Back in December, Dan Le Batard and ESPN announced that Le Batard’s last day with the company would be January 4. That would mark an end to the ESPN run of radio show The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz, and would also mark an end to the time of Le Batard and his father Gonzalo “Papi” Le Batard on ESPN TV show Highly Questionable (which began life as Dan Le Batard Is Highly Questionable, but is now set to continue on without the Le Batard clan). That led to plenty of tributes, including a couple here, and on Monday, Le Batard and company made their exits. On the radio side, Le Batard played George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” (which he also played on Dec. 4 after ESPN put out a release that he would be leaving in January), then ended with discussion of Greg Cote’s toenails that ran right into the network hard out (which fits with a couple of long-running show themes, from mocking Cote to hitting that out in the middle of a discussion):
A perfect ending to the @LeBatardShow. Just.. running up against the hard out and that's it. pic.twitter.com/OPQDEBF1JW
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) January 4, 2021
And on the TV side, Le Batard and Papi went out in a blaze of glory, with Le Batard introducing a segment involving some of their best clips over the years (one of which is shown above), and Papi adding in his own goodbye:
https://twitter.com/HQonESPN/status/1346184666710159361
Le Batard and his collaborators certainly made an incredible contribution to ESPN over the last decade, and it’s neat to see him get to go out this way. We’ll see what’s next for him.
[Tim Burke on Twitter]
