The Bill Simmons Podcast - Bob Costas on Learning From Letterman, the Future of the Olympics, and the Best Baseball Story Lines (Ep. 272)

Episode Date: October 13, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by longtime NBC Sports broadcaster Bob Costas to discuss broadcasting in the ABA (6:00), Ahmad Rashad's presence (12:00), guest hosts on late-night television (17:00), hosting an HBO show (28:00), the issue with host cities for the IOC (35:00), covering Michael Jordan's iconic game-winning shot in 1998 (46:00), the 20 greatest MLB games of the past 50 years (55:00), the best World Series story line (1:10:00), and the justifiable protests in the NFL and beyond in the sports world (1:17:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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that there was a time in the 70s when Gabe Kaplan was huge. The biggest. He was an A-lister. Absolutely. Not just because of Welcome Back, Cotter, but because he was a regular guest on The Tonight Show. Battle Network stars. He had that too. And Johnny Carson worked out a sweetheart deal.

When I was 15 years old, I knew he had a sweetheart deal. They would run reruns on Monday, and then sometimes he'd do three days a week, get a long weekend. Joan Rivers frequently filled in until they had a falling out. She ditched him. Right. Dick Shawn, who was also a big deal at one time, one of the stars of the movie version of The Producers. Yeah.

Dick Shawn did a bit, if I recall this correctly, where he destroyed Carson's desk or he threw the ashtray or something. And Carson viewed that as disrespectful. Like you're a guest in his home. You've been invited to guest host the show. And so Dick Shawn became persona. He had him killed. He blew up in a car. Pretty much. Pretty much. Like Harry Carey being hit by a car going the wrong way down a one-way street outside the Chase Park Plaza Hotel for reasons that remain murky. Yeah, we'll never know. Disassociated from the St. Louis Cardinals. You know what killed the guest host?

Jay Leno and Johnny Carson. Right. Because Jay Leno started gaining momentum as the Carson guest host, and then his manager snagged Carson in in like page 6 and that led to the whole kind of Carson. Who was that? Helen Kushnick? Played by Kathy Bates in the movie. Correct. Gave him the gentle nudge and that like Letterman would never have a guest host. I think he finally had

him when he had heart problems. But now everyone's afraid to be. It's like the Wally Pipp syndrome. You don't want the Wally Pipp to come in. There's no guest host for Stephen Colbert or for Jimmy Fallon. Or the Bill Simmons podcast. You'll never hear it. I don't want you don't want the wally pip to come in there's no guest host for stephen colbert or for jimmy fallon or the bill simmons podcast you'll never hear i don't want anybody hosting this they might they might do a better job than me i might lose my own podcast you know all that's happened you'll never you'll never host my podcast i'll never host the bill simmons podcast you'll never do it i'll never let you guest host i know if you asked i probably would

on the other hand just to close the circle there, Gabe Kaplan. Gabe Kaplan, when last seen, was like playing poker wearing a members-only jacket and some kind of eye shades at 3 o'clock in the morning on ESPN 12. Okay? Gabe Kaplan actually wasn't just a guest on The Tonight Show.

He was one of the guest hosts. Came out, did the monologue, sat in Johnny Carson's chair. So did Joe Garagiola once. Huge star. I once wrote a column for ESPN Magazine about Gabe Kaplan racing Bob Conrad in the first episode of Battle Network Stars. It was one of the great moments of my childhood.

There's no way that Gabe Kaplan beat Bob Conrad, right? He beat him handily. Really? What happened... Oh, yeah, it's on YouTube. What happened is Bob Conrad's three-pack-a-day cigarette habit, I think, hurt him. Oh, kicked in. It was even for about 40 yards, and then that nicotine

really starts kicking in. That's why I don't know if you know this, but Olympic gold medalists in sprinting, they usually don't smoke cigarettes. I would think not. It's usually how, yeah, it's bad for you. So yeah, it hurt Bob Conrad. See, I never can picture Usain Bolt with a territon dangling

from his mouth. That's why the NBA players, I have this great photo of the Celtics celebrating a championship in like 1962. And they're all around, they all have beer. And this one guy who's like the power forward is this white doughy power forward. He's got a cigarette and he's got like his arm around Bill Russell. And I'm like, how do we compare the Bill Russell era to now? And like,

LeBron James would kill somebody if they smoked a cigarette. Bailey Howell has to come out after seven minutes on the court because he's wheezing like an 80-year-old with emphysema. Right.

Tommy Heinze and all those guys, I mean, they're playing in these crappy sneakers. So I don't know. I struggled with it when I wrote my book

trying to figure out how to compare who to who. And in baseball, it's so much easier because you can basically use stats sneakers so i don't know i struggled with it with when i wrote my book trying to figure out how to compare who to who and in baseball it's so much easier because you can basically use stats and then air adjusted stats and in basketball it's hopeless and now the way they play basketball now it's like really hopeless because there's no correlation you know as much as i loved the celtic teams of the 60s and i I can remember them pretty well. Yeah. First basketball game I ever went to, I was 10 years old in 1962, and I became a Celtic fan. It was the only non-New York team,

since I grew up in New York, only non-New York team that I rooted for. All my buddies in high school had it in for me because I rooted for the Celtics when they played the Knicks in the playoffs because my dad took me to a Celtic game. I was 10 years old, and Bill Russell got 40 rebounds in the game.

And Koozie was still playing then for the Celtics. And so I became a Celtic fan. But as much as I loved those teams and as resourceful as they were, and as much as I loved the Knicks hit the open man team of the early 70s, or Bill Walton's trailblazers, you just can't see athletically, you just can't see them competing with LeBron James' Cavaliers or Steph Curry's Golden State Warriors. You just can't see it.

I always thought, even I wrote that book in 2009, I always thought the 86 outs, so much size, so tough. But they were built to make two-point baskets, and now these teams are getting an extra 15 points a game. And I don't... The Celtics, you'd almost have to give them the knowledge of how to play and be like, Larry, you actually have to shoot eight threes a game. Like maybe...

Which he could do if he had to. He could have. He would have learned how to do it. I'm an ABA guy because one of my first jobs after minor league hockey when I was still at Syracuse, my first job after that in St. Louis was the last two years of the ABA, Marvin Barnes and the Spirits of St. Louis. And you were considered a good three-point shooter in the league that invented the three-point shot if you could make about 30% of them. Nobody made more than 40% of

them. Now you've got guys hitting close to 50% of threes. I think Isaiah Thomas in like 1982 might have been in the top two or three shooting like 35% or... Yeah. Yeah, there was... If you could make

one out of three, you were a three-point artist. Sadly, no video. We should mention, by the way, great career move not rooted for the Knicks. I think that should be

in your first paragraph of your Wikipedia. Smart enough to know to stay away i saw what was coming just spidey senses but uh those aba those aba years there's like no video at all and in some ways it's helped the mystique of the i know when i was trying to write my book like there's five games you broadcast probably two of them one of them was with the lady who, like, was married to the owner. Right. Arlene Weltman was the wife of the late Harry Weltman, who was the president and GM of the Spirits,

and later became the GM of the Nets and the Cavaliers. And she was so charming and lovely in an interview that we did at halftime of the first season that the sponsor said, why don't we make her the color commentator? Not on the radio, but on the handful of road games that we televised. And one of them that lives on YouTube is the Spirits Against the Kentucky Colonels. That's the one you've probably seen. I've studied it. It was a simulcast, like Chick Hearn used to do simulcasts of Laker games. So it was simultaneously on radio and television. So I'm rattling a mile a minute not putting captions beneath the picture,

which is what you really want to do on television. But who cares? It was 1976. It's funny. Now they would be applauded. Like, woman getting a chance. Like Doris Burke, who deserves to be doing games. It's great.

Back then it was like, hey, she's charming. Let's throw her in. Like that was the 70s. Right. She's nice. Can we just put a mic on her? She's nice and she seems to know the difference between a free throw and a three-pointer.

Good. The bar has been cleared. That's a little bit different for Jessica Mendoza these days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But before, this is going to stick with me if I don't come back to this. Even with a heavy cigarette habit Robert Conrad especially as James West of the Wild Wild West this this guy appeared

to be an extremely fit dude yeah at a time when it wasn't that common for people to work out this is gimmick right it's very very fit strong knocked the battery off my shoulder guy. Right. Gabe Kaplan dusted him. It's a great movement. Now, I'm a bit older than you. Do you remember who James West's number one nemesis was in the Wild Wild West, which was an unbelievably cool show in the 1960s? Yeah, I don't know any of the 60s shows. I kick in with the Mod Squad.

That's what my memory kicks in yeah one black one white one blonde the mod squad it was it it was like out of central casting i it is funny though tv how many people watch like i was telling a couple of my staffers like we saw this dynasty billboard it's dynasties coming back the CW. And I was saying to the people in the car, like, that was the number one show when I was like 10. And not only was it the number one show, it was like 35 million people an episode,

something like that. People don't realize the difference between being a number one rated show then and a number one rated show now. How many people, like 80 million people watched the last episode of Seinfeld or MASH or whatever? Yeah. Like a Super Bowl almost. When you were doing Letterman, which is, I first knew about you from NFL 80, which I

don't remember the year when they started the NBC NFL pregame show with the three great plays with the announcers? All right. Was that, what was it? That was like- You were there when they were doing it. 1984. I became the host in 83.

Yeah, so it was a couple years before they did that. After Brian Gumbel went to the Today Show. Okay, so Letterman was before NFL then. Letterman started in February of 82. Okay, so I knew you first from Letterman. When did you do the anniversary? The one you're probably remembering is the third anniversary show. The pregnancy show.

Yeah, that was in 85. Okay, so I knew you from NFL, so I'm right. So the NFL show had the three plays, and all I wanted, I couldn't wait until, I think it was only a half hour, right? Yep. 12.30, I couldn't wait to see what three plays they picked and whether it would be a positive patriot play and it was always if the patriots were in it it was always they had given up a hail mary or because it was always hail marys flea flickers kick returns i remember one of them was the opening line which i voiced was great games

great moments yes on nbc i was the best played a little theme voiced was, great games, great moments on NBC. Oh, it was the best. Then they played a little theme, and they'd show the three plays. And the only one I remember was the Vikings against somebody. Charlie Jones and Len Dawson are calling the game. Oh, Margaret Shatz, you know, Mary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as the pass is released, I don't know,

Tommy Kramer maybe was the quarterback for the Vikings. He throws it into the end zone. And you hear Dawson beneath Jones' play-by-play going, they're hoping. And the ball's in the air and it's tipped. And Ahmad catches it, right? Yeah. And at that point, Ahmad is now on the set with us. So he'd be beaming every time we showed that one.

And Ahmad's like the greatest guy, too. I did like a 35-minute podcast with us. So he'd be beaming every time we showed that one. And Ahmad's like the greatest guy too. I did like a 35-minute podcast with him. It really could have been 13 hours. I love Ahmad. He has a story about, you could just pick names out of a hat. You could be like Grace Kelly. He's like,

well, one time I was at a poker table with Grace. He's somehow, every person ever has passed through his life in a significant way. Ahmad Rashad, not only is a nice guy, but he has presence. Yes. Even if you didn't know who he was, he walks into a room, he has presence. He's the kind of guy who on short notice or short acquaintance, somebody would invite to their dinner party the next night.

Hey, I met him. I don't need to know anything more about him. He's cool. He's going to make it better. I like hanging around with him. No problem. Yeah, he's like that basketball player who's just fun to play with,

only that's like his social game. Yeah. Yeah, we did a pot with him. All of us were in love with him by the end. We're like, can that guy just work for us? Can he just be around us? You know, I said to an unnamed television critic once, he asked me, if you were putting

together a sports department and you could have a half dozen people, and I named, you know, the great, you'd want Al Michaels, and you'd want this person and that person. And one of the people I named was Ahmad. And the guy raised an eyebrow because, by his reckoning,

Ahmad wasn't a true journalist, he wasn't a play-by-play man. He's in Jordan's pocket. Yeah, all that stuff. Yeah, okay. I said, no, you don't understand. This guy naturally relates to people in such a way, and they want to be with him.

This guy is an ace to have on your staff. I'm not going to have him do my job or do Al Michaels' job, but nobody can do his job as well as he can. And he can bring people into the fold and draw things out of people that even the most skillful interviewer cannot because people just are drawn to him. Yeah. Well, that explains why he's still out there and doing stuff all these years later. I mean, even Jordan, who seems like he had a very high bar for who got to hang out with him. Even Jordan was like, I'm going to take him out.

You're with me. You're in the club. No question about it. Yeah. No question about it. So mid-80s, you do, I don't think we've talked about this on a podcast. Right. You do the Letterman three-year anniversary show. Because this was before you became the old humorless guy on the couch that you do the letterman three-year anniversary show because this was

before you became the old humorless guy on the couch that you have the reputation that i am now with no no sense of humor whatsoever which we're gonna hold that because i want to talk about that you're on letterman and he puts people in three different hospitals because they're gonna have the first late night baby yep and it's like you it's it's Vince McMahon. Who was the third one? Larry Bud Melman? Only two hospitals. There's only two? Larry Bud Melman was handing out hot towels to people.

Right. And you were just so funny in that. And then he started making fun of Vince, but Vince didn't realize. Right. It didn't really dawn on him that Letterman was kind of teasing him, which made it funnier.

And it was, to me, the best hour of Letterman ever. Hour and a half, I guess it funnier. And it was, to me, the best hour of Letterman ever. Hour and a half, I guess, that night. The idea was, third anniversary, if a baby was born at Lenox Hill Hospital or Columbia Presbyterian, I think was the other one, and they had me and Vince McMahon staked out in the maternity ward. Just think about that, by the way. You and Vince McMahon as the two reporters.

Before our fates would intersect way by the way. Yeah. You and Vince McMahon as the two reporters. Before our fates would intersect. Yeah, many years later. Way down the road. So anyway, to see if in fact a baby would be born during this hour that they were taping the show. And if so, that baby would become for life the late night baby and have all manner of perks and benefits for the rest of his or her life. And it happened, right? It happened. The baby was born in Vince's hospital.

Right. He was euphoric. Right. And they said, write your own, whatever you want to do. And I forget everything that I said, but one of the things I said was in the initial report, I set the scene and I said, all right, Dave, and we'll remain here for all the pre and post natal action. And Dave liked that.

And then when it was over with, even though a baby hadn't been born at my hospital, everything was in preparation. They had balloons and party hats and noisemakers and cake. And so behind me, all the nurses and doctors and orderlies are celebrating. And so I described the scene, and then it just occurred to me. I looked back in the camera, and I said, Meanwhile, Dave, the plaintive cries of desperately ill men and women go unheeded. And after that, Letterman— Oh, he loved you after that.

I'd been a few times before that. You did the elevator races. You did the hallway stuff. Letterman. Oh, he loved you after that. I'd been a few times before that. Wouldn't you do the elevator races? You did the hallway stuff. Elevator races, dog sled races. Yeah. Yeah, that was, I mean, I don't know. It probably had a bigger impact on me than just about anything those first couple Letterman years. That's great.

You know, me too. Yeah, and you're in it. You're like working in the same building, right? Working in the same building. Would see him from time to time. He was always extremely nice and supportive. And in fact, he had something to do with me getting the later show, which followed his show. It was a time in the late 80s and early 90s when the lineup, think about this, talk about a high tide raising all boats, Johnny Carson, you'd be watching primetime.

The promo would be Johnny Carson, Letterman, and then Martin Scorsese joins Bob on later. Wow. That alone was just incredible. And Letterman had said to Dick Ebersole, you know, I think Costas could do a late night show. I've heard him do sports interviews. If he can do an hour with Bart Starr, why couldn't he do an hour with somebody else?

And Ebersole, who was very tight with the late, great Brandon Tartikoff and had influence beyond NBC Sports, Ebersole took the idea to Tartikoff. And remember the show, and it was a very good show, called Overnight with Linda Ellerbe, which was kind of a wry, tongue-in-cheek look at the news. Yeah.

That, for whatever reason, had ended about a year before. So that 1.30 Eastern Time time slot had been given back to the affiliates, and we claimed a half an hour. And it was like Hollywood Squares and probably infomercials. Right, John Davidson's version of Hollywood Squares. How many years did you do the NBC half-hour show? From 88 to 94. And then I reluctantly left. You know, my kids were really young then.

And NBC had reacquired baseball. And we still had a run of Olympics coming up. And we had the NBA and we had the NFL. And something had to come off the plate. And yet, to this day, what are we now, 23 years down the road? I'm not saying it happens every day, but very frequently someone will stop me and recall a specific later episode. Oh, wow. They'll say, you know, I've never seen Robert Duvall interviewed except on later.

Or I remember the night that you couldn't stop laughing with Richard Lewis. Or when Mary Lou Henner revealed why the night men walked on the moon had real significance in her life. Mary Lou Henner was probably one of your goofier guests, right? Wasn't she a little out there? I mean, in a good way. She's really likable. She has all kinds of energy. And she'll say anything. That's like the perfect guest.

As proven by this. She has this facility, this Savant's facility. Yes, she's an incredible memory, right? Right. If you say to her, September 16th, 1965, she says, oh, well, I was in the second grade. I wore a purple dress. Exactly. And it was a Tuesday. And it's all checkable. She's right. At least she's right about the date and the day of the week. You have to take her word about the personal

That's why I laughed when you mentioned her. Because to have a guest that remembers every moment of their life, I don't even know what I would do with that. So I asked her, is it a blessing or a curse? And she says, oh, it's almost always a blessing because you have something on people. You always have something over on people. So I begin to ask her some dates and she fires off a half dozen or so of these personal recollections, but there's no way for anybody to compare their own experience to it. So now I'm beginning to think, what's a date where everyone remembers

where they were? And if I said November 22nd, 1963, that would be too dark. Yeah. And so I- It's comedy killer. Yeah. I chose July 20th, 1969, which was the night that men walked on the moon. Yeah. So I said, here's one where we all remember where we were. July 20th, 1969. And she looks at me and she starts twirling her hair with her index finger, which is a sign of anxiety. Yeah. Right? And she says, who told you this? And I said, nobody.

It's just an obvious thing to bring up. She says, well, okay. Now, who told, somebody told. No, I swear. So this goes back and forth like no i promise i just asked it it just came off the top of my head and finally she goes okay that's the night i lost my virginity now remember later had no studio audience so you earned your laughs because you earned them from the cameraman oh yeah the stage manager so it was always more authentic when they laughed it was cool So now they're cracking up.

I don't have to say another word. I just let the laughter subside. And then on her own, she goes, standing up in the shower. She was standing up in the shower. Now the crew is dying, right? And so I say, well, one thing we know for sure, Neil Armstrong wasn't the guy. And every anniversary show we did, that clip made it. That's awesome.

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The half hour interview show was a thing. Roy Firestone famously. Right. Kind of went all the way to the mid 90s. Yep. And then I don't know whether the internet changed it or whether attention spans flipped or just the concept of watching somebody have a real conversation on a late night show or anywhere just kind of flip there's charlie rose and i guess larry king and that was really it do you Could you have done that show in 2017, do you think?

Here's where I think- Because I feel like podcasts have almost replaced it. Here's where I think I'd have a problem. In the 80s and the 90s, everyone who was current, or even people like Anthony Quinn, let's say, or Rod Steiger, who had long careers that predated my own youth, I was still familiar with them. If Jimmy Cagney had still been alive and had been a guest, I could have interviewed him about Yankee Doodle Dandy. In 2017, could I interview Taylor Swift? Of course I could. I could do the preparation and I could interview her. But I wouldn't be as organically connected to it as I was interviewing Smokey Robinson or Tom Hanks. So I think I could do a show like that once a week

where you could pick the guests that made sense for me to have. But could I do it every single night and just kind of the parade of celebrities that come on the assembly line? So like DJ Khaled, maybe you'd have to do some prep. A lot. Basically, to be a good guest on Later, you had to have a body of work. And a lot of people, pat myself on the back here, but it also goes to the producers who did a great

job on the show and the researchers. A lot of people who didn't do television, but, you know, show business people, athletes, they stay up at odd hours. And so they watch the show in disproportionate numbers. People who didn't do TV then, and there were still a lot of people who didn't do a lot of TV then. Now you see almost anybody on Entertainment Tonight. They've never heard stories. Hollywood. Yeah, I just went to the store and this happened. Right, but Paul McCartney did later,

and he hadn't done any U.S. television in 10 years. That's awesome. Robert Duvall did later. Robert Duvall hates interviews. Right. He did a three-parter. Three parts? Three parts.

Paul Simon did later. Carole King, who hardly ever does any television. She's very, very shy. She did later. Elie Wiesel did later. Carol King, who hardly ever does any television, she's very, very shy. She did later. Elie Wiesel did later. Martin Scorsese did later. And showed it to his film classes at NYU. That's awesome. So, you know, that was a cool thing to have done. And the fact that people still remember it, at least some people, is gratifying.

Well, so now, like I would say, podcasts have become that way for a lot of people. A lot of people, they don't even, like I had Gray carter on this week and he never done a podcast and he didn't even fully understand what was going to happen when those are the best ones you know where we went for like an hour 20 and he was like that was great that's all that's it you just recorded that like those are always the best ones when it's they don't know where it's going and they're but they're kind of excited by it. I'm sure you must have had that a million times. We had it so often.

And a lot of times what we would do is if we knew we couldn't contain it, we just made it into a double. Yeah. And I would say, will you come back tomorrow night? And the guy would say, sure. And then the next night it'd be, well, we didn't have time to change clothes. We're in the same clothes as last night, but here we go. Right. You must have been disappointed by athletes for the most part, right?

It's tough to really go there with athletes. The athletes we interviewed were people that had significant life stories. Hank Aaron. Yes. Kareem. Jim Brown. John Wooden. Mickey Mantle. Jim Brown. John Wooden. Mickey Mantle. It was

that kind of thing. You couldn't just be the hot athlete of the moment. You couldn't just be the guy who made the Pro Bowl. That wasn't reason enough to be on the show. Yeah. Or Rod Tidwell on Firestone Show and Jerry Maguire. He had to do five shows a week. Yeah.

It's crazy when you think about it all the athletes are sports people well I remember they brought back Chris Connolly to do kind of to revive the Firestone format and

they put him in like Anaheim like in the Disneyland studio so it was immediately impossible to get guests right and you end up three-fourths of the time

with a guest you probably don't want I think if you're going to do a show like that it has to be in New York in the thick of everything. Sure. Where you're grabbing people. Or in L.A. in the thick of everything. I think that's the only way it might work.

I don't know how it could work. Five days a week, you're just going to have to book people sometimes that aren't going to be that good. And you know, that even happened with us. I'm sure it did. There were times when you'd have one that should go in the time machine on monday and then on tuesday just because you had to have a show you had someone who was in a sitcom yeah or somebody who had a movie that was released that week you know i don't know how many shows we did well over 600 i wouldn't want the bottom 100 of them to be re-released.

To show up on YouTube. Yeah, yeah. But I think most of them held up pretty well. And then when did the HBO show start? HBO show started in 2001 and went till 2009 and could have kept going, but the Baseball Network came into existence and they were okay with me continuing at HBO, but the folks at HBO said, you got to choose. And NBC had no baseball,

no prospect of getting baseball back. And I've always loved baseball. And so reluctantly, I had to leave HBO. Was that when you lost your sense of humor? Yeah, evidently. That was it? When did you become a crank? Here's something that I just came across accidentally. We were talking about Letterman. And like you, I was interested in all things Letterman. From the very beginning, in 82, actually when he had The Morning Show.

Oh, yeah. Before that. I don't lie and pretend I saw that show, when he had The Morning Show before that. I don't lie and pretend I saw that show. I never saw The Morning Show. I saw it often. Some people did. He was turning the whole thing inside out. He was simultaneously a fan of and yet mocking

all the conventions and protocols of television. All the insincerity, the whole thing. And everybody, no matter how gifted they are, and many of them are truly gifted, whether it's Conan or Kimmel or whoever it is, they all owe a debt to David Letterman. David Letterman says he owes a debt to Johnny Carson. He does because Carson helped to launch his career.

But Carson owed a debt to Steve Allen, let's say. Letterman reinvented the whole form. Letterman wasn't trying to be Johnny Carson. Reinvented the whole form. So I totally loved him. And when he retired, all sorts of articles were written in appreciation of him. So I come across one online that says, what sports personalities could host a late night show? Okay, so I'm reading, it's interesting. And the person thinks maybe Michelle Beadle could, or this person could, or that person could.

And the guy says, Bob Costas could never host a late night show unless it was on PBS because he's just too dry. Yeah. And I'm thinking as I read this, two things. One, the internet has opened up a lot of great things. You're proof of that. But it also has given voice to people who have no freaking idea what they're talking about. That's very true. If you said to me, hey, Bob, do you know who Branch Rickey was?

You don't expect me to have a personal anecdote about Branch Rickey like you would have Vin Scully. But if I didn't know who Branch Rickey was, you'd think less of me because I cover baseball and I'm supposed to know something about the history of it. So even if you're 35 years old and you don't remember later with Bob Costas, if you're going to write a story. At least go research it. You would possibly know that not only was this a very successful show,

it was Emmy nominated. And the last year, the year before I left, it won the Emmy. Not for some obscure late night category, but for Best Informational Series. And that when Letterman left NBC for CBS, he controlled the hour after his show. He offered that hour to me. Is that true? Absolutely, it's true. I didn't know that.

Yeah, not many people do. He offered the hour to me, and I seriously considered it because it was David Letterman. And they were going to combine it with a half dozen appearances a year on 60 Minutes because at that time I was doing pieces on NBC news magazines before the news magazines became what they pretty much are now, which are crime stories. So I would do profiles of Ray Charles or Dustin Hoffman or Woody Allen or Bob Knight. And they had some real texture to them. And so they thought they would have me do those kind of culture and sports pieces on 60 Minutes. You would have been the youngest guy on 60 Minutes by like 40 years.

You would have helped their demo. I would have had to hang out with Leslie Stahl just to be with someone that wasn't more than 30 years older than me. They would have called you kid. You would have been like, what year is this? Getting morally safer coffee. Anyway, so that was true. But I could never do a late night program,

even though I did pretty successfully, and even though the article was about Letterman, and he offered me the show after his. But on top of that, on later, and then more recently on HBO, almost every one of the HBO shows, even though they were primarily sports shows, had Billy Crystal, Richard Lewis, Chris Rock, Jon Stewart, on and on, on and on.

Yeah. The last joke that Rodney Dangerfield ever told on television, this is just by happenstance, he told on my HBO show. Really? Yeah. We had a segment called Nine and Ninety, which concluded the show. Really? Yeah. We had a segment called 9 and 90, which concluded the show. And I didn't know who the person would be. They kept the person sequestered. And then he or she would come out from behind the wall and the techs would react, the cameramen, whatever. And one time it was

Richard Lewis. One time it was Wynton Marsalis. One time it was Tina Fey, whose career was just taking off. Then it would be that kind of thing. Mario Cuomo came out one time. And I didn't know who they were. And then I would have to ask them questions. And then they would have questions that I would have to answer. So Rodney Dangerfield comes out. And as soon as Dangerfield comes around the corner,

and this is only a few months before he died, the cameramen go nuts. It's soon as Dangerfield comes around the corner, and this is only a few months before he died, the cameramen go nuts. It's Rodney Dangerfield. So while they're reacting, Dangerfield says to me under his breath, ask me if I've been to the beach. And I'm thinking, well, that's the most natural question to ask an 83-year-old man who's white as a ghost. I say, hey, Rodney, it's summertime you've been spending much time at the beach he goes oh yeah bob you know i i like to hang around the nude beach and now the camera oh really really yeah yeah you know and i the other day i ran into a guy he weighed a hundred pounds i go skinny guy yeah he goes yeah a hundred pounds and 50 of that was in his testicles oh and i went no

the whole studio's nuts and he goes he came up to me he said i'm depressed i said you're not depressed you're half nuts now that was his last joke ever the last two months after that he died you're half nuts you're half nuts now by the, the kind of joke that's only funny if Rodney Dangerfield tells it. That's it. And maybe Don Rickles. Right. There's certain things that only work because a persona exists. So anyway.

I can't believe the Letterman story. Was your contract up? Yeah. Yeah, my contract was up. And I had great loyalty to Dick Ebersole and to people at NBC. And they had, it was crucial. And they had the Olympics. They had the Olympics.

And the NBA. And the NBA. And I always liked the NBA more than the NFL. Yeah. And they had just acquired a piece of baseball. Yeah. So I balanced it all. And they were going to charter me back and forth between St. Louis and New York so that I could spend as much time at home as possible.

You know, and I thought about it seriously because it was David Letterman and Howard Stringer at CBS was very nice. And you can't beat the prestige of 60 Minutes. And they seemed to have an idea that would exactly fit. They weren't putting square peg into round hole. This would have been a perfect fit for me. Yeah. But I wound up staying at NBC. Interesting what if.

Yeah. A really interesting what if. The Olympics meant so much more from a prestige standpoint. I'm not saying it's not prestigious now. But with what's happened with the locations and the locales, it's become like the Yankee Christmas gift, Yankee Swap Christmas gift, where nobody even wants to host it. I don't know what happens to the Olympics now.

Well, I think the IOC was wise to grant two at a time. To lockdown LA, yeah. To lockdown Paris and LA. They'll still have a Winter Olympics to fill in in between. Summer definitely, I think, has a better chance to live in a big way than the winter does. The winter, I mean, you have places now that it's man-made snow, and that's where the Olympics are going to be. It's insane. And the Olympics, more and more, is drawn toward authoritarian regimes because say what you want, they don't

complain about the debt that's left behind, the unused facilities. No one is complaining about, hey, these funds could go towards schools or infrastructure because you're not allowed to complain like that in China or in Russia. So a Summer Olympics in Beijing was spectacular and made sense. A Winter Olympics in Beijing? It's insane. A Winter Olympics in Sochi? Which is basically like having an Olympics in Martha's Vineyard

just because it's the place where the president likes to vacation. Yeah. Because that's what Sochi was, or is, was Putin's vacation spot. So where do you see the Olympics going? Do we have an Olympics 40 years from now?

I'm not going to have to worry about it. I don't even have to worry about next February. Yeah, yeah. You're finally... I'm done. Yeah. You didn't answer the question. No, I didn't.

Because I don't know the answer. I don't either. I think it'll always be a valuable television property. Yeah. And it will always yield some extraordinary moments. Everything's relative. So you can say, well, Olympic ratings were down from their own previous high,

but they still win every night of those three weeks. And it isn't like one show that lasts for half an hour or an hour. It's all of primetime. They win every bit of it. It's just creating stars it's still doing that right um i think la is probably the only american city that can pull the olympics off they got the facilities they have all the facilities and that's why when everybody talks about well they lost this much they lost that much it's always because they had to build

giant infrastructures to have the Olympics. LA actually has it. They have enough time to plan. They might be able to make... I'm at least optimistic. I think any other city, it's the dumbest thing ever. Like when Boston was involved, I was like, this is... there's no way. Boston doesn't have the infrastructure. The people there will hate it. It's going to be awful. I don't know. LA, at

least, I'm mildly optimistic. But Paris is a concern. I think LA can handle it i think they handled it before i think the concern in paris is just security safety security yeah and then you see what happened in vegas last week which is kind of in the back of our heads was our great fear with large gatherings and baseball stadiums and nfl stadium. And the fact that it's so much harder to get on an airplane than it is to walk into a football stadium, you know, right. What you have open,

there's just so many ways it can go wrong. And that was my, my big, the Vegas concert. I just kept thinking like, man, this guy playing this out, really thought about it and figured out a way to just take down 500 people and 58 of them die.

And could this happen again was my big takeaway. I can't stop thinking about it. And now what we're beginning to learn was that the timeline at first was inaccurate and he shot the security guard six minutes before he opened fire on the crowd below. And it's possible, we don't know yet, but it's possible that that threw his plan off, that he wasn't really ready to begin the assault and that he had other things planned. But once he shot the guy, then he had to spring into action. And so as horrific as the slaughter was,

maybe it would have been even worse if he could have done it on his own timetable. Yeah, and he was casing stadiums and all this. So I think at some point, they're going to have to worry about security. Paris is a scary place to have the Olympics for a lot of reasons. On the one hand, it's a glorious place to have the Olympics. Yeah, on the other hand, it's one of the great cities we have. If we can't have the Olympics there...

They said this about London in 2012, and everybody was so worried about London and it worked. You know, there are things that it's not rational, but you almost feel like you can't say them out loud because saying it out loud somehow increases the chances. Yeah. You can lock down an Olympics and the perimeter around an Olympics. You can lock down the hotels that house the dignitaries or the athletes village or the NBC people. But if an incident takes place in a cafe 10 miles outside the core of London in 2012, the headline still would have been Terror Strikes Olympics.

Yes. Because that's the Olympic city. And for some reason that, thank God, for some reason that hasn't happened. What do you remember? I'm not old enough to remember Munich. What do you remember about Munich? I was in college at Syracuse. I had a little black and white TV in my dorm room.

And I remember watching Jim McKay. It was in September. It was a late Olympics. It went beyond summer. So it was in September. So classes were back in session at Syracuse. And I would check back in on it when I'd come back from class. And I remember how masterfully McKay handled it.

It's an incredible job. Incredible job of careful journalism, but also just something that can't be taught. That touch of humanity. I was going to say empathy. Yeah. Yeah. Empathy. And the last line was something like, or the last line before the one that's most remembered.

My father used to say, our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized. Yeah. But now they have been. Right. We've just been told, and then he recounted the numbers, and he said, they're all gone. And when I was lucky enough to get to know Jim toward the end of his life and I interviewed him on Later once and asked him what he was thinking as all of this unfolded and he said, well, many things, but one of the things I was thinking

was that one of the athletes, the Israeli athletes, was David Berger, who was a weightlifter who had Israeli citizenship, but his family lived in Shaker Heights, Ohio. And in that era, no one had smartphones. There was no internet. There was no CNN. There was nothing. So really, ABC was the sole source. And Jim McKay, although Peter Jennings was there and other people were there, Jim McKay was essentially the conduit for all this information. Nobody else had any of this information. And he said, I was going to be the person to tell David Berger's parents whether he lived or died. And I knew when I looked into that camera that I wasn't just telling America something that would shake them.

I was telling a family that they had lost their son. It was handled about as well as anyone could have possibly handled that. And it became a big part of his legacy, which is a little morbid, but at the same time speaks to how talented the dude was that, you know know that moment could have gone wrong in the wrong hands in so many different ways and that's why he did it perfect yep rune arledge made the right choice he had howard cosell no one could deny howard cosell's intellect yeah and journalistic instincts but howard would not have had the right personal touch the empathy i will say though he did come through with the john lennon thing on Monday night to some degree.

He did because he recognized the importance of it. Yeah. With all due respect to Frank Gifford, who was a wonderfully nice man, Howard recognized that this was more important. The Patriots were playing in the game, weren't they? Oh, yeah. He recognized the importance of it. Yeah. You know?

And I think they were lining up for the winning field goal or something was happening in the game. And he kind of jumped in with a tone that said, what happens here tonight on this field will be long forgotten. Right. No longer matters. But what happened in New York just now is of tremendous significance. What was your, like, did you have a moment on live TV like that where you were like, holy shit, I now have to deliver something that's super important? Or did you somehow escape that?

Well, I did the Sandusky interview, which was kind of live to tape, but it didn't air until like two hours after we did it. That was in 2011. You had time to prep for that at least. I'd prepped to interview his attorney, Joseph Amendola, and then Amendola says to me, what if I could get Sandusky on the phone? And my thought is, you're his lawyer.

This makes no sense. But what I say is, oh, that's a great idea. Let's do it. And so I didn't really prepare to interview Sandusky, but I had read the grand jury report, and so I was familiar with the whys and wherefores of the case, at least as they were known at that point. So I just kind of shifted from what I would have asked Amendola

and directed it toward Sandusky. You know, when you did, obviously not nearly as tragic and morbid as the stuff we're talking about, but when you did Jordan's last game and he made the last shot, you recognized it immediately that this was a moment, which I always thought was like when I've watched that, I think that's the greatest game anyone's ever played in basketball, even though the stats will,

this is the great argument about stats versus eye test. Cause he shot less than 50%. He was like 19. Because he shot less than 50% of the game. Yeah, he was like 19 for 45, but he controlled the pace of the game. His body was shot from the playoffs. Pippen's got a bad back. Rodman's a drunk at that point. They have no bench. They're in Utah.

They have to win that game. They're going to lose game seven. In Utah, Pippen's got to play it if he plays it at all with a bad back. Right. And it was just like they had to win, and he controlled every element of the game. And then in the last minute, coming out of bounds, layup, comes back, strip, comes down, shoot, and it all happens in real time.

He makes three plays in the last 30 seconds. He makes three unbelievable plays in 27 seconds, and you caught it when it happened. You were like, that might be his last shot. If this ends here, this could be it. I think Doug Collins is the best NBA analyst ever. We should talk about Doug. And I guess there are other – I really enjoy Van Gundy.

And I enjoy him a lot. I like the chemistry they have, but Doug was wonderful. Yeah. And Isaiah was a rookie at it. Right. And you had a lot of trouble that those three together and Isaiah and trying to fit Isaiah in and he didn't know what he was doing yet. And Doug's the best. Doug is the best. But anyway, they analyzed the play. And I think part of my job as either a host or in that situation, a play-by-play guy, is to maybe see what the bigger picture is. If a call of a

game or an event touches upon all the points that a good article three days later in Sports Illustrated would include, then I think you've done a good job. Now, not every game merits that. Some games are just, well, that's that. There's the result. See you next week. But although he hadn't announced his retirement, so I had to phrase it in such a way, I think I said something like, who knows what will unfold. Do you have inside info from Ahmad? I didn't. You didn't? Uh-uh.

I didn't. If Ahmad knew something, he didn't tell me, which is the mark of a good friend. Right. To Jordan, not to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I mean. Yeah. A pecking order. Yeah, of course.

But, you know, I just felt as if this was a moment, and it wasn't just that he made the shot, as you know, it was so classic, and he held the pose for a second, almost like he was posing for a portrait or a statue, and the ball didn't just go in, it was a perfect swish. If it was a movie, you couldn't make it look any better. And I sense that this is the kind of image that won't just be on the cover of Sports Illustrated, it could be on the cover of Time magazine. Yeah, this could be his Babe Ruth moment. Yeah.

Like just the Babe Ruth pointing to the stands. This was it. What a cool game to go to. That your blue-haired grandmother from Omaha knew who Michael Jordan was. Yeah. In a way, with all due respect, that that person does not know who Russell Westbrook is today, may not even know who LeBron James is, as wonderful and great as he is. Jordan transcended all of it. Jordan was a true household name. People watched to see Michael Jordan, who wouldn't know a pick and

roll from a three-point shot. They watched to watch Michael Jordan. So it was Doug's job and Isaiah's job to say what happened with Brian Russell, to say, you know, blah, blah, blah, what the Jazz might do on the next play, because there was still 5.2 seconds left. But it was my job to try to put a caption beneath that picture that if people rewound the tape 20 years later would hold up.

Don't get mad at me. I thought you struggled the first year with the rhythm of how to do a basketball game versus the other ones. I read the book. By the third year, you figured it out. The only part of that I disagree with is I think I figured it out by the second half of the first year. Isaiah, who I like very much personally, belonged in the studio. Handsome guy. How about this?

Three-man play-by-play things don't work. Usually they don't. We just shouldn't have them. Usually they don't. Unless the wife of the St. Louis Spirit's CMO is the third person. Then it works. And even then it was just a two-person booth. It was a one-man, one-woman booth.

But Isaiah, in addition to never having done color before, has a very soft voice. Yeah. He belongs on camera where you can see him. He's very telegenic. You've got to lean forward to listen to it. But Doug was already great at this before he went back to coaching with the Pistons. And literally, he either resigned or was fired. I forget which.

Like on a Wednesday. Probably shoved out. On a Wednesday. And he was on the air with us that following Sunday. Because I had told Dick Ebersole, I had done a Pistons game with Isaiah about two weeks before that and I said Doug isn't going to make it through the season he's either going to quit or they're going to fire him and the instant that happens you should pick up the phone and call Doug Collins because we need him so when Doug got there then I think that and also the fact that I hadn't

done play-by-play of basketball in a long time. I was starting to get the rhythm. It's hard. Al Michaels and I argued about this, too, because Al Michaels, you know, he had the same, there's a pace to it that it's almost like hopping on a bike and learning how to, you know, there's a rhythm to it almost. I think there is. Hockey, I think, has a totally different rhythm. Doc Emrick's rhythm is different than

Vin Scully's rhythm was calling a baseball game. Which is different than Mike Breen's rhythm. Exactly. Which is different than Jim Nance doing the Masters. Exactly. But if you go to YouTube, as I have a few times, and it's amazing, or you're just channel surfing and the NBA Network will have hardwood classics. Like I don't watch all the hardwood classics.

If you watch like Portland and the Lakers from 2000 or the Lakers and the Pacers in 2000. Well, the Lakers in 2000, that was a good broadcast. Yeah. I think. The game four OT. Yeah, it was a good series. Could have gone seven.

Kobe kind of putting some chest hairs on in the OT after Shaq gets fouled out. Right. Hold on. I want to talk about Doug. We're going to take a break. All right. Another break to talk about my favorite airline, Delta.

I think I'm a platinum medallion. Yeah. Something like that. One of the reasons I love the Fly Delta app. That's why I use Delta. It allows me to book flights, check my sky miles, check my gate info, keep track of my bags. Well, I didn't think Delta could take it up a notch. It did.

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Delta Airlines committed to constantly improving every aspect of the travel experience, including your ability to stay connected while in flight. And now you can with free messaging on Delta. You have no reason to stop the conversations you're having on the ground, not even when you get in the clouds. So I spent a year with Doug Collins.

And I did countdown the second year. I remember. I mean, one of a kind. Calls everyone coach. Right. I felt like I was in his family within two weeks. Just energy constantly. There's no relaxing around Doug Collins.

He just loves what he does. He loves basketball. And it was just intensity, energy, and love that poured out of him at all times. I really love the guy. You know what Doug Collins has? Sounds corny. Doug Collins has heart. Yeah. And sometimes he,

I think it may have led to him becoming too emotionally involved with his teams or situations, almost to where it moved him to tears. Yeah. But he cares so much. And he's one of these people who thinks about his life and thinks about, well, this is the man I was when I was 25. But this is the man I am now, and this is the man I hope to be five years from now. That's the way he looks at the world. There's a difference between a pleasant acquaintance and a friend. I have lots of pleasant acquaintances. Doug Collins is a real

friend. I haven't talked to Doug in, I don't know, nine, 10, 11 months, but if I saw him right now, we would talk for three hours. He's just one of those guys. He's kind of like a rabbi. Yeah. You end up just talking about your life with him. And we had such an effed up second season just in general. But he was, I don't know.

I just love the guy. It was just a memorable time to work with him. A great combination of a really good professional. He was just good at that. Yeah. And a really good guy. And although, you know, people's impressions of any public figure are based on a few things. Some people associate me with the Olympics or with baseball or with whatever.

But actually, once I got in the groove, those two or three years before Marv came back, and I wanted Marv to come back. I told Dick Ebersole when he asked me if I would move from the studio to play-by-play, I said, you know, Marv is kind of in a bad spot right now, but you can't say for sure that he won't be able to come back. And if and when he comes back, this job belongs to him. He does a lot of things, but his defining thing is basketball. So I'll fill in as long as you need me. But if he's able to come back, I'll happily step aside. So that's what happened.

But in the last two and a half years of doing the NBA, I'd stand by that. I look at those games when I come across them on Hollywood Classics, and I say, damn, those were damn good. What's the best baseball game you ever announced? Maybe the most dramatic one was game seven of the 1997 World Series, which went extra innings, and I'd go rent a real one. Mesa blew the lead in the ninth. Tony Fernandez. Tony Fernandez, which is interesting. Tony Fernandez is not in Bill Buckner territory. Now, you know, that was a weird time for baseball

because people were so freaking mad about the strike. Right. And then Ripken came back, but it was the year before McGuire and Sosa. Right. And those three years,

other than the Yankee fans who look back at 96 fondly, and there are no Marlins fans, but those three years are just, that was one of the great baseball games ever never gets thrown into it it was a great game in fact Jim Leland remember on the baseball network Tom Verducci and I did the 20 greatest games of the last 50 years yeah because we couldn't go back further than that because we had to make sure there was tv and good footage so uh I think that game came in at number 13. And Jim Leland said to me, you know what?

If it was the Red Sox or the Yankees or the Dodgers, that would have been way higher than 13. And he might have a point because the game had all kinds of strategy in it and twists and turns. And a lot of famous people. Like you wouldn't think from a Cleveland-Florida game, but there's like a lot of heavy hitters in that game. You know?

And even young Manny. I remember saying sometime during the seventh game when that stadium, which it might have been Pro Player Park by that time. One time it was Joe Robbie Stadium. It was a football stadium turned into a baseball park. And they didn't draw very well until they got into October. And I said, there are people in Cleveland who have been waiting for this since 1948. There are people in South Florida who have been waiting for this since Thursday.

And that wasn't a lie. That pisses people off if they think you're ragging on their team, you know? I mean, that was, and then they'd get rid of all the dudes the next year. It just would have been so much more fun if Cleveland wins that one. But that's the thing about baseball. The microcosm of that Indians team, which is not much different than the 86 Red Sox, is they had Jose Mesa trying to close Game 7 of the World Series, and that's a problem. Yep.

We had Calvin Chiraldi. I mean, you've told this story a million times, but you're in the Red Sox clubhouse with the champagne bottles. Yep. And then they're hustling those babies out. You did it on the 30 for 30 on the Chase and Bartman. You told that whole story.

Yeah, I did. It's a great... I mean, the footage of it is unbelievable. They're putting the plastic over the locker rooms. That's how close the Red Sox were. Even though we've won three titles, I still haven't totally... I haven't buried 86. It was on Classic

once. It's like the scene of the crime for me. A lot of people think that the World Series ended when the ball went through Buckner's legs. No, it was way worse. There was a rain delay that rained out the next day and 48 hours to talk ourselves back into a possible game seven.

And then we took the lead. Although that allowed them to start Bruce Hurst. Who was great. Otherwise, they would have had to start Oil Can Boyd. And so now he starts. Yeah. And he pitches really well. Yeah.

And they'd already passed the ballots around the press box. And Bruce Hurst had been named the MVP of the World Series, actually, in the 10th inning of Game 6. Right. Even before he pitched in Game 7. And then those had to be torn up. And then he goes out and takes like a 3-0 lead into the sixth before things started to go sideways.

He wears down. Al Nipper, I'll never forgive McNamara for bringing in Al Nipper. That was headed for a disaster. Yeah, I mean, it's weird. The losses resonate more than the wins. Oh, yeah. Was it Bill Parcells? It might have been Parcells, but somebody said,

losing hurts worse than winning feels good. Yeah, that's true. Baseball announcing, I wanted to ask you about this. There's a certain way we announce baseball games, and you can hear it on the radio. Yeah. And it's almost like listening to two aliens communicate with one another. It's not a human

interaction it's like oh first ball one two it's got this like we're talking about rhythms before there's a rhythm to it and everybody is afraid to tweak it even five five millimeters i think on tv they tweak it more than on radio right like or Like, Ursula and Remy, when they were doing the Red Sox game together, they would get silly sometimes. And people would lose their shit. And it's almost like, collectively, we haven't crossed this line. It'd just be like, hey, maybe these games are three and a half hours. Maybe we should figure out how to liven them up. I think that's why.

People are bringing in guests and stuff now. Kruko and Kuiper are very popular in the Bay Area. Yeah. And, of course, the Giants really have a tremendous depth of good announcers. Dave Fleming is a really good young announcer. And John Miller is like an old school announcer who would be right at home with Red Barber or Vin Scully or Mel Allen. So they've got Miller and Fleming on the radio.

They've got Kuyper and Kruko on television. But neither Dwayne nor Mike is a classic baseball announcer. Yeah. And yet they've got a chemistry and an insight and a connection with the San Francisco fans that... So you think that's the model? I think that's the new local model. Okay.

Or Cillo and Remy, Dave O'Brien and Remy. So the Red Sox had Dave O'Brien, Remy, and Eckersley. Yep. And it was like this door opened, and it was blue skies. It was like Remy and Eck who played together a million years before, but it was like listening to two old college roommates. All of a sudden, it was a different broadcast. I always wonder why they don't experiment more,

especially with the local stuff. Why is it so boring? This is always why, no matter how good the network announcer is, in the cities of the competing teams, they're never going to be happy with them. I don't care if it's Vin Scully. If the Indians are in the World Series, you want to hear Tom Hamilton. A, the guy's very good. But B, that's the guy who took you through 162

and through all the years that you've been an Indian fan. Remember poor Joe Buck's dad. Everyone was mad at him for those couple years. He did the World Series. Right. And he was like one of the all-timers. They were like, who is this guy? A Hall of Famer.

Yeah. In Cincinnati, they still can't understand why Joe Nuxall isn't in the broadcaster's wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Right. Marty Brenneman is. Outside Cincinnati. Nobody even knows who that is. Objectively, I don't think anyone would say that Joe Nuxall was a Hall of Fame announcer, but was he a beloved local figure?

Of course. So if you're a Cincinnati Reds fan, you'd rather hear Joe Nuxall than Joe Buck. Objectively, there's no comparison in terms of broadcasting craftsmanship, but I get it. Well, we'll never have to worry about this about seven years from now when there's seven different broadcasts streaming. Right. And you just get to pick your announcers.

And you could have frigging Snoop Dogg and LL Cool J announce the Game 7 of the World Series. It could be anybody. Seven, eight the World series. It could be anybody. Seven, eight, nine pairs. It could be you and Al Michaels. Well, when I was on TV with you and Al... That was so much fun, by the way. We both said afterwards that it was a good half hour

or whatever we did. But we talked about this, how back when people wrote letters, and now it would be tweets or emails or whatever. But when people wrote letters, you would get exactly the same letter complaining that you were biased against a team. The only thing that was different was the postmark. But the letter was identical. So you're doing the Marlins and the Indians, and you get letters from Ohio. Why are you rooting for the Marlins? You hate the Indians and we hate you. And you get exactly the same letter

from somebody in South Florida. The only the team names were changed, but none of us. I'm sure if we could have a seance with Kurt Gowdy or Mel Allen, they tell you the same thing. None of us has ever received a letter that goes like this. Dear Mr. Costas, Nance, Buck, Michaels, Musburger, whomever, I happen to live in Seattle. And so as a fan of the Mariners, I had no particular rooting interest in the Cubs Indians World Series. However, I must say, I found you shockingly biased in favor of the Indians. Oh, that's interesting. No such letter has ever been received. Those letters only come from people who themselves

have an irrational rooting interest. You know, the second year I did Countdown, it was San Antonio versus Miami in the finals. Right. Each city was convinced that I hated their team. Of course they were. And I think I might have even said it on the air. I was like, there's only two teams in the finals, and apparently I hate both of them.

What am I, rooting for an apocalypse? Chris Collinsworth apparently hates 32 different teams in the NFL. Yeah, Chris, even more. If there's more, he hates those too. Last anecdote pertaining to this. Yeah. You can't find a more professional broadcaster in any sport in history than Vin Scully. Yep.

Well, he's an alien, so I don't usually count him. He's just in a category also. Yeah, he's not a human being. So he and Joe Garagello are doing the 86 World Series. And one night, the NBC switchboard in New York receives 1,800 calls of complaint during the World Series. A thousand of them, roughly, they kept track as best they could. This is the Stone Age. A thousand of them complained that Vin and Joe were biased against the Mets. 800 or so complained that they were biased against the Red Sox. I attribute the difference only to the fact that New York is a somewhat larger city than Boston.

And also it would have been a toll call back in the days before cell phones. So otherwise it's 50-50. People hearing exactly the same broadcast perceived opposite biases. What's left for you as a sports fan and somebody who's been in the sports media for 40 years? What do you want to see? What what great sporting event hasn't happened yet or what great athlete hasn't happened yet that you're like, shit, I thought I'd see this by now or I really want to see this. This might not be the most inspired answer, but I'd like to see Mike Trout in the World Series. Wow. Wow.

Okay. Just the best baseball player who just nobody even knows what he looks like, basically. See Mike Trout in the World Series. People, again, will take this as bias against the teams that are still alive. I'd love to see the Cleveland Indians win a World Series. Yeah. Not at someone else's expense, but just because they've waited so long. Now Houston's like, what about us?'ve waited so long now houston's like

what about us we waited that long why don't you suck costas i mentioned that by the way i mentioned i did the one game the first game of the red sox astro series and i mentioned that well certainly it's not as mythic and it doesn't go back as many years but the astros have been in the postseason 11 times they've only made the world series, and they've had some epic near misses in 80 against the Phillies. Game six in 86. 80 was horrible. Yeah, so they know all about so close and yet so far.

But one thing that really annoys me is when you see these lists of longest waits without a championship. Yeah. There's only one that matters now, and it's the Cleveland Indians or the Astros, if you want to mention the Astros. But when they say the Arizona St. Louis Chicago Cardinals,

there is no 12-year-old kid in Arizona saying to his father, Dad, tell me about Jim Hart, Dan Geerdorf, and Jackie Smith. Right. And there is nobody in Sacramento who says, Dad or Mom, did Oscar Robertson play for my team, even though my team was in Cincinnati? And before that, was Bob Davies really that good for the Rochester Royals when they played George Mikan and the Minneapolis Lakers?

No. It only counts if all the waiting, all the near misses, all the heartache, all the longing, all the anticipation took place in one city. And better yet, carried up another notch, one place. That's what made the Red Sox and the Cubs, with all due respect, even better than it will likely be in Cleveland because that ballpark doesn't house all the ghosts, whereas Fenway and Wrigley did. You just made the case for if the Knicks ever win the NBA title again.

Because Madison Square Garden still stands. You're talking 1946, the OG team, haven't won since 70, generations of fans that go to like- No, they won in 73. 73, I'm sorry. Yeah, 73. 72 or 73 so 73 yeah so it's been 44 years

but you're talking about like my friend William Goldman who's in his mid 80s now he's insane now who is no no that made it sound like I was saying he's insane about the Knicks

he's insane about the Knicks and he always has been you go from him who's seen every every Knicks season ever to some six year old like he like maybe his great grandchild or whatever right i think how many generations that is yeah that's always gonna matter when that grandpa's taking kids to the same ballpark the same arena or at least in the same

city the indians are the last baseball team who could have the william goldman fan and then also the six-year-old fan. And then after the Astros, it's not going to span that many generations. I do wonder, though, I do think part of what really carried baseball post-Strake were all these franchises that hadn't won. You know, and like the Red Sox have won three World Series. They just got bounced in four in round one. Right. And if this was 2003, we'd be having a heart attack. It it's like all right we'll just let's get another manager we're good we got some good players it's

not life or death you know tell me you're the boston guy yeah i like john farrell a lot every time i was ever around him i thought he had a really solid demeanor yeah not too high not too low won a world series won a world series won back-to-back division titles of course between had a really solid demeanor. Yeah. Not too high, not too low. Won a World Series. Won a World Series, won back-to-back division titles. Of course, between the World Series and the first of those two division titles, they finished last twice. But his overall body of work is very good.

His demeanor is that of a leader. Yeah. What's the problem? I don't know what's up. I'm going to tell you right after this break. Okay, good. My God, it's my old friend Framebridge. If you've ever seen anything we've done in my office on Instagram,

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just to share what my frame photos look like because they're pretty cool. Framebridge.com, promo code BS. By the way, people at Framebridge, I'm about to send you more pictures to frame. Yeah, it's coming. Get ready for me. All right, back to Bob. John Farrell, sometimes it's just time with your manager, kind of knowing it's time.

Is it because not, not because of what went on on the field strategically stuff in the clubhouse that got away from him or Dombrowski coming in and wanting his own guy or that might be part of it. But I always like consistency with my managers. You know, I, I like when things just make sense. Like when we don't play Devers in game two,

Devers, like this wasn't a World Series team they're not going to win the title this year they weren't good enough I care about Devers and Benintendi and Betts and just these guys getting reps and being in big situations and plus Devers is like sneaky really good against lefties so they bench him in game two for Devin Marrero and you see something like that and you, that's just nonsensical. You could have seen them making that move if Nunez had not been hurt in game one, and Ramirez, well, you wouldn't have known it if Nunez hadn't been hurt, but Ramirez came

off the bench and got a couple of base hits as the DH. You could see if they played Nunez at third and played against a left-hander, they could have played Hanley at first. I just want the young guys to get reps in the playoffs. Actually, I've now talked myself into a corner because based on what you said, they could have left Devers at third. They could have DH Nunez and played Ramirez at first. Or how about this?

Bench dust and Pejoria, who'sland could have come off the bench against a winner. Well, how about this? Bench dust and pejorative. He's never had a big postseason hit in his life. Well, that would cause an insurrection in parts of Boston. Or since 2008. Yeah, he was okay in 07, but after that. Yeah, which team from a baseball storyline standpoint? By the way, on John Farrell,

not bringing Addison Reed in the eighth inning. If we hadn't won three World Series, that also would have... Like bringing Chrisison Reed in the eighth inning. If we hadn't won three World Series, that also would have... Like bringing Chris Sale, getting that extra inning. Oh, wait. See, but we already know that now you can die in peace. I know, three times. Yeah.

Who has the sexiest storyline for Bob Costas of all the remaining teams? Dodgers? Dodgers or Indians. But every one of them, every one of them has a good storyline if it's the Yankees you've got Aaron Judge and if it's the Yankees and Dodgers

then you bring out all the Brooklyn versus the Yankees or the LA Sandy Koufax Dodgers versus the Mickey Mantle Dodgers Yankees

would be incredible Yankees why'd they pitch to Reggie Jackson the third time one of the great unanswered questions ever really you're gonna pitch to Reggie Jackson the third time? One of the great unanswered questions ever. Really?

You're going to pitch to him again? Nobody on base? Yeah. True. I would rank it. I think Dodgers Indians would be, as just like a baseball fan slash historian, the most fascinating one. Because the Dodgers are now working on three decades.

And they're another team that has the generations all that stuff and you know when i say stuff like this there are some people who if it didn't happen in their lifetime if they don't remember it they consider it to be irrelevant or annoying or stupid. Right. Which is something I don't understand. I realize the world changes around you. When I was 12 years old, I was fascinated when people told me stories of Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb. Yeah. I'm old enough to actually have known people when I was in my 20s who knew Ty Cobb. I knew Shirley Povich. He knew Ty Cobb and Jack Dempsey and Walter Johnson and Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Joe Lewis. I wanted to hear all this stuff.

So if the Dodgers were to play the Indians in the World Series, somebody needs to mention, not dwelling on it for half an inning, but somebody needs to mention that in 1920, Bill Wamsgans of the Indians turned an unassisted triple play against the Brooklyn Dodgers. There's no footage. The game was not televised. We should mention, we're taping this on a late Wednesday afternoon,

the Indians might lose game five tonight to the Yankees. That's true. So we might have just jinxed them for the last eight minutes. Wait, last thing and then we're done. NFL used to do these halftime essays, weighty sometimes. Yeah. It's a weighty. It's been a weighty decade for the NFL.

A lot of stuff going on. And the weightiness just went up 19 notches because now the president's involved and now all these rich owners are who tried to spend the weekend pretending that they cared about the players and we all know they didn't and now they've been exposed what how far would you have gone if you still had that halftime as far as they would let me yeah but i think that nbc has done a good job covering the story in a different way in the pregame show with dan patrick with tony dungy with interviews that NBC has done a good job covering the story in a different way in the pregame show with Dan Patrick, with Tony Dungy, with interviews that they've done. But they've chosen not to use the halftime in that way.

And in truth, the last year or two that I did it, the halftime just became pretty much boilerplate. You'd show a few highlights and then you do a promo, which was mandated by the NFL for the Thursday night game, whether it was on NBC or CBS, you did a promo for that and a promo for the Today Show. So you could do it almost robotically. When I did those halftime essays, I think the legitimate criticism was that we shouldn't have done one every week. And in fact, I brought that up to the producers. Yeah, do it when you need it.

Yeah, I said, you know what? Out of 18 weeks, 20 weeks, maybe seven or eight times, Al Davis dies or some issue comes up. I was able to get out. Some issue, there's a lot of issues that might come up. Right, but I have to have something either really worthwhile to say in a serious vein or something humorous or offbeat enough that it differentiates it from anything else that you would have otherwise heard.

And that, I think, was maybe the shortcoming, that doing it every week, there were times when we just had to come up with something or other. But I think even those were generally sometimes i had lived them but usually i wrote them and they were well produced and it was a different two minutes than you would see elsewhere and i don't understand the objection i well i think you do understand i guess i don't know know. You go ahead and then I'll follow. If I was running the NFL or I owned one of the 32 teams, especially this season, I wouldn't want Bob Costas coming out at halftime. Oh, yeah.

The objection from, you know, I think that. I'd be like, get that guy off there. Can we just promote the Thursday night game and show some highlights? You know who I don't want? It's Bob Costas telling me what I'm doing wrong with my shit league I think that unless I'm kidding myself

I've had good relationships with all the people virtually within the leagues the IOC good personal relationships but I think that some of them are to some extent relieved that at certain times that I'm not around.

Right. Because they wanted me because the audience was used to me and I could do certain things reasonably well, so they thought that added some prestige to it. Well, Ebersole was also like, we have football back here, some major stars. Right. To really push this telecast along. Yeah, I wasn't really that keen on returning to football i thought i'd done it long enough but i did it because of my loyalty

to dick and he thought well we're bringing al michaels and john madden over and we'll have chris collinsworth with you in the studio and we'll have kind of a and then here's a lot of a murder well yeah they did they did pay me i didn't do it as a charitable endeavor. Yeah. I forgot that part briefly. My accountant did not. Yeah. But I think that there were times when at NBC, and these guys are all my friends, and they elevated me, and I had a wonderful experience there. But I think that there were times when they said, I wish he was less insistent on trying to bring some element of journalism or commentary to this.

Why doesn't he just fall in line? Just talk about how great Odell Beckham's one-handed catches are. Can you do that essay, Bob? No, I'm going to talk about concussions and the guy who got concussed last week and then came back. I can do the Odell Beckham. That's the thing about me, right? I think a thing about me is that I've always appreciated the drama,

the excitement, the quirkiness, the humor, the shared experience of sports. But I also think that there are issues. They shouldn't get in the way of bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth or fourth and goal with 10 seconds to go. But I'm on pre-games and halftime. So when I'm hosting the Olympics, I'm between events, 90 seconds here, two minutes there.

You could add a little texture and shading and perspective and a touch of journalism. And I'm not saying they never let me do it. They did let me do it. If I had my druthers, I would have done it more often. Yeah. I mean, I'm writing a column on Friday for The Ringer, which is like a fun mailbag column.

I read it all the time. But then occasionally, it's time to, you know, there's stuff to write about, and you've got to be there. And that's with the column, I've always kind of stayed away, but you kind of know when it's time. This is becoming something, and that's with the column i've always kind of stayed away but you kind of know when it's time this is becoming something and it's time to write about it and i felt that way a couple weeks ago when i saw the owners kneeling with the players and it just seems so false to me and it's such like a pandering move and i knew how it was going to play out i knew it

was going to affect their business and i knew they were to affect their business. And I knew they were going to do a 180. And I knew we were going to get to where we were getting. And it's like, why are we going through this charade? Why do I have to look at Jerry Jones kneeling with his players? Get the fuck out of here. That was my attitude. And a lot of the guys kneeling with the players. And what else were they going to do?

These are their employees. Yeah. Exactly. They're employees. Right. They can't turn their back on them and put themselves at odds with a large number of them. Plus, they know whether they agree or disagree with them politically, that a large number of these players are very decent men who do good things quietly behind the scenes in their communities. They're not sons of bitches. So in that sense, it stopped being what Colin Kaepernick wanted it to be about. And it became,

I don't know how long it will last, it became a virtually league-wide condemnation of Donald Trump for saying what he said about these players as a group. You want to tell me Malcolm Jenkins or Antoine Bolden, Anquan Bolden, I'm sorry, Anquan Bolden is a son of a bitch. You want to tell me that guys like that, that you'd be happy to have your son grow up to be a man like that, that he's a son of a bitch? Well, I don't care where I fall on the political spectrum. My response to that's going to be, well, screw you too. No, I'm going to stand with this guy. I know this guy. He's my teammate.

He's my friend. Screw you. How do you think it plays out? We're heading into week six. Goodell has sent this letter out saying everybody has to stand. I mean, on the one hand, it's really stupid at this point. On the other hand, it's really important. It's this rare, stupid-slash-important story.

Here's what I think is happening. I think that—I've said this before, and I apologize if people have heard me say it. I admire Colin Kaepernick's intentions, and he's backed it up by walking the walk, raising and or donating millions of dollars being involved in community projects, okay? He's not the natural heir to Muhammad Ali or Arthur Ashe or Kurt Flood or Kareem. He doesn't have that kind of public profile.

And a lot of the things he has said have undermined his cause. You know, he doesn't vote and wearing socks. The Fidel Castro t-shirt. Fidel Castro and cops as pigs. OK, he's taken the ball as far as he's capable of taking it. I think now what you have to think about is not just what's justifiable. It's justifiable to protest injustices in policing and injustices in the justice system and mass incarceration and whatnot.

That's justifiable. But what's going to be the most effective thing going forward? What's going to help you persuade the persuadable? And so I actually think this would not be a surrender, would not be a capitulation. Kneel before the national anthem. Stand during the national anthem with your head bowed if you want to. And then as soon as the anthem ends, kneel again. Then you've disarmed the love it or leave it crowd. Almost all these guys have said, we respect the military. We love our country. It's not against America itself. We're trying to highlight a specific injustice.

Okay. Frame it that way. And then find people better equipped than Colin Kaepernick. And there are plenty of them. You listen to Doug Baldwin or Michael Bennett. And it'd be good if a few white guys, if Chris Long and a few guys like that chimed into the chorus. You can command an audience now. It isn't just three networks anymore. You can command an audience. Every league has its own television

outlet. I would think that as part of this, the NFL could say, look, we understand you have legitimate concerns. We'll do an hour every week on the NFL Network. And we'll have varying viewpoints. We'll have a competent moderator. And everybody will be able to have their say. And if you want to address the press, we'll make sure that that's available to you. And these guys ought to get community events together. You remember the famous picture of Jim Brown and Bill Russell and the young Kareem, who was Lou Alcindor, surrounding Muhammad Ali.

We need to go beyond, I say we, I'm a fortunate, beyond middle-aged white man. But I grew up during the civil rights movement. And I think people may misunderstand or not remember just how popular Muhammad Ali and Kurt Flood and people like that and Tommy Smith and John Carlos were among young white people on college campuses in the 1970s. We, to the extent that a white person could, we got it and we supported it. We loved Hank Aaron. We knew he was noble. We knew he was accomplishing something more important than just hitting 715 home runs. So what we, those of us who want social justice, need to do is go beyond gestures now to specifics

and find the people, LeBron James may be one of them, find the people who have the combination of prestige and nuanced grasp of the issues to take those platforms and have real textured stuff, is that it's the NBA players that are going to drive this. I've felt for a while now that the NBA has kind of become the sport. The NFL has the ratings and it's still bigger. But the NBA has more cultural buzz. The NBA has more cultural buzz. It's a 12-month-a-year sport. It has most of the marketable guys. It has guys that people hang on their every word, their every action, their Instagram pictures

and all that stuff. And when those guys really get involved in this, and they've been involved, but not, if they really get involved, I mean, they go deep. That's when this goes to another level. Yeah, and I think that's what's gonna happen, to be honest. When I see Odell Beckham, okay, who- He's a kid, he's like 23 right he's first of

all he's one of the most magnificent compelling yeah electric athletes i've ever seen he does things that jerry rice never did i'm not saying he's better than jerry rice but he makes plays that jerry rice uh didn't it's kind of like seeing connie hawkins or julius irving right wait a minute he's redefining the way the game is being played all right and he's a likable kid when you're around him big beaming smile and whatnot but it's hard to take seriously a guy who in the same game pantomimes a dog taking a leak and then raises raises a fist in some homage to Tommy Smith and John Carlos. I'm not taking this guy seriously. I don't take him as seriously as I took Kurt Flood or Arthur Ashe or I take Kareem to this very day.

Yeah, Kareem has become more invaluable like this year than he was like even when he was on the Lakers. Kareem is – He's like one of the great resources we have. He won't come on this podcast, but- I'll talk to him. He's mad at me for a couple different things. Well, this probably traces to- Well, it's a Celtic Lakers thing.

The Celtic Lakers stuff. But I made a joke when I was on TV about when they were getting the statue. When he was getting the Lakers statue, I made a joke, I think, about something about, is the statue him not talking to a reporter or something? But it was on ABC, and I think he got mad. Hey, I'm sitting here. I know. Has everything you've ever said about me

been as glowing as I deserve based on my sterling character and outstanding career? No, but I've overlooked a few of those brickbats, and here I am, and we just had a splendid podcast. We had an awesome podcast. Have you ever thought about having a podcast? Have you ever thought about having a podcast? I have, because it would give me the freedom that we have here.

Because you wouldn't have to prepare. I didn't prepare anything for this. It's like Bob Costas is one of the great guests. Just be able to roll. There we go. Roll with anything. Start out with Gabe Kaplan, finish with Kareem. Get a whole bunch of stuff in between.

And we didn't even, there's somebody out there among your countless listeners who's wondering who was James West, as played by Robert Conrad, who was his nemesis? James West. It was Michael Dunn. Michael Dunn, who was a little person, as is now politically correct to say. Michael Dunn, who played the diabolical Miguelito Lopez. No, Miguelito Loveless. Miguelito Loveless.

Not Lopez. I was confusing him with former Yankee left fielder Hector Lopez. No, Miguelito Loveless. He was like a diabolical genius who was always seemingly about to spell doom for James West. But the Wild Wild West got out of it. Who has the upper hand right now between you and Al Michaels? The world's greatest rivalry. The Borg and McEnroe of sports media.

You know, I would say that, first of all, Al is the greatest modern... No, don't compliment him. He's your rival. Don't try to pretend you like Al Michaels. Well, then I'm going to have to fake it when we have dinner in a couple of days. You both want to destroy each other. We do different things. I would think that Joe Buck and Jim Nance and Al Michaels

are more in this conversation. I'm off on my own little island. Yeah, I guess. I like starting stuff between you and Al because you guys love each other that's what makes it funny

but it was you were like kind of kind of staring at each other at the top of the mountain there for a long long time I guess I guess

you know Al you would have shoved them off if nobody knew if nobody found out I've always I've always you know you watch the forensic files right yeah If nobody found out. I've always, you know, you watch the forensic files, right? Yeah. Has anyone diagrammed the way this podcast has gone?

No. The various zigzags. These are my favorite kind of podcasts, though. Like, Tommy can't even keep track. Tate's trying to take notes. If you really wanted to do someone in. Yeah. All right. And leave no trace,

the best way would be probably to take them hiking up in the mountains. So you thought about this without Michaels. And then push them off a narrow ledge. Oh my God, he slipped. I tried. Oh, I couldn't. There's no forensics. True.

It's your word and the mountain's word. And that's it. All right. So you thought about that without Michaels. We can go hiking with you. Bob Costas. Anything to plug? Any movies coming out?

Basketball 2? I believe when you peaked the way Al and I did in Basketball 1. Why even do Basketball 2? The sequel can only be a disappointment. All right. I would revisit Pootie Tang if anybody wanted me to. You have a fascinating IMDb. I do.

There's a lot of stuff in there. This is fun. A lot of time, my brother. I don't know how often you're in California, but anytime you want to come in and talk about stuff, let me know. We'll do it again, for sure. All right. Thanks, Bob.

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Free messaging on Delta. What's better than that? Don't forget I am on the Ringer NBA show with Haralabob Valgaris. We're going to put that up Sunday midnight. Yeah. And then Sal's coming back on Monday to do Week 7 Lines. And we have some awesome guests next week, including Jeff Bridges.

Oh, yeah. Couldn't believe that one. Jeff Bridges in my office. After he left, we talked about The Vanishing, one of my favorite dumb cable movies. And he left a coffee on my desk. It was almost like, I don't know whether he did it intentionally.

And it was like a little shout out to the fact that I liked The Vanishing. Or he did it intentionally because he wanted me to drink the coffee and end up in a coffin. Or whether he just did it unintentionally because he didn't know where to throw it at. But it was one of those three things. And Jeff Bridges is coming next week. But it was one of those three things. Anything Jeff Bridges is coming next week. And that's it. Enjoy the weekend.