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The only thing harder than getting to the big leagues is staying there. The only thing harder than staying there is excelling. And the only thing harder than all of it, upon actually producing a great career in the show, is figuring out how to walk away before they make you run.
Most athletes, elite as they are, fail at that last part. For many, the book gets written for them: released by their team, forced out of the game by injury, or simply left unclaimed after one contract expires and another one fails to materialize.
Sometimes it’s a plume of smoke, sometimes a wisp. They fall out of the sky either way.
Maybe that’s why we celebrate the people who figure out how to pull it off. We love the John Elways of the world, who win a Super Bowl, chopper out of the stadium and never look back. The Mia Hamms, winning Olympic gold and then calling it a career. Ted Williams at Fenway. Bill Russell with the Celtics. There are more, but there aren’t a ton.
Bob Costas, who talks about games for living and by so doing has become more famous than many, many of the athletes he’s described, has seen plenty of terrible career exits and a few good ones. Costas decided to call his own shot. That has to be good enough for now.
Costas, 72, knew before the 2024 MLB season began that it would be his last as an active play-by-play broadcaster. He waited until this week to expand on that, telling Tom Verducci that it was all about clearing a high bar.
It is a remarkable declaration by a very self-aware pro. Here are the bulk of Costas’ words:
“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.
“And I have too much regard for the game, for the craft, and for whatever my own standard has been to hit beneath my lifetime batting average, which is why I’m grateful to the MLB Network for replaying the Sounds of Baseball. Because players have this advantage over people in almost any other profession. My guy Mickey Mantle hit well below his lifetime average his last few years, but even a kid who never saw him play can go to Baseball Reference and see what the career was like. And I just felt like in the last couple of years, I couldn’t quite reach that. And what I hoped for this year…I just hoped to end on a grace note.”
Viewers will decide for themselves on that. Costas didn’t get much love during the Division Series between the Yankees and Royals, and that is largely because some folks — those on social media, at any rate — wanted a more excitable sort behind the mike.
Fair to say that at one point in his career, that person would have been Costas. Now, at age 72, he is a much more measured broadcaster, although his energy seemed to surge during the conclusive Game 4 of that New York-Kansas City series.
Costas knew, and we didn’t, that the game was his final call. It’s always possible that MLB Network will invite him back for an occasional play-by-play guest appearance in addition to the other programs on which he’ll continue to appear, but I doubt Costas would say yes. I take him at his word. He likes what his career numbers say about the kind of broadcaster he is, and he won’t mess with that.
Costas was always a proud person, quite self-critical and constantly looking to adjust for the better. It’s the only way he could have spent this many decades calling just about every sport at the highest levels. He certainly knew he was good, which seemed to bother some people, but at that summit you either know you can or know you can’t.
If this is it (and again, I absolutely assume that it is), then good on Costas for the timing. It’s hard to imagine that MLB Network would have forced a parting, and that could have led to too many seasons of games that weren’t up to the network’s standards – or, more significantly, to Costas’ own self-expectation.
It isn’t Ted Williams homering in his final Fenway at-bat, no. Then again, most people never even come remotely close to that. What Costas just did was still mighty rare: He scoped out an exit doorway and headed straight for it. No point in looking over his shoulder now.
Mark Kreidler is a national award-winning writer whose work has appeared at ESPN, the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and dozens of other publications. He’s also a sports-talk veteran with stops in San Francisco and Sacramento, and the author of three books, including the bestselling “Four Days to Glory.” More of his writing can be found at https://markkreidler.substack.com. He is also reachable on Twitter @MarkKreidler.
