ESPN baseball writer shares love for 'Around the Horn'

You will rarely hear a bad word said about Around the Horn from ESPN talent who has worked on the show. Clinton Yates of Andscape and ESPN Daily is no exception.

In an interview on Sports Business Journal’s Sports Media Podcast released Wednesday , Yates praised ATH for the impact it had on his career and bringing the best out of him professionally.

“I have learned more from the constant influx of opinions from respected journalists from not just different publications but different places, different generations,” Yates said. “So it’s so much more than just what you see come airtime that goes into making that show and goes into being part of that.”

Yates said the jokes and chatter during recordings and the real-life camaraderie in press boxes and at sporting events among panelists is irreplaceable.

But as a Washington, D.C., native who started as a sports journalist while studying at Miami University in Ohio, Yates has an even more personal bond with the show. ATH launched while Yates was in college, and he loved it so much that he started cold-calling the panelists and host Tony Reali to be on his college radio show.

Now, as one of the more veteran panelists on ATH , he feels incredibly lucky.

“It’s special to me in a way that I don’t know it’s going to be special to other people, and I have no problem with that,” Yates said. “It is where I’ve had the most fun as a professional in this gig, just in terms of everything that it’s gotten me, whether it’s shoutouts at airports, whether it’s knowing people when I go into clubhouses and locker rooms because they’ve just plain seen the show and they don’t mind talking to me … invaluable resource.”

Yates related being an ATH regular to being in a Power 5 football conference where competing against the best makes you a better team.

“It’s like being at one of the better schools in a conference because everybody else there is so good that how you compare to each other is one thing, but you can tell as soon as you get to some of these other places … folks just don’t have it,” Yates said. “And if you work for ATH , you’ve gotta have it.”

All the great ATH panelists have similar stories of sports figures respecting them more once they appeared, forming lifelong friendships with fellow panelists, and honing their craft as journalists all through the little half-hour sports game show each afternoon on ESPN.

[ The Sports Media Podcast ]

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