Tony Reali on life, grief, empathy and two decades of Around the Horn ·

26 May 2024, 00:00

Editor’s Note: This story is included in The Athletic’s Best of 2022. View the full list.

NEW YORK — On a warm autumn morning, Tony Reali settles into a window seat at a cafe across the street from Brooklyn Bridge Park, still smiling from school drop-off. It’s 4-year-old Enzo’s first day of kindergarten. A sign at the school suggested parents ease separation anxiety by being as boring as possible at dropoff. Reali’s wife, Samiya, nudged him: “That’s for you.” Reali is many things; he is not boring. The children in Enzo’s class know this, so there they were, engines revved, when he walked in. To them, and to hundreds of other kids in the borough of Brooklyn, Enzo’s dad isn’t Mr. Reali. His name is Tony Bologna Macaroni Pepperoni Guacamole Banana Ravioli Pizza.

Reali considers it the highest compliment when another parent thinks he works at the school. Years ago, before they had three children in tow (Francesca is now 8, Enzo, 4, and Antonella, 1), he and Samiya took a personality test that predicted a career path. Samiya’s results said she’d be a global business leader. Reali’s said kindergarten teacher. “I was like, they got me,” he says, beaming.

It’s 10:30 a.m. at the cafe when Reali orders a black coffee and joins a daily pre-show call with the producers and panelists of “Around the Horn” — the weekday ESPN roundtable show with a mute button, a scoring system and a gregarious host who pinch-hit one day and never left. Reali has grown up on TV over the past two decades. He was 23 when he became the sidekick “Stat Boy” for Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon on “Pardon the Interruption.” He was 25 when he started hosting “Around the Horn.” Now he’s 44, a husband, a father, a part of the furniture on ESPN as “Around the Horn” marks its 20th anniversary. “Things aren’t allowed to last that long,” writes friend and former ESPN host Dan Le Batard in an email. “He helms one of the most successful sports shows in the history of this medium, whether people know it or not.”

20 years of Around the Horn 🔄📯🔇

Catch our 20th Anniversary Special on December 13th! You might even hear @TonyReali explain the scoring system… pic.twitter.com/PL9AC3NGcA

— Around the Horn (@AroundtheHorn) November 4, 2022

A one-hour “Around the Horn” special, hosted by Reali and featuring many current and former panelists, will air at 7 p.m. Dec. 13 on ESPN.

Over the years, “Around the Horn” has evolved from a barrage of bombastic debate into a smarter show where banter and nuance can coexist, and Reali has developed from a facilitator, a pass-first point guard, into a host whose voice and vulnerability have made a glorified game show into a refreshingly genuine space.

Colleagues applaud Reali’s instincts as host — to entertain yet empathize, humanize, contextualize. They rave about his motor. “He is the most energetic person on the planet,” ESPN writer and host Pablo Torre says. They tease his long-windedness. “If you’re recording, bring batteries,” panelist Israel Gutierrez says. They marvel at his enthusiasm. “He grabs life with both hands at every turn,” says producer Matt Kelliher. And they praise his authenticity.

Recently, someone asked Jackie MacMullan, a former Boston Globe columnist and original “Around the Horn” panelist, about Reali: “What’s with that guy, dressed in all black? He’s trying too hard.” MacMullan replied, “No he’s not. He’s being who he is. You can be mad at him for being flippant. You can think he’s irreverent. You can think all those things. But I’m telling you, he’s the most decent person I’ve ever met in our business. The person you’re watching is real.”

Back at the Brooklyn cafe, Reali is wearing a black T-shirt, black slacks and black sneakers. He wears black every day as a tribute to his son, Amadeo, Enzo’s twin, who was stillborn. “It’s how I felt I needed to process losing somebody I was expecting and planning to have in my life forever,” he says, and it’s part of his promise to always keep Amadeo present — even at a time when the thought that’s popping up is that there should be two boys starting kindergarten today.

“Those days changed my life,” Reali says of losing Amadeo. “They changed how I continue to talk. They changed how I feel about being a TV host — stopped being so obsessed with sports and started focusing more on the humanity of sports. I still love games. But I see something more than I used to see.”

Reali brings up DJ Reed, the Jets defensive back who two days prior intercepted a pass late in a blowout loss, dropped to his knees at midfield and raised his arms to the sky. The celebration, with his team badly behind, was ridiculed. After the game, Reed explained he was honoring his father, who had died that morning. The impulse tweets and takes had missed the real story.

“These are the types of things that inform me every day on the show,” Reali says. “I know what the business can be, and I know what we can aspire to be.”

For now, on the pre-show call, Reali has muted his line. Aaron Solomon, coordinating producer of “Around the Horn,” is running point. A younger Reali wanted a hand in each part of the production. He says he was trying to be Martin Scorsese directing “Goodfellas” in 21 minutes, 45 seconds each weekday: “I lived and died with every show.” But maintaining that level of control was more complicated once Reali moved to New York in 2014 — the show is still produced out of Washington, D.C. — and it wasn’t healthy for him. He’d come home in the evenings wired, the dial always turned to 11.

“And a Reali 11,” he says, “is most people’s 20.”

For most of his life, Reali saw his perpetual energy as a superpower — his answer to the imposter syndrome setting in at each rung of the sports-media ladder, and his explanation for how a kid who was once taken off the air at his college radio station, WFUV at Fordham University, because his accent and delivery were wrong could wind up here.

It was Reali’s persistence that got him back on the air. He was not a natural, despite what his parents, Joe and Madelyn, told him as a young boy in Marlboro, N.J., calling Yankees play-by-play on a wooden spoon. But Reali worked with a voice coach to tame his Staten Island accent and polish his delivery, and he got another chance at WFUV calling Fordham basketball and football. Then, for three glorious summers during college, Reali was WFUV’s Yankees reporter. “The first dream job of the million dream jobs I’ve had,” he says. It coincided with the Yankees’ World Series three-peat, from 1998 to 2000. Along the way, between filing reports from champagne-soaked clubhouses and riding the media float in ticker-tape parades, Reali found his voice. He was smart. He spoke with authority. And he was unafraid to express himself.

“For some reason, this kid had a way of saying things that resonated,” says Bob Ahrens, who mentored Reali at WFUV. “It was uncanny.”

It was Reali’s hustle that got him to ESPN. After graduating from Fordham, he immediately took two jobs: writing Channel 11 sportscasts, and researching for the sports trivia show “2 Minute Drill.” Then, in October 2001, he walked into an interview for a researcher role with “Pardon the Interruption,” wearing a suit and a skeptical look, and said, “Explain how this isn’t just going to be a radio show.” It was a fair ask. ESPN was betting viewers would find Kornheiser and Wilbon’s chemistry infectious, like two uncles debating the sports news of the day. And they did. The show remains a massive success. One day early on, a few George Washington freshmen asked to attend a live taping at the Atlantic Video studios. They sat in a back corner, and Kornheiser — astonished that the show had fans — asked them, “Is this some kind of fraternity prank?!” (One of the students, Josh Bard, is now a producer for “Around the Horn.”)

Reali emerged not only as the show’s researcher but also as “Stat Boy,” showing up at the end of each show to add errors and omissions. Just like that, a few seconds per show, Reali became an ESPN regular.

And it was Reali’s industriousness, plus a heavy dose of good fortune, that made him the host of “Around the Horn.” During the halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVIII on Feb. 1, 2004, Reali’s phone rang with a last-minute request. “Around the Horn” host Max Kellerman’s contract was up, and ESPN needed a temporary replacement while the sides negotiated. “I was just a person around in D.C.,” Reali says. He was in the right place at the perfect time: the next day was the biggest show of the year.

Even after Kellerman left for Fox Sports, Reali expected a more established ESPN host to relieve him. No one did. “Those first few weeks, I was just trying not to screw up,” he says. Once the job was officially his, Reali wasn’t going to let it get away. He was incessantly upbeat. And he didn’t take a day of vacation for his first seven years as host — even the day he and Samiya awoke to flames and their D.C. apartment building burning down — because “it could be Lou Gehrig and Wally Pipp at any moment,” he says. “That doesn’t mean you’re not respected. It’s just a reality.”

Now, Reali’s daily commute is a four-minute ferry ride across the East River from Brooklyn. He has hosted “Around the Horn” for almost 19 years. “He doesn’t feel threatened anymore,” Solomon says, laughing. Gutierrez adds, “Max starting it off is kind of a footnote these days. It’s Tony’s show.” Standing on the stern of the ferry, Reali points out ESPN’s South Street Seaport Studios at Pier 17. His grandfathers were close friends as kids on the Lower East Side. They both dropped out of high school to unload bananas off boats at Pier 17. Reali now works there, too, out of Studio 2 on the second floor.

Reali on his morning commute. (Stephen Nesbitt / The Athletic)

From as far back as he can remember, Reali wanted to be two things: a sportscaster and a father. He told anyone who would listen that he wanted to have a big family.

Then he and Samiya discovered it wasn’t so simple. They met in 2001 when Reali went out with a buddy to Buffalo Billiards, a pool and beer hall in D.C.’s Dupont Circle, and realized he’d been roped into a double date. Samiya wasn’t his date; she was their server. They’ve been together ever since. They married in the Virgin Islands, honeymooned in France and then, for six years, tried to get pregnant. They went through rounds of fertility treatments. They waited. They tried again. A doctor told them they had less than a 1 percent chance of conceiving a child naturally. “It was a really damning thing,” Reali says.

Francesca came naturally, between rounds of in-vitro fertilization. As Samiya held their miracle child for the first time, Reali determined he’d do whatever it took to make every day together the best day yet. “I wanted to be dad of the year,” he says. “I was so blissfully happy. I was trying to approach life like I approached ‘Around the Horn’ shoots. Trying to give it everything.”

That’s when Reali, over the moon and unknowingly over his head, learned that his nonstop energy was something that needed to be managed.

One Sunday afternoon in September 2015, Samiya, who works in emerging markets in developing countries, was on a three-week work trip to Nigeria. Reali put 1-year-old Francesca in her crib for a nap and settled in to read a book. The book, “True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa,” was about a father who murdered his wife and children. A heavy read. Reali set the book aside and scrolled Twitter instead. He saw a headline about a similar tragedy. It spooked and staggered him. Suddenly, Reali’s mind whirred with intrusive thoughts about fatherhood. His heartbeat fluttered. He’d never had an anxiety attack before, so he thought he was having a heart attack.

Francesca slept that night; her father didn’t. The unnerving thoughts and heart palpitations continued. Reali phoned a postpartum helpline in the middle of the night, but no one answered after-hours. He paced back and forth. He Googled his symptoms and read page after page of results — not so much doom-scrolling WebMD, he says, as searching for comfort that he wasn’t losing his mind. In the morning, he handed off Francesca to his mother-in-law and headed to work. He called the postpartum helpline again and spoke to someone who guided him back to steady ground. Reali hosted “Around the Horn” that day and then, for the first time, went to see a therapist. (He’d go again the next day, and the next, and the next.)

Unpacking it all later, Reali realized his anxiety had been bubbling beneath the surface for a while and had shown up only sporadically, like the previous week when he had an episode of transient amnesia. He’d had a full plate but kept adding to it. He was watching Francesca while his wife was away; shooting “Around the Horn” five days per week; and on call each weekend for “Good Morning America,” which he had joined as a social-media correspondent after leaving “Pardon the Interruption.” It had seemed like a natural progression, adding morning TV alongside “Around the Horn,” but the role was unclear and the segments sporadic. He was grappling with failure on that front. But more than that, Reali says, the anxiety came as a manifestation of being a father — “because it meant so much to me,” because he hadn’t learned to say no, because every day had to be the best.

Since being diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, Reali has shared openly about his experience on air and on social media. To this day, strangers message him on Twitter about mental health or infertility or grief, and Reali sends back pages and pages of thoughts. “Why would I stop giving a window into that?” he says. Perhaps one of Reali’s most profound moments on “Around the Horn” was a monologue about former NBA player Delonte West, whose private demons have been broadcast publicly numerous times in recent years.

Hi, I’m Tony Reali and I’m a TV host, sports yapper, dad and the neighborhood Uncle Tony. I have generalized anxiety disorder and I take medicine and I’ve benefitted greatly from talk therapy. Mental health is simply health.

— Tony Reali (@TonyReali) July 28, 2021

Reali also advocates strongly for talk therapy. Without it, he’s not sure how he would have survived what came next for him and Samiya: more trying, more fertility treatments, a positive pregnancy test, and then Enzo and Amadeo. There’s no way parents can be prepared to lose a child, but Reali felt he was able to process it only because of what he’d worked through in therapy.

Samiya was 7 1/2 months pregnant with the twins when she and Reali went into the office for an ultrasound. Reali remembers chatting with the nurses and the ultrasound technician, then realizing after a while he was the only one talking. The room was silent. “That’s the moment it hits you,” Reali says. “Everyone’s quiet for a reason. They’re worried for the kids.”

Samiya was rushed to the hospital for an emergency cesarean section. The doctors delivered Amadeo first. Reali held his son, wrapped in a swaddle, and touched his tiny feet. Doctors would later determine Amadeo’s intestines had ruptured in utero. Enzo came next and was whisked to the neonatal intensive care unit for monitoring. Then Reali rushed home to talk to Francesca. She’d been waiting excitedly for months for her twin brothers to come home.

The ensuing days in the hospital are a black hole in Reali’s memory. He was crushed by the duality, the dissonance of grief and joy present in that moment: holding a healthy child in the NICU, and writing a eulogy for another. He and Samiya would never bring Amadeo home, and yet they felt like they knew him in some small way. They had felt his kicks for months before birth. They had held him in their arms. After delivering the eulogy at a memorial mass for Amadeo, Reali told Samiya he thought he should share about losing Amadeo on the air. Samiya agreed. If their pain could help others who are hurting, it would be worthwhile, in a way. First, though, Reali took time off. He told a friend: “I just want to hug my kids and be away for a bit.”

Heartened by Father’s Day wishes.

In recognition that this day like all things in life could mean different things to different people -parent and child, positive and negative-I’d like to speak here about fathers who’ve experienced loss.

This month I became one.

— Tony Reali (@TonyReali) June 17, 2018

Reali returned to “Around the Horn” the day after Father’s Day. He wore black.

“Here’s where I am today,” he said then. “Grief is part of humanity. Grief is proof of humanity. Parents dealing with loss, or anyone dealing with loss, meet yourselves where you are. Give voice to your feelings. Young men and women watching, this can be how you grieve. Don’t bury your heart. Keep it on the outside. And look to other people, because humanity can lift us.”

Today we welcomed @tonyreali back to the show! In FaceTime he shared his feelings about his recent loss, his recent addition, and how he’s getting through it all. pic.twitter.com/myaoby0kzO

— Around the Horn (@AroundtheHorn) June 18, 2018

Outside Studio 2, Reali opens a hallway closet to reveal a row of black jackets with a shelf of black sneakers below. He pulls on a jacket, steps inside the studio and greets the panelists shown on the video screen: Israel Gutierrez, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Sarah Spain, in Chicago; David Dennis Jr., in Atlanta; and Bob Ryan, in Boston. Associate producer Caroline Willett informs the panelists that this is show No. 4,454 in “Around the Horn” history. The number draws a laugh from Ryan. He was on show No. 1 on Nov. 4, 2002.

“Around the Horn” has changed considerably since then. It initially was more aggressive and argumentative. At the time, MacMullan — then a Boston Globe columnist, like Ryan — had a busy work life and young kids at home. She was already taping “The Sports Reporters” on weekends, and she found herself thinking “Around the Horn” wasn’t worth her time. “I was like, this is bad for me,” she says. “The shouting. The insults. The slapstick, almost. I thought, I’m a journalist. I don’t want to lose my journalistic integrity.”

After a Spurs shootaround one day, head coach Gregg Popovich told MacMullan, “I like the Sunday morning show. You should lose the other one.” So, for a few years, she did.

There’s a scene from “30 Rock” that everyone involved with “Around the Horn” knows. In it, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) references his regular appearances on the fictional show “Sports Shouting.” The scene cuts to a quad-box shot. Three panelists are talking over each other, and Jordan is just shouting. It is, undeniably, a spoof of “Around the Horn.” “I take it as a point of pride that anything I’ve been involved in has been parodied on 30 Rock,” Torre says.

Sports Shouting is what “Around the Horn” might look like if you were watching an episode on mute at a bar.

“You’d think to yourself, what are these gasbags gas-bagging about?” Torre says. “Which is a fair instinct, to be clear. There is gas-bagging. But what the show has become in the 10 years I’ve been doing it is one that actually prides itself on gathering people who have incisive, thoughtful and personal things to contribute to the conversation around sports. It’s quietly subversive.

“You start with this premise that it’s a game show, then you fill it with people who occasionally have profound things to confess about how they feel about sports.”

There was a time when “Around the Horn” went to commercials with outro videos of Jessica Alba and Britney Spears dancing. “I could not host that show anymore,” Reali says. There was a time when the show was more likely to veer away from a difficult topic than to steer into one simply because it didn’t fit the show’s original format of binary arguments — A or B, yes or no, this or that. Now, the show pulls no punches. It has introduced non-scored segments for topics “with nuance and resonance and no easy answers,” executive producer Erik Rydholm explains in an email. While the show’s top priority is to entertain, Reali encourages the panelists to talk about what matters to them, even if there’s no natural segue. “He’s always made sure, and increasingly so, there’s space to get a really important message in on our show,” says panelist J.A. Adande.

There also was a time when “Around the Horn” contestants were a homogenous cast of columnists — a handful of White men and MacMullan. In the early days, MacMullan says, she kept telling the show’s creators, “Guys, there are more women out there than just me. There are plenty of women who can do this.’” She suggested names, to no avail. MacMullan eventually returned to the show, at Reali’s and Solomon’s request, and saw a more diverse cast beginning to fill in around her. This was no accident. Reali wanted panelists to be smart and entertaining, but also be people with varying experiences and perspectives. He scouted young writers and radio hosts who had something to say — such as Bomani Jones, Mina Kimes, Kate Fagan and Torre — and whose backgrounds hadn’t been represented on the show. The staff roster grew deeper and more diverse. “It rode the wave, in a good way, and not just in a tokenist way,” says panelist Clinton Yates, who is Black.

Solomon now has a roster of more than 20 active panelists.

But on this day, inside Studio 2, it’s Bob Ryan, a founding father of “Around the Horn,” who wins. As Ryan — who was once a guest on Reali’s college radio show at Fordham; just like Reali was later a guest on Yates’ college radio show at Miami (Ohio) — delivers his FaceTime thoughts, Reali crumples a piece of paper (a leftover scrap from “First Take”) and lobs it at the camera. Then he walks out, hangs his jacket in the hallway closet and heads for home.

There’s a 33-second voicemail from Reali on Torre’s phone that he has saved for nine years. Torre was standing on a sidewalk in Williamsburg when his phone rang Oct. 23, 2013 — a few weeks after he was hired by ESPN, and the day before his “Around the Horn” debut. He froze. He knew Reali would be calling but was too nervous to pick up. He listened to the voicemail instead. Reali’s voice boomed, “PABLO TORRE,” and warmly welcomed him to the show.

“The term ‘host’ is a term of art in our business,” Torre says. “It describes what you do on camera. But for Tony there is the (sense that) ‘I am the guy in this giant, mixed-up Italian American family that is “Around the Horn,” and I want to make you feel like you belong here.’ He is going to go out of his way to make you comfortable. That started literally from moment zero.”

Reali phones each new panelist before their first show. (When he called Yates, years after being on his college radio show, they talked for two hours.) Reali is mostly calling to deliver a pep talk. “They’re on frickin’ ‘Around the Horn,’” he says. “They watched that show when they were 11. Their mother and father need to know I’m going to take care of them, treat them with respect, but also ce-le-brate them.” Reali likes to reference Patrick Beverley’s over-the-top celebration — jumping on the scorer’s table, throwing his jersey into the stands — after winning a play-in game this spring. “Are we in our lives ever allowed to celebrate like that?” Reali asks. “We have all accomplished wonderful things.”

This, in a nutshell, is Reali, a man so earnest even his clichés scan as sincere. He likes to say, “I love to talk, and I talk to love.” He drops into a monologue about the “our” at the center of “encourage” at a moment’s notice. He engages with critics on Twitter — about “Around the Horn,” about his Catholic faith, about anything — and retweets his replies because he wants to show his 735,000 followers you can respond to someone in a way that leads with giving grace. Reali once felt so bad about a joke he made on air about NFL quarterback Mitch Trubisky that he apologized publicly and donated to a cause Trubisky supports. “The internet, as you may have noticed, is cynical and sarcastic and layered with so much irony such that the people involved don’t have to feel anything anymore,” Torre says. “Tony wants to feel everything.”

Reali has a habit of randomly giving office tours to groups of kids he just met; he once invited a preschool class into the “Around the Horn” studio and filmed each of the 30 students on set saying “I love you” to their parents. He calls this photographer mode “Italian Grandma Tony,” and it’s why he has 185,748 photos and videos (38,836 favorites) on his phone.

“He’s just one of the kindest people I’ve ever met,” MacMullan says.

“Find someone who has worked with him in 20 years who has a bad thing to say about him,” Le Batard writes. “I defy you.”

“It would be easy for someone to read (about him) and be like, ‘OK, so he’s a cool dude. That’s nice,’” Fagan says. “But it’s very different than that. Even as someone who works in words, I don’t quite know what to say to you to convey Tony. There is no one else like him that I have encountered in this business.”

Reali’s energy and infectious positivity are his trademark characteristics, on the air and off, but those close to him say his calling card is his empathy. They offer one example after another of Reali going out of his way to help.

Like when Fagan’s father, Chris, was diagnosed with ALS around the time she went on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” to promote her first book, “What Made Maddy Run.” Reali waited with Fagan in the green room before the taping, then he and Samiya hosted Fagan’s family and friends that evening. When Fagan’s father died, Reali drove to Albany, N.Y., for the funeral. He had a show the next day, and he doesn’t drink, but he stayed for the Irish wake and didn’t leave until the last toast was raised in the early hours of the morning.

“Tony holds a really special place in my heart,” Fagan says. “In every business, people say they’re about those things. But when that afternoon comes when you have to drive to Albany and you’re not going to be home until 1 in the morning, you cut it short. That’s not Tony.”

Like when Gutierrez came out publicly as gay a week before his wedding, and told his “Around the Horn” colleagues, somewhat sheepishly, they were welcome to attend the wedding. Reali and Bard, the producer, showed up. They danced with Gutierrez’s sisters all night long. Gutierrez remembers reading a four-page handwritten letter from Reali afterward: “It had me in tears.” Later, when that marriage was falling apart and Gutierrez didn’t know who to turn to, he phoned Reali for support. “I could have called anybody,” Gutierrez says. “I called him.”

Or like when Le Batard was on “Pardon the Interruption” for the first time, and “Stat Boy” showed him the ropes. “I was nervous and didn’t know how to fit in and was probably hiding that,” Le Batard writes. “And he went out of his way to help me, the way a host would treat you in his home. He probably doesn’t remember it because he did it for everybody. But it isn’t something I’ll forget.”

Over the years, “Around the Horn” has become a de facto feeder program for other ESPN shows, and in that way Reali’s impact is felt across the network. Reali is proud of that, thrilled that the show has been a launching pad for the careers of many current and former ESPNers.

But, for Reali, that requires a celebration of a different sort. That’s not the Patrick Beverley moment, he says. That’s the last scene of “Good Will Hunting” — Chuckie waiting at Will’s doorstep and realizing his buddy has left for good, gone chasing a dream. It’s a misty-eyed happy.

Earlier this year, Reali turned on the TV and saw basketball analyst Monica McNutt on the NBA All-Star Game broadcast. McNutt hadn’t been a panelist on “Around the Horn” in months — moving on, moving up.

“That’s the ‘Good Will Hunting’ moment,” Reali says. “You have to be happy for your friend, for the person you believe in.”

Walking to Pier 11 to catch a ferry back to Brooklyn, Reali is asked how he decompresses. He shrugs and smiles. He struggles with that. Reali pulls a pair of orange-tinted sunglasses from his fanny pack. They provide a perpetual sunset. That’s one technique he uses to relax. It’s hard to unwind when the kids are awake — he’s busy being the life of the playdate — but he plays piano and drums, listens to music and, after the kids are in bed, he sits beside the windows overlooking the East River to watch the water, the lights of Manhattan and the fading sunset.

Lately, Reali has been focused on finding balance. It isn’t in his nature. For example, he used to do high-intensity training five days per week, and he craved the collapse at the end of each workout. Now he knows that’s not a wise workout plan for someone with high anxiety and endless energy; he was pulling muscles crossing the street because his body was wound so tightly. Now, Reali trains with Functional Patterns, a program focused on posture and balance.

“I want things in my life to breathe a little more,” he says.

For now, Reali has a full plate and isn’t trying to heap more on top.

The sun is arcing low in the sky as Reali steps onto the ferry, and the conversation turns to his children again. Before he had kids, Reali would go to weddings and write in his card to the happy couple: Have kids — lots of them! He doesn’t write that any longer. Now he understands that parenting, for many, can be a painful journey. Back when he was writing that, Reali says, “I was overjoyed for their wedding, and not realizing at that moment, in my maturity, that, A) people should rightfully have different views about it; B) may have issues, like we had issues conceiving; and, C) may have something like (losing Amadeo) happen.”

The arrival of Antonella last year was a beautiful surprise.

“Never thought I’d be back in that (delivery) room,” Reali says.

We have been blessed beyond our wildest dreams:

Welcome to the world Antonella Reali!

Samiya is well and Francesca and Enzo can’t wait to meet their new partner for life!

Our hearts beat outside our body and we share the joy! pic.twitter.com/qCIT09sLWg

— Tony Reali (@TonyReali) October 18, 2021

He and Samiya hold their children closely, the way parents do when they know the pain of burying one. One reason they chose the name Amadeo is that it’s not a name one often stumbles upon accidentally, on store signs or class rosters. Still, every so often, seeing a double stroller or a set of twins brings a wave of sadness.

Stepping off the ferry, Reali is back in Brooklyn Bridge Park — a block from home and the three children waiting to charge their father. The night before, Reali put the last touches on Enzo’s “Me Book,” a picture book each student keeps in their classroom during the school year to look at when they’re having a lonely day. Enzo’s book is filled with photos of his family and his favorite things. As he placed the photos, Reali couldn’t help but marvel at how much his little boy has grown already.

“Parenting is every little day, every little minute, letting go just a little bit more,” he says. “That’s going to be challenging for me. I’ll never let go completely.”

(Top image: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photo: Courtesy of ESPN)

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Tony Reali on life, grief, empathy and two decades of Around the Horn

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