Throughout the 20 years in which The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz has been on the airwaves, there have been a variety of recurring segments that have created perdurable moments and memories. Tim Kurkjian, the award-winning baseball reporter for ESPN, has been a frequent guest on Le Batard’s program throughout that time and recently hosted him on his podcast, Is This A Great Game, Or What?, proverbially turning the tables.
During the appearance, Kurkjian explained that Le Batard is the most clever person he has ever met other than journalist Steve Rushin and how that is really saying something. On top of that, he mentioned how his participation in a specific game from the show embeds itself within his professional career.
“I get more comments on the ‘Looks Like’ game than anything I have ever done in my entire career,” Kurkjian said. “I’ve covered the game for 45 years, and more people want to talk to me about this than anything else.”
Le Batard apologized for those who are uninitiated in this regard and elaborated that the visuals within this game are exceptional. Within his explanation, he recalled how one of the submissions delineated how former NBA head coach and ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy looks like the Queen of Hearts, resulting in laughter from Kurkjian and his son, Jeff, with whom he hosts the podcast. Over the years broadcasting with a variety of entities, some of which included 790 The Ticket, ESPN Radio and Meadowlark Media, Le Batard’s program has built and managed to retain its audience that appreciates the way in which the show discusses sports.
“When we interacted with our audience and the stickiness of the audience that makes that segment something that makes them connect with you in the street, that’s quite a compliment for you to say that it’s more than anything in your career when your career has a lot of sticky stuff in it, but it’s our audience of clever, funny people who appreciate that sports can be covered a little bit differently and also enjoy the competition of trying to be more clever than each other,” Le Batard explained.
“That competition stirred some really extraordinary writing, and some writing from people who might not be writers, but might also not be comfortable being funny in public because of whatever it is — insecurities are about public speaking — so they were able to sort of quietly compete on clever in the shadows anonymously.”
Adam McKay and Mike Schur are people who Le Batard considers to be friends of the show and “responsible for a generation of comedy.” Despite their skill and expertise in this genre, Le Batard depicted how it is one of the great frustrations in McKay’s career that he has been unable to write something that gets into this tournament. From there, Kurkjian spoke about how another “Looks Like” submission about Van Gundy set the tone in which he was portrayed as looking like “a coroner who did an autopsy while holding a ham sandwich,” enacting more laughter on the program.
“Jeff, do you think that Adnan Virk looks like the first man that James Bond sees as he crawls across the shore after surviving an explosion who says, ‘Welcome to Tangier, Mr. Bond’?,” Le Batard said.
This prompted Kurkjian to reminisce on when he was calling a game with Virk from Oriole Park at Camden Yards where New York Yankees superstar outfielder Aaron Judge hit a home run to center field that he felt was a “laser shot.” Before it officially crossed the outfield fence, Kurkjian started to laugh because of how hard Judge struck the baseball, along with Virk’s call in which he recited, “Welcome to Tangier.”
“Le Batard the next day calls me and brings me on the air,” Kurkjian said. “Was I laughing at how hard Aaron Judge hit the ball? That’s what the ‘Looks Like’ game does. It spurs home run calls and follow-up calls on The Dan Le Batard Show.”
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