Pablo Torre had worked with Dan Le Batard for many years at ESPN, but most recently made the move to join him at Meadowlark Media. While Torre is still doing some work for ESPN, he has also found a place where he enjoys working with the people that he works with.
Torre was a guest on Le Batard’s South Beach Sessions podcast and it was a powerful hour-plus conversation. Torre told Le Batard that he didn’t get what The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz was about until he became a part of the show.
“I didn’t listen to your show before I was on your radio show. I had heard it, I was a guest once or twice. I was shedding the exoskeleton of literary sportswriter. When I came in and realized what the f*** you guys were doing, it changed my perspective on what this job could be. The fact that this moved so quickly, that it’s light, easy, and fun, it literally was not dreamable for my parents that this would actually be more worthwhile than anything that was pain.
“The reason I went from full-time Disney employee who they wanted to do the shows that I was doing. I have nothing bad to say about ESPN on that front. They believed in me. The fact I went from that to working for and with you and giving up healthcare while I have a 3-year-old is nuts. Who could have ever thought that?”
Torre mentioned that one of the reasons he likes working with Le Batard is that he gets to work with people who he loves and that he wanted to be a part of their family.
“In an uncertain future in which we don’t know what icebergs will be remaining, I want to work with people that I love, that seem to have figured something out about how this could be. I wanted to be a part of your family. That was fundamentally the decision that I made. Yes, great, I can do some TV stuff, stay at ESPN, I don’t want to minimize that. That is so important to me. I’m here because I love sports, but that’s not why I’m staying. I’m staying because I love these people. Those feelings are in my naive brain, a better business model than let me serve you sports wherever you can get them with these takes.
“I want to be the neighbor to this house, I don’t want to be off across the country. I want to be a wing to this bizarre estate because so much of the engineering to this business comes from a place of attention, manipulation, and trying to engineer habits and it comes from the artificial and you start the other way. You start from what’s inside and people feel that. I feel that and that’s what drew me to this.”
During the interview, Le Batard did talk about how when he used to write stories, he would know if it was good enough if the story met his standards. He mentioned that when Torre asked him what he is most confident in being better than anyone in the industry.
“It is because if it meets my standard, I know it’s good enough. I give it to editors and I’m like this isn’t going to have to be changed. I’m not going to have to fight you on much. Whenever I was handing something in to one of these people who were at the top of the industry, if it met my standards, I knew it would meet theirs. Mine is a discerning taste when it comes to writing.
“When I know I have written well, that’s the most immune I am to any doubt…I’ve got a pretty good idea when we are speaking into microphones whether I’m giving the audience something that will be objectively interesting to the average person. Nowhere is it more honed than writing.”
Also, Le Batard revealed about Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser that there aren’t many people that the duo both agree to work with, but that Le Batard and Torre are two of the people that share that rare honor.
“People don’t know this about Kornheiser and Wilbon. They are between them beyond being very different, there are very few people that both of them are willing to work with. I am one and you are one and I just remember after you had written 5-6 articles, telling you because I saw you were on the same path, get out of writing without having to do the noble writing of pouring yourself into the most challenging thing and then judge all the TV and radio people for choosing the cotton candy instead of the crossword puzzle.”
