Matthew Berry, ESPN.com

About ESPN’s Matthew Berry – “The Talented Mr. Roto”

When Matthew Berry turned 14, he discovered many wondrous things – about himself, about his body and about things he liked to do. High up on that list (not first, mind you, but up there) was Rotisserie League Baseball. He had found this weird green book and devoured it, thinking this sounded like a helluva a lot of fun.

Since then a number of things have happened. There were some wars and Presidents and apparently some big wall fell overseas at some point, but probably most importantly, Matthew Berry has turned over 20 years of playing fantasy sports into a career that has finally stopped his parents from asking when he’s going to med school.

Described as “One of the stars of the web” and a “fantasy savant” by the New York Times and as having an “Unflappable Liver” by Deadspin.com, Matthew is known as “The Talented Mr. Roto,” and is the Senior Fantasy Sports Analyst for ESPN.

He appears multiple times every day giving out fantasy sports advice on every possible ESPN Platform known to man. He’s been seen on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPNU, ESPN Classic, ESPN.com, ESPN the Magazine, ESPN Radio, ESPN Mobile TV and, as soon as he learns to say “Groundball / Fly Ball Ratio” in Spanish, ESPN Deportes.

He has appeared on many of ESPN’s most recognizable programs, including Monday Night Football, SportsCenter, NFL Sunday Countdown, NFL Live, Baseball Tonight, Mike and Mike in the Morning, First Take, The Herd with Colin Cowherd, NBA Coast to Coast, all programs on ESPNEWS and on ESPN.com video in the popular daily video show Fantasy Focus.

He writes regularly for ESPN.com and ESPN the Magazine and from August to December of 2008, only two columnists had more page views of their written work than Matthew on ESPN.com. A two time Sports Emmy nominee and recent Sports Emmy winner for his work on the Sunday Morning show “Fantasy Football Now”, (the first ever given to a fantasy show) Matthew hosts a daily Fantasy sports podcast that was the #1 downloaded audio podcast (all subjects, not just sports) on all of iTunes in August 2007 and was #8 on iTunes in August of 2008.

The podcast received over 6 million downloads from August to December 2008 and, of the over 100 podcasts offered on ESPN.com, is second only to “PTI” in terms of total downloads.

Before joining the FSWA’s Executive Committee and taking himself out of the running for awards, Matthew was the most nominated writer in the industry and has five wins, including a Writer of the Year award, from the Fantasy Sports Writers Association (FSWA).

Matthew started his professional fantasy career in 1999 as the Senior Columnist (and Executive Editor of their 2003 FF Draft Mag) for Rotoworld.com, one of the largest pure fantasy sports sites on the web. His column quickly became extremely popular on the site and after five years, Matthew decided to branch out on his own.

In 2004, Matthew created and launched TalentedMrRoto.com, his “own” site. The site quickly became an industry favorite, providing content for many of the world’s largest media companies, including ESPN. And, as a result of this relationship, The Worldwide Leader acquired TalentedMrRoto.com and installed Berry as its lead on-air personality for Fantasy sports.

Prior to joining ESPN exclusively, Matthew has written for and/or appeared on SportingNews.com and The Sporting News magazine, NFL Network, NBA TV, Fox Sports Net, Sporting News Radio, SportsIllustrated.com, Fox Sports Radio, NPR, Slam Magazine, XM and Sirius Satellite Radio.

In addition, he has spent the two years prior to joining ESPN writing the daily fantasy blog for Major League Baseball on MLB.com, a weekly column for NBA.com and a weekly Fantasy Football column for NFLPlayers.com.

He spent two years as the official Fantasy Sports Expert for the Fox Sports Radio Network and has what is widely regarded as the longest, most ego-stroking bio in the industry. Even his Mom is like “Pouring it on a little thick, aren’t you honey?”

Matthew has been profiled / interviewed in books, magazines and newspapers across the country, including GQ Magazine, the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, The Associated Press, New York Post, NY York Daily News, Maxim.com, Men’s Journal, The Tampa Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Kansas City Star, Detroit Free Press, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Orlando Sentinel, Giant Magazine, Hooters Magazine, LA Weekly, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Las Vegas Review Journal, Honolulu Observer, Sports Business Journal and was a main character in the NY Times best selling book “Fantasyland” by Wall St. Journal columnist Sam Walker.

He also did a two episode guest starring role on ABC’s “One Life to Live” which was met with great tolerance by the faithful soap community.

Matthew Berry started his career as a TV / Film screenwriter and producer. Since graduating Syracuse University in 1992, Matthew (with writing partner Eric Abrams) wrote on and/or produced over a 100 half hours of television comedy. It’s a resume that includes “Married… With Children” and working with such industry luminaries as Diane English (“Murphy Brown”) and James Burrows (“Cheers” “Will&Grace”). It also includes working on some of the worst sitcoms in recent history that he is too shamed to mention. He was young, he needed the money.

He spent two years as the Supervising Producer on a critically acclaimed claymation show that no one ever saw called “Gary & Mike,” wrote a TV pilot for The Muppets and in 2004 had an overall deal for producing and writing tv pilots with 20th Century Fox.

A Razzie Award nominee for his work as the co-author of the family film “Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles” (which he agreed to write when he got the answer to the question “They want to pay me HOW much?”), he has co-written film projects for such stars as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Hillary Swank and Tim Allen. They were different projects – don’t worry.

Having left Hollywood, the showbiz folks who constantly bug him for advice are Jeff Garlin of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the head of daytime drama for ABC, the lead guitarist of Alice in Chains, the screenwriter of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and the co-creator of “Lost.” He is represented at legendary talent agency Creative Artists (CAA).

You can follow him on Twitter as “TheRealTMR.” He is a Capricorn, a Parrothead and is hoping he can avoid J.D. Drew this year, who he hates for no rational reason whatsoever. Just one of those things.