades, I apparently spewed plenty of stupid.
I would brag on the Lakers, mute. I would predict victory for the Dodgers, mute. I would question just what the hell Woody Paige was talking about, mute.
I was muted so much, athletes would chide me by pushing an imaginary button when I asked a question.
I was muted so much, my own mother would sometimes interrupt my thoughts during the deepest of heartfelt conversations with a giggly “Mute! Mute!”
The mute was maddening, but the mute was magnificent, the daily humbling of a haughty hack, an humiliating dose of accountability in a world dominated by thoughtless hot takes.
Sadly, that slice of silence has been forever silenced.
“Around the Horn” turns out its lights this week after 4,953 shows — more than 4,000 more than “The Simpsons” — with ESPN killing the afternoon staple because, well, the bosses just got tired of us.
Their loss.
They’re canceling more than a show, they’re shuttering a miracle.
The idea that anybody would want to watch four full-of-it sportswriters from four different parts of the country spout their opinions in a chase for points was outlandish from the start. When I joined the show five months after its debut, it was surely the most criticized 30 minutes in the history of television.
But somehow, thanks to a herculean effort led by executive producer Erik Rydholm, coordinating producer Aaron Solomon, producer Josh Bard and host Tony Reali, we survived. It turns out, folks actually liked watching real-life wisdom from ink-stained wretches.
They liked hearing Tim Cowlishaw talking about the Dallas Cowboys with adhesive tape still sticking to his shoes from his previous day’s walk through the Cowboys locker room. They liked hearing Bob Ryan and Jackie MacMullan talk about basketball from the depths of the Boston Garden. They liked hearing J.A. Adande deliver counterpunches from inside the Lakers locker room, and Frank Isola from Madison Square Garden, and Israel Gutierrez from the Heat in South Beach, and Kevin Blackistone from the show’s base in Washington, D.C.
And they liked hearing Woody Paige talk about anything, particularly when, as mentioned earlier, he had no idea what the hell he was talking about.
The show was initially different from other shows on ESPN because, instead of television personalities, it featured sportswriters who still trolled the trenches and battled the scrums and told their credible truths from the heart of bare-knuckled reporting.
Who would want to watch that? Lots of folks, it turns out. College kids in their dorms after classes, NBA referees in their hotel rooms before games, and pit bosses every afternoon in Las Vegas, where “Around the Horn” was seemingly aired on every television in every casino, leading to some ill-advised betting on a show that had been taped hours earlier.
(True story: Two hours before the show aired, Paige would call his mother and tell her who won, and she would proceed to win bets with her unsuspecting cronies.)
We were even big with Cirque du Soleil, whose acrobats would watch us every afternoon before their shows, a fact I learned one night when a painted goblin climbed on my seat and leaned down and shouted, “Plaschke!”
The ratings were always stronger than most of the network shows, the anecdotal popularity never seemed to wane, and the scope of viewers never ceased to amaze, from TSA agents on their break to retirement homes at dinner to President Obama himself.
The show eventually evolved to include young and sharp ESPN personalities who battered us old folks with refreshing wit and smart takes, stars like Bomani Jones and Pablo Torre and Mina Kimes and Clinton Yates and Sarah Spain and, more recently, Courtney Cronin and Harry Lyles Jr. and David Dennis Jr.
I took the brunt of the cool kids’ jabs, I was the most un-hip person in the cast, the other three panelists would sometimes engage in a pop culture discussion of which I recognized about two words.
But I was proud that the show evolved, expanded and enlightened. Inspired by Reali, we became one of the only sports shows on television to tackle issues of racism, sexism, homophobia and mental health. We stopped shouting. We started listening. We embraced change. We grew up. The show you watched in its final week was far different from the show that debuted on Nov. 4, 2002, there being but one constant.
I always stunk. I was always the worst. Out of the 61 people who served as panelists — would you believe Lil Wayne once sat in my chair? — I was the biggest punching bag. Although I rank third in appearances, I rank 23rd in win percentage, triumphing just 24.3% of the time.
I am often asked to explain the show’s bizarre scoring system. I will forever have no idea. I just know that the fewest points were always awarded to me.
When the Cubs won the 2016 World Series after a 108-year drought, I was docked 108 points because I had long since declared them dead.
When the 111-win Dodgers lost in the first round of the playoffs in 2022, I was docked 111 points because I had already pronounced them champions.
The show’s brilliant staff tried to prop me up, they really did. It just never worked. Willett would give me special statistics and I would forget them. Bard would whisper funny lines into my earpiece and I would botch them. Director John Dursee would remind me to brush the doughnut crumbs off my lapel and I stayed messy. Associate director Myriam Leger would give me pre-show inspirational talks and I would still get flattened.
One of the reasons I lost so much was because my catchphrase was “It’s over,” even though the beauty of sports is that it is rarely over. But that phrase was no gimmick. I’m that fool who really believes the minute one team looks better than its opponent, the series is over. I earned those mutes honestly.
I also shamelessly supported the local teams, leading to the nickname “Homer.” In my writing, I am often derided by readers as being too tough, but in front of a national television audience, as a panelist from Los Angeles, I felt a responsibility to stick up for SoCal. I always wondered if the locals noticed, then one night before a Sparks game against the Phoenix Mercury, women’s basketball’s GOAT Diana Taurasi approached me and, as a Chino native, she thanked me for always having Los Angeles’ back. I still get chills thinking about that.
I am moved to tears by many “Around the Horn”-inspired moments over the years, the show becoming my second family with Reali serving as the doting uncle with a crazy collection of siblings who never muted their support.
They were there for the victories — whenever I won an award, they publicly bragged about it as if it were their award. They were there for the struggles — when my lifelong battles with stuttering surfaced, they never said a word, working around me in ways that empowered me to keep talking.
They were there in my darkest hours — when my parents died, they let me win my next show so I could use the 30-second face time to memorialize them. They were also there in my oddest hours — I once wore an argyle tie for an entire year in hopes of impressing a certain woman, and they never made me change.
In recent months they have been there for me in my publicized struggles to deal with the wildfire trauma. They even stopped using a flaming background for hot takes out of respect for my pain.
My mother used to watch the show with a glass of wine, declaring “Around the Horn’s” time slot as her happy hour. It was also my happiest of times, and I will forever feel blessed to be part of something so groundbreaking, so illuminating, so empowering and so much fun
Al Michaels once called us “gasbags on parade.”
Well, shoot, I’m proud to be a gasbag and, as we parade into the darkness having changed the American sports media landscape forever, at least I can finally say unequivocally, “It’s …”
Mute!
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