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Bob Costas recently confirmed he was retiring from calling MLB games while promising to shed some more light on the decision in the near future, and he candidly admitted his best years are behind him while following through on that pledge.
There’s really not much left for Bob Costas to achieve based on all the boxes he’s been able to check during a legendary career in sports broadcasting that stretches back to the 1970s.
After all, we’re talking about a man who’s won 29 Emmys, has had an instrumental role in covering multiple iterations of the Olympics, NBA Finals, World Series, and Super Bowl, and was honored by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017 for his standout work as an MLB broadcaster for more than three decades.
However, that impressive run officially came to an end when Costas called Game 4 of this year’s ALDS between the Yankees and the Royals, which we recently learned marked his final time working an MLB game in the booth when the 72-year-old revealed he was done covering baseball in that capacity at the end of October.
Costas said he’d already made the decision to retire ahead of a season where plenty of MLB fans asserted it was time for him to do exactly that thanks to some lackluster performances that spawned some pretty valid criticism, and he alluded to those shortcomings while addressing the end of that chapter of his career.
He might be done calling baseball games, but Costas will continue to contribute to MLB Network—the outlet that had him sit down with Tom Verducci to expound on his retirement.
Bob Costas sits down with Tom Verducci to talk through his decision to retire from play-by-play announcing and reflect on his career. pic.twitter.com/8LkxIalgsv
— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) November 4, 2024
Costas wasn’t afraid to admit he’s regressed from his prime, saying:
“I felt that I couldn’t consistently reach my past standard. There might have been individual games or stretches within games or moments in games that were just the same as if it was the 1990s or the early 21st century, but I couldn’t string enough of them together.
I have too much regard for the game, for the craft, and whatever my own standard has been to hit beneath my lifetime batting average…I just felt like in the past couple of years, I couldn’t quite reach that.”
Al Michaels should probably take some notes.