Playboy Interview: Bob Costas

Bob Costas is at Yankee Stadium for game three of the World Series. The noise is deafening in the NBC booth, where he is calling the play-by-play. Headphones blot out some of the pandemonium and at the same time transmit another source of extraneous audio: the voice of producer David Neal. After half an inning, Costas calls for the Advil.

It's a trademark Costas performance--smooth, knowledgeable, ironic, humorous. From time to time he swivels around and rests a hand on the shoulder of analyst Joe Morgan ("To let him know I'm listening," Costas says). Like two vaudevillians, they have their tempo, timing and temperaments in sync. Yet only when seated directly behind Costas can one fully appreciate the beautifully choreographed presentation he's been pulling off for 26 years.

Robert Quinlan Costas was born on March 22, 1952, and grew up in New York in Queens and on Long Island. His father, John, an electrical engineer, was a sports fan and gambler who coaxed his son to monitor the radio for scores. Seduced by the winsome voices of Mel Allen, Red Barber, Ernie Harwell and Vin Scully, Bob often fell asleep with a transistor radio tucked under his pillow. By day he "announced" the play-by-play of his own ball games, or even when tossing tennis balls against a wall by himself.

At Syracuse University he began broadcasting at the campus FM radio station and trying to lose his New York accent. He then landed a job as a weekend sports anchor, substitute weatherman and fill-in host for Bowling for Dollars with a local TV station. Six months later, he doctored a highlight tape by turning up the bass to make himself sound older and was immediately hired by KMOX-AM to broadcast games of the Spirits of St. Louis in the old American Basketball Association.

Armed with an easy-listening voice and an impressive memory, Costas came to the attention of CBS. He was recruited to work NFL and college basketball games. By 1980, he had signed a contract with NBC, again to work football and basketball, all the while yearning to cover his favorite sport--baseball. Finally, in 1983, NBC teamed him with Tony Kubek on the backup national game of the week, and from that point on Costas was everywhere. He hosted the network's NFL pregame, halftime and postgame shows. He also did a two-hour syndicated Sunday night radio program, Costas Coast to Coast, and soon was popping up on David Letterman calling elevator races. If that wasn't enough, he hosted Later, a half-hour interview show that followed Letterman on NBC.

In time, Costas grew weary of the workload and travel. He also worried that too much Costas might not serve him well. He dropped Later, Coast to Coast and the NFL telecasts to spend more time with his children, Keith, 14, and Taylor, 11, and his wife, Randy, at their home in St. Louis.

Now in the fourth year of a six-year NBC contract that pays him a reported $3 million a year, Costas will once again host the Olympic Summer Games and broadcast baseball's playoffs and World Series. Starting in February he will have a weekly half-hour show on HBO, "a sort of sports Nightline," he says, in which he can tackle issues, do commentaries and interview sports figures. That means he'll be giving up his NBA play-by-play post and will contribute only peripherally during playoff coverage.

At the age of 48 and having won 12 Emmys, has the time come for Costas to abandon sports for other TV pursuits? To find the answer to that question, as well as why he's been so critical of baseball lately, we sent writer Diane K. Shah to catch up with Costas in New York and Los Angeles. She reports:

"OK, so he's short. Five foot seven. Made to seem even shorter by the giant-size athletes he covers. 'Hey, it's not like I shop in the boys' department,' he says agreeably. 'Besides, Jim McKay isn't any taller and Bryant Gumbel barely is.'

"What you quickly learn about Costas is that he's never quite turned off. The man can talk. As with his on-air performances, each sentence flows seamlessly and grammatically into the next, sprinkled with Costasian irony and wit.

"Our interviews took place over the course of nine months, mainly in hotel lobbies and dining rooms. But it was while sitting with him in the booth at Yankee Stadium that I came to understand how his commentary runs smoothly over a torrent of information he is monitoring. One eye on a TV set to catch a sudden graphic, one ear peeled to producer Neal, Costas is also the recipient of scribbled notes from statistician Elliot Kalb. Barely giving them a glance, Costas tosses the notes onto the floor then phrases the item in his own words--never, of course, missing a beat.

"But baseball is only part of his life, so we started with the Olympic Summer Games in Sydney."

[Q]Playboy: During the 16 days of the Olympics, you'll be on air six to eight hours a day. How much control do you have in deciding what's covered?

[A]Costas: I have input, but no control. I host the Olympics, but I don't program them. And while I can control the words that come out of my mouth, I don't decide when we should cover a distance runner from Algeria instead of going back to swimming to take another look at an American in the 100-meter butterfly.

[Q]Playboy: John Tesh was taken aback when you criticized him after he hosted the gymnastics during the 1996 Olympics. What was that all about?

[A]Costas: I was very uncomfortable with some of the over-the-top aspects of the Olympic coverage. There's legitimate drama in sports and then there's hype, contrivance and maudlin nonsense. And I think most reasonable people would say that at times the gymnastics coverage was beyond parody. I didn't say anything on the air. But occasionally coming off some stuff, I might have paused for a second, raised an eyebrow, hoping to communicate to the reasonably perceptive, "Hey, folks, I just work here."

[Q]Playboy: It seems it was more than that.

[A]Costas: I'm really circumspect about not saying anything about my colleagues. But the whole tone of that coverage became the prevailing tone of the first week of the Olympics, and it made it difficult for me as the host. It's such a tightrope to walk because you represent the network, and it put me in a position of trying to figure out how to counter-punch without directly dissing it. So I often sat there on the set off the air rolling my eyes, actually amusing the technicians, who were cracking up.

[Q]Playboy: Didn't you make a remark in public?

[A]Costas: After the Olympics there was a roast for Marv Albert. This was before his troubles. I was one of the roasters. And Rudy Martzke of USA Today said to me, "So, what have you got planned for the Marv roast?" And I said, "Actually, I feel so emotional about Marv that I'm having John Tesh prepare my remarks." That's all I said. In fact, John is a very nice man. And I applaud him for his TV and musical endeavors. He's a talented guy. But, oh man, those gymnastics.

[Q]Playboy: What are your favorite events?

[A]Costas: To me, the essence of the Summer Olympics is track and field. Jesse Owens, Rafer Johnson, Smith and Carlos, Bob Beamon, Carl Lewis, Dan O'Brien, Bruce Jenner, Michael Johnson coming off the turn of the 200, Wilma Rudolph--those are the images that stick in my mind.

[Q]Playboy: Apart from Marion Jones' attempt to win five gold medals, what stories will you be looking at?

[A]Costas: There's Cathy Freeman, an Australian track star who is an aborigine, and the story of the treatment of aborigines in Australia is one of the stories within the Olympics. Also--and this is a relative rarity--the home country that isn't the old Soviet Union or the U.S. has a chance to win a lot of medals, specifically in swimming. So you'll have a situation where the Americans and the Australians are going at it like Duke and North Carolina. Also, there will be more of a focus on women's sports--soccer, of course. The next-best team in the world after the U.S. in softball is Australia. And to me, women's Olympic basketball is now more interesting than men's.

[Q]Playboy: You've been called an easy-listening version of Howard Cosell. But wasn't Howard in a class by himself? His coverage and defense of Muhammad Ali are sports journalism legends.

[A]Costas: If the rest of his career were dreck, the Ali thing alone earns him a place of high regard. It was a defining moment, and even with all the bombast and the self-congratulation, he was on the right side of it. He also deserves tremendous credit for helping to make Monday Night Football entertaining.

[Q]Playboy: Don't you think it was Howard's "tell it like it is" bluntness that truly set him apart?

[A]Costas: What's grown up is this myth that there was Cosell and the rest were all a bunch of bland robotic shills. Maybe the majority were bland, but there were many colorful and vivid announcers who may not have done the same things Cosell did, but they were excellent in their own way--Harry Caray, Vin Scully, Red Barber, Mel Allen, Lindsey Nelson, Jim McKay and literate essayists like Heywood Hale Broun and Jack Whitaker. Cosell brought an element of controversy and journalism that wasn't there before and has generally been lacking since. But there are many aspects to sports broadcasting. Who would you want at the mike when Koufax was working the final inning of his perfect game? Scully or Cosell? Who do you want at the mike when the Miracle on Ice happened? Or the earthquake hit? Al Michaels was at the mike for both, and Cosell couldn't approach what he did in those spots. I think some sportswriters knowingly use the myth of Cosell as a club to dismiss all modern sports broadcasters. When in fact many broadcasters, past and present, have done work that compares more than favorably with Cosell's.

[Q]Playboy: Cosell himself was roundly attacked at the time.

[A]Costas: Sure, but for being obnoxious. You've got this distilled notion that he was the only guy who ever really took on the issues. But the issues were more clear-cut then, and Roone Arledge recognized that Cosell talking to Ali and Frazier or grilling Pete Rozelle was not only journalism, it was riveting TV. My criticism of network sports today is that you will almost never see a discussion of franchise extortion, or the fact that a significant number of NFL players have been charged with serious crimes. To me it's a responsibility to do that, and it would be a lot more interesting than the 43rd feature on some player who has dedicated his season to his sick sister. That's the end of my rant.

[Q]Playboy: But why aren't the issues being tackled today? Surely, not all network executives are fools.

[A]Costas: I think NBC and our colleagues at other networks turn out lots of work that's high quality. But, generally speaking, there's a huge void in TV sports. Part of it is a reluctance to rough up the leagues they are in business with, but part of it has to do with the nature of the issues. There was a right side and a wrong side with Muhammad Ali, Curt Flood, Billie Jean King. I mean, I can give you a fairly detailed and insightful analysis of baseball's economic situation, but it's difficult to hop on a high horse in favor of either side, you know? The issues are not as vivid as they once were.

[Q]Playboy: OK, so today's issues are different. But we don't hear anybody saying, "We shouldn't permit highly visible, well-paid athletes to get into bar brawls or drunk-driving accidents or violent episodes and not be prosecuted." Or how come nobody does a Cosellian tirade about the number of illegitimate children athletes father?

[A]Costas: One of the reasons Cosell made an impression is that he dealt in tirades, which naturally some people remember more than the actual content of a more thoughtful and restrained presentation. Still, you make an interesting point. A lot of us who grew up in the Sixties and Seventies have been slow to react because we don't want to sound like reactionaries, like your Aunt Matilda in Omaha going, "Tsk, tsk." We somehow think it makes us appear uptight if we say, "Wait a minute. There are certain things that are just common decency."

[Q]Playboy: But so much of what passes for controversy today is bad behavior, no?

[A]Costas: Or just acting like an idiot. I mean, do you know how much more of a rebel Jim Bouton was than Dennis Rodman has ever dreamed of being? How much more guts Billie Jean King had, or Curt Flood or Muhammad Ali--or Arthur Ashe in his own quiet way, but with dignity? Or Sandy Koufax, when he wouldn't pitch the first game of the World Series because it fell on a High Holiday? How much more truly individual these people were than the cartoon characters who call themselves outrageous and say they're standing up for what they believe in, when mostly what they're standing up for is their own selfish needs? When was the last time you heard an athlete express outrage over something that didn't have to do with his paycheck?

[Q]Playboy: Do you think leagues and teams should take a tougher stance against churlish or even illegal acts committed by their players?

[A]Costas: You have to be careful because there's a presumption of innocence, and a charge is not the same as a conviction. So you have to let the legal system run its course. But I think leagues would be well within their rights, and players' associations would do well, to stop being so obstructionist about some of these things, to recognize there are certain behaviors that, if only for reasons of public relations, should not be tolerated.

[Q]Playboy: Still, the bottom line would appear to be: If this player can help us, we will look the other way.

[A]Costas: I believe the primary consideration still is: Can this guy help us win?

[Q]Playboy: As an announcer, do you ever lose your timing or go into a slump?

[A]Costas: In 1998. It was my first year on basketball, filling in for Marv Albert, and then during the 1998 baseball playoffs. Those were the first times I can remember feeling like I was pressing a little bit.

[Q]Playboy: How come?

[A]Costas: It was a combination of factors. I had a run from the late Eighties through the Nineties where all my assignments were well suited to me. I think I was well suited to host the Olympics, the football and basketball coverage. I was well suited to do Later. I had a radio show on Sunday nights so I could deal with issues and conduct in-depth interviews. And I would pop up now and then on Charlie Rose or Nightline, and it seemed like all the bases were covered in a way that fit. Then, because of the ages of my kids and commuting and other things, I gave up Later and the radio show.

[Q]Playboy: You also gave up football. Why?

[A]Costas: Hosting the NFL show, apart from the Olympics, is the biggest exposure you can have in sportscasting. You're on TV every week, you're the pregame, halftime, postgame. But then my connection to it waned. When I knew there were millions of fans who cared more about football than I did, I quit.

[Q]Playboy: And you were doing less baseball, too, right?

[A]Costas: Because NBC had no regular season package, I was not around all the teams as much as I was in the Eighties. Plus, I felt a certain alienation from baseball. As much as I loved it, I felt like, Geez, this is wrong--the whole direction of the game is wrong.

[Q]Playboy: We'll get back to that soon. You're saying you got rusty?

[A]Costas: Yes, and also it was just that all of a sudden, the places where I could do interviews or commentaries or essays were gone. I didn't have a forum. Network sports is loaded with hyping, shilling and the most superficial observations, and I'm thinking I have to put in something more worthwhile than that. So I tried to get in observations during the play-by-play, but I found that no matter how well expressed, it plays differently while a guy's going to the rosin bag. When you try to do the Vin Scully thing and the Howard Cosell thing simultaneously, it gets tricky. That was my mistake. I still work in commentary, but I'm more judicious about it now.

[Q]Playboy: You couldn't figure out how to get back the fluidity?

[A]Costas: Right. You don't want to be pushing too hard for it. So the anxiety for me is, Can I reach my own standard? People who care about me say I'm too self-critical, that it's one thing to try to do the best job you can; it's another to beat yourself up over it. And, man, I beat myself up over it. I went back and watched those tapes over and over again and tried to figure out what it was. It was scary and it was embarrassing.

[Q]Playboy: Do you feel you've regained your groove?

[A]Costas: Last summer I arranged to do two games on ESPN with Joe Morgan. That was helpful. I didn't get it to 100 percent, but it got close. Then a few games into the playoffs, the pacing and rhythm were there. Joe and I started playing off each other, and it sounds more like what I recall of the old conversational style in the Eighties with Tony Kubek.

[Q]Playboy: In an earlier session, we asked you to respond to a criticism made of you during the World Series. You reacted angrily, and off the record. Why the thin skin?

[A]Costas: I don't think I have one. What you hope for is some sense of proportion and you had asked me about an atypical, isolated comment. If yanked out of context, one stray comment becomes like, "When did you stop beating your wife?"

[Q]Playboy: No, we were very specific. And we'll ask it again. During the World Series, David Letterman ripped you for not shutting up. He referred to you as "motormouth." We bring this up for two reasons. One, because you have a longtime personal relationship with him, and two, because he reaches a fairly large audience. When we first asked you about it, you referred to it as a kind of goof. So what surprised us was that you didn't flip it off with a funny retort.

[A]Costas: I should have.

[Q]Playboy: That got to you. And, rightly or wrongly, it revealed more about you than we expected to find.

[A]Costas: What do you think it said?

[Q]Playboy: That you are very sensitive.

[A]Costas: I think you misunderstood. The only reason this stung was because it was David who said it. He's a brilliant guy. I've always admired him, and I'm grateful to him because he was very helpful to me by putting me on his show often early in my career. He had always said complimentary things about my work. He boosted me to NBC executives, which is part of the reason I wound up doing Later. When he went to CBS, he offered me the program after his, and a huge portion of the reason I almost did it was my personal regard for him. I'm very attuned to the kind of stuff Dave does. I'm a big fan of the kind of irreverent joking that takes place all the time on his show and from which nobody, including your buddies, is exempt. But this had a different tone. It came across as a gratuitous shot out of nowhere. It stunned me. So my response to your question was not, "How dare anybody say something about me," it was, "Wait a minute, why is David saying this?" No matter [smile], the steel-cage death match is a week from Tuesday.

[Q]Playboy: We're assuming you didn't actually see this?

[A]Costas: No, I did. I was in the hotel in New York. It was the Monday night between the second and third games of the World Series and I had just gotten in from Atlanta. The irony is that his producer had called earlier that day to get me on the show. I didn't get in until three P.M. and they tape around 4:30. Had the call come any earlier, I would have gone.

[Q]Playboy: That might have saved you some grief.

[A]Costas: I want to make this clear: I don't think that I am above criticism. Announcers, all of us, occasionally overplay our hands. Have I? On occasion do I take my strengths, which are command of the material and a good sense of history, and go to that a little too often when it would have been better if it were 10 or 15 percent less? Yeah. On occasion.

[Q]Playboy: Does it bother you that most televised sporting events are presented as just more prime-time entertainment?

[A]Costas: Sports was always a form of entertainment. No one went to see Joe Di-Maggio just to study his batting form. They went to be entertained. But there wasn't such complete synergy between sports and business as there is now. You begin to feel you're always being sold something. In many cases, even if you haven't accomplished anything, you're a celebrity by virtue of being in the NBA for a couple of years. Style matters. Glamour matters.

[Q]Playboy: Coaches, too?

[A]Costas: You can't win without substance and real dedication. A guy like Pat Riley is a tremendous coach. But if someone else came in with his exact ideas, practice procedures and game strategies but didn't have the six championship rings, four of them as a head coach, and didn't have the image, he wouldn't have credibility. In a different way, Larry Bird has credibility because he's Larry Bird, and the roster of the Pacers is loaded with veteran guys who played at the same time Bird did. On the other hand, there's the famous quote from Shaquille O'Neal before an all-star game early in his career. Lenny Wilkens was one of the head coaches and Shaq asked, "Did he ever play in the NBA?" Lenny Wilkens is in the Hall of Fame. It's a short-attention-span world to begin with and it's a style-over-substance world. The most successful people are those who actually have substance but can carry it off with style. Like Riley.

[Q]Playboy: Is that how you explain Phil Jackson's success with the Lakers?

[A]Costas: Phil's obviously a very bright guy. But again, it's the credibility. Not just his six rings, but the Bulls kept playing when everybody else was done. The Lakers sat at home and watched him on television, and his standing was reinforced every time they cut away to him on the sideline and every time champagne was dumped on his head. From moment one with the Lakers, he'd already cleared an enormous hurdle.

[Q]Playboy: Do you think television encourages outrageous behavior?

[A]Costas: Definitely. If television hadn't focused on the mutual antagonism between John Rocker and the New York fans, a lot of this stuff wouldn't have gone as far as it has. I mean, the biggest reason Rocker wound up where he did was this culture of outrage we live in, this Jerry Springer-Dennis Rodman-WWF culture, where the loudest, dopiest person gets the attention. I think Rocker was trying to keep his customers satisfied and embellish his standing in his own mind as an outrageous character, maybe because it gratified his sense of self or because there could be a commercial benefit to it. And because he might not be too bright, this is the way he saw to do it.

[Q]Playboy: In the minds of American viewers, you are most identified with baseball. Do you remember the first game you went to?

[A]Costas: I was five years old and I remember going to the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field and seeing the Giants and Dodgers games with my father. I remember being struck by the emerald green of the field, how purely white the baselines, batter's box and bases were at the start of the game. And holding my father's hand. The whole thing was outsize because I was a little kid. And it was a time when the mythology of the game was undisturbed. It drew me in, not just for the game but for the whole world of baseball. Radio broadcasts. Red Barber's voice, Mel Allen's voice. We lived in LA at the tail end of 1960 and for part of 1961, and I remember going to sleep with a transistor radio under the pillow, listening to Vin Scully, the melodic way he broadcast the Dodgers games. I was transfixed by it. Then we were back living in New York, and in order to get the out-of-town games, I would take the keys to my father's car and I would sit in the driveway, turn the ignition on----

[Q]Playboy: You were getting scores for your father, right?

[A]Costas: Yeah. He was a gambler and I retrieved scores for him. It was the only way he could get scores. So I would sit there and turn the radio dial--calibrating it like a safecracker. The Indians were over here, but a twist over there is Cincinnati and just a little bit down the dial were the Tigers. The idea that you're sitting in the driveway on Long Island and the Reds are playing the Cardinals at Sportsman's Park, this had more of a theater of the imagination than a triple-header on DirecTV could ever have. It had a power to compel that was way beyond anything today.

[Q]Playboy: So your father was a serious player?

[A]Costas: He was a bright man with a tremendous vibrancy about him. He was also a big-time gambler. Here's a guy, an engineer, probably making $30,000, $40,000 a year, which was a good living in 1963. But he would have $2000 or $3000 worth of action going on some weekends.

[Q]Playboy: He bet on all sports?

[A]Costas: Whatever was in season. He would bet $500 a game on half a dozen games on a weekend. Guys named Fury and Three Finger came to our house to pay off and collect bets.

[Q]Playboy: Did it ever get rough?

[A]Costas: Not that I witnessed. But it would be implied. Guys showed up sometimes who looked like extras out of a B movie. Shiny suits and pinkie rings with snap-brim hats, going, "John around?" I'm 12 years old and I'm instructed to tell them, on a Sunday afternoon with both cars in the driveway, "He's not here." And they'd say, "Where is he?" "I don't know. He'll be back soon." They'd say, "Tell him Dominic was here."

[Q]Playboy: How did this affect you?

[A]Costas: I actually found it kind of entertaining and romantic, sort of. I thought my father was a very cool guy.

[Q]Playboy: He never lost too much?

[A]Costas: He often lost too much. He often was out the mortgage money. The best story, though, is when he went on an unbelievable winning streak at the start of the 1965 baseball season. He won 17 straight baseball bets, and that's just impossible. It can't be done. He's up $14,000. We go to a doughnut shop in Brooklyn to meet the bookie who's going to pay him off. So we sit down at the counter and there's this guy who looks like an extra out of The Sopranos. He greets my father, "That your boy?" My father goes, "Yeah." And he says, "Nice boy. Hey, kid, you drink milk?" I'm sitting there thinking, You putz. I'm 13--no, I drink tequila. Yes, I drink milk. And what I say is, "Yes, yes, I do." And so he beckons the counter guy. "Give the kid a glass of milk and a doughnut." Then he slides a brown paper bag across the counter to my father. Out to the car we go and my father sits behind the steering wheel, opens the bag and counts out $14,000 in 100-dollar bills, tax free, 1965. And at that moment I am sure, with the possible exception of Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, my father was to me the most heroic man alive.

[Q]Playboy: Did you know this was illegal?

[A]Costas: Yeah. But I liked the codes. "Give me the Mets for a nickel. Give me the Giants for a dime." I knew what all this stuff meant. And by the time I was 11 or 12, you could give me any football game on Monday for the next Sunday and I'd give you the line off the top of my head. And be close.

[Q]Playboy: Did you ever take up betting?

[A]Costas: No. I saw what it did to my father. He had a horrible temper. When he would lose, he'd go nuts. He didn't get violent, but he got tremendously emotional and would yell and scream and throw things.

[Q]Playboy: We understand that when you were watching a game with him that he'd bet on, if things were going well, he wouldn't allow you to move lest you jinx the action.

[A]Costas: It happened several times. He knew how much I loved Mantle and this is where it got a little twisted. One time, in 1967, Mantle hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth at Yankee Stadium. I was such a student of Mantle that I could tell by the swing, right away, that it's going to be gone. And, as he swings, I get up and walk out. I go out into the yard and I can hear my father cursing as Mantle rounds the bases. He's thinking, The kid is happy about it. He cares more about someone he's never met than whether his family makes or loses $500. It was pretty fucked up.

[Q]Playboy: How old were you when he died?

[A]Costas: Eighteen. He dropped dead of a heart attack walking through JFK on a Friday afternoon. He was 42. He died without any insurance. And my mother had had an automobile accident four years earlier that left her unable to walk for several years. She had me and a 16-year-old daughter and she couldn't work because of her condition. No insurance and no savings. But at the wake, a guy named Steve Collins told me my dad was up when he died. Steve had immediately called the bookie and said that my father had told him to collect, knowing that if they found out he was dead, they'd never pay the money. "Here, give this to your mother," Steve said, and he hands me an envelope right there in the funeral parlor. Six thousand dollars. That was his estate.

[Q]Playboy: So your dad never got to hear you broadcast?

[A]Costas: No, which is a shame. But I think of it comically, too, because I can imagine him cursing at me through the television set for having the wrong inflection in my voice while his bet went down the drain. Or for not calling him from the booth when I found out someone had a pulled hamstring that would affect his bet. So I don't know if it's a curse or a blessing.

[Q]Playboy: In your book, Fair Ball, you state that baseball is "broken," and you assign blame to the owners for losing sight of what their product should be, and to the Players Association for being stuck in the wrong decade. You assert that because of the financial imbalance between the haves and the have-nots, the season is rigged from the start. Looking back to April, how many teams had a chance to make the playoffs?

[A]Costas: Out of 30, probably 12. But the problem is not how many teams in a given year are contenders. The problem is that the identity of those teams would probably be 80 or 90 percent the same from year to year. What I want is a situation that is fluid and flexible enough so that each team, if it plays its cards right, has a chance to be strong at any given time.

[Q]Playboy: But if you look back in history, there were always teams that dominated, like the Gas House Gang Cardinals of the Thirties or the Oakland A's of the early Seventies. And the Yankees, pretty much always.

[A]Costas: If those things are the result of normal baseball factors--bad luck, bad judgment, competition too stiff on the field-that's the way it goes. But if it's the result of unbridgeable economic differences, where the hand that's dealt when the game begins is so out of whack that it isn't even interesting, then I think you have a problem.

[Q]Playboy: One of the solutions you propose in your book--that teams throw 50 percent of their local TV revenues into a pot to be shared by all 30 teams--sounds good on paper. But do you really think the owners will take any of these steps when the Basic Agreement runs out after next season?

[A]Costas: If they don't, they might as well play real baseball in eight or nine cities and just play exhibition games in every other major league park. And give away Beanie Babies and souvenirs--because they're not selling competitive baseball, just ballpark ambience.

[Q]Playboy: Your plan also calls for a higher minimum wage, so to speak, as well as a ceiling on salaries. Do you really think Donald Fehr of the Players Association will spend two minutes considering this?

[A]Costas: If Don Fehr and associate general counsel Gene Orza, both of whom I like and respect, really wanted to be statesmen, they'd realize the best approach now is not to hold the line but to be part of creating a new paradigm for baseball in the 21st century. But for a long time now the Players Association has been fighting only for its narrow vested interests.

[Q]Playboy: You hold up the settlement of the NBA lockout as a good example of owner-player partnership, when, in fact, most people believe that the players got the shaft.

[A]Costas: The basketball owners had a good strategy, and after all this wringing of hands, I have yet to see an NBA player on a street corner with a tin cup. In fact, the average player saw his salary rise immediately under the new agreement, while only the Shaquille O'Neals have to get by with $15 million a year instead of $25 million. But the most important effect is this: San Antonio, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis--you couldn't even dream of placing a baseball franchise in any of those cities. And not only are there NBA franchises in those cities, every one of them is a contender.

[Q]Playboy: You're suggesting baseball owners adopt a similar strategy?

[A]Costas: Unless they can somehow convince the players to be part of a plan without a work stoppage, baseball has no choice but to shut the game down. The shame of the 1994 strike was not so much that it blew off the World Series. The real shame of it was that it blew off the Series and accomplished nothing.

[Q]Playboy: Does it strike you that kids don't have the same passion for baseball that earlier generations had?

[A]Costas: I think that's true. When the Yankees lost the 1960 World Series to Pittsburgh, I remember breaking down and crying. I was eight years old. I vowed that I wouldn't speak until the next baseball season. And I actually kept the vow into the next day, which for a loquacious eight-year-old is like an eternity. It was a day game and when I went to dinner, my mother explained to my father, "He's not speaking until the next baseball season starts." I sat there sulking, eyes welling with tears, as my father told me about other teams that were better than the team that won the World Series. "The 1954 Indians won 111 games when you were two years old, Robert. The Giants swept them four straight." I didn't care. The next day I went to school and some kids who were Dodgers fans taunted me. Also, I had to answer when the teacher called on me. So my plan went down the drain somewhere around 10 the next morning.

[Q]Playboy: Speaking of the past, anyone who has listened to you knows you had a special affection for Mickey Mantle, who was your idol.

[A]Costas: Growing up, he was my baseball hero, not my idol. Years later, when I was doing Game of the Week on Saturdays, I was with Tony Kubek, his old teammate, and Kubek started talking about how I knew everything about Mantle. Mickey became aware of this and he was very nice to me, and we just sort of wound up doing a lot of stuff.

[Q]Playboy: If anyone had a two-edged reputation, it was Mantle

[A]Costas: Mickey is a poignant figure despite everything. When he died, men and women roughly my age felt something that could not be explained logically, but it was real. He knew he was not just the biggest star on his own team but, along with Willie Mays, the biggest star in baseball. But he never carried himself that way. There was always something poignant about him.

[Q]Playboy: Poignant but, even in his worst moments, somehow not pathetic.

[A]Costas: Mantle had his flaws, obviously. But in the last couple of years of his life, he redeemed himself. He confronted his alcoholism by going to the Betty Ford Clinic, and when liver cancer struck him down barely a year later, he handled his death and his dying with tremendous grace. To be the ballplayer he was, not just what he accomplished statistically but the way he made people feel when they watched him, to be this kind of figure and then to handle a public death with that kind of grace and humor, those things are actually more remarkable than the sorry story in the middle.

[Q]Playboy: Speaking of sorry stories, is it true that O.J. Simpson tried to phone you from the Bronco the night of the slow-speed chase?

[A]Costas: I didn't know about that until I went to visit him in jail.

[Q]Playboy: Was your purpose in visiting him your own curiosity, or think you might learn something you could report?

[A]Costas: I think I held out the possibility that there might have been some explanation for what happened. Not something that placed him elsewhere that night, but some aspect to his story that would be part of his defense. Even if it was incriminating, maybe it wasn't as incriminating.

[Q]Playboy: Did you feel compelled to reassure him that you believed him?

[A]Costas: No, but he offered a lot of thoughts about the evidence or things he felt were inaccurate that had been reported. I listened, and at the end of each I said, "You'll have a chance to tell your side in court."

[Q]Playboy: Did he take the approach that you should know he couldn't possibly do anything like this?

[A]Costas: I think there was an undercurrent of that.

[Q]Playboy: Weren't you at Madison Square Garden broadcasting the NBA finals the night of the chase?

[A]Costas: Yeah. Marv Albert was calling the game and I was hosting it, and Tom Brokaw kept breaking in with this weird tragedy playing itself out. Apparently, O.J. had his computer Rolodex and his cell phone. I think he must have been looking for someone who he felt would give him a forum and get it transmitted to the public. No one answered at my home so he called the studio and no one was there because we were at the Garden. Now, I don't know if this is 100 percent true, but I've heard from a couple of people that an audio man answered the phone. O.J. said: "Is Bob Costas there?" "Who's calling?" "O.J. Simpson." "Yeah, right." And the guy hangs up. The luckiest thing that ever happened to me is that I never received that telephone call. (continued on page 149) Bob Costas (continued from page 76)

Playboy: Why?

[A]Costas: I would have had to offer some kind of testimony about his state of mind and I would have become part of the circus without having anything to contribute. My impression was that he needed someone who could get his story out. He was upset at the way he was being portrayed. I think my name just sprang to mind. But I have no idea if O.J. would have wanted to go on the air. If he had, there was the potential for a grotesque circus.

[Q]Playboy: Last season the NBA's ratings took a nosedive. Has the bubble burst or is this just a temporary glitch?

[A]Costas: No, it's a problem. The NBA was riding a tremendous wave of good fortune from 1980 to 1998. Sixteen of those 19 finals had Magic Johnson, Larry Bird or Michael Jordan in them. And then mix in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Dr. J., Isiah Thomas, Hakeem Olajuwon, the young Shaq and the New York Knicks led by Pat Riley. The biggest events always featured their biggest stars. How many times has Ken Griffey Jr. been in the World Series? Zero. When was the last time Mark McGwire was in the World Series? It was 1990.

So rather than the hyping of individual stars, or the highlight reel dunks that show up on Sportscenter, the greatest drama the sport had to offer always featured the best, the most appealing and--this part is really important--the most authentic stars. If you look at the young stars in the NBA today--Kevin Garnett, Vince Carter, Allen Iverson--they have not been anywhere near the NBA finals. And the NBA is all about June.

However, this June the NBA had reason to be encouraged. Shaq and Kobe are major stars in a major market that now has a reigning champion.

[Q]Playboy: Let's talk about some of your pet peeves.

[A]Costas: Here's one that never fails to amuse and amaze me. Something tragic happens. Somebody dies in a plane crash, someone's wife or child battles cancer. And then, as sure as you're breathing, the sportscaster utters the following line: "You know, this really puts it all in perspective." And I say, "No it doesn't, you nitwit! This may be terribly sad, it may even bring me to tears, but I do not need anyone's death or illness to put the Pepperdine-Santa Clara game in context. I've got it in context, I've got it in perspective, and it doesn't mean jack shit! And it's only pinheads like you who think it does."

[Q]Playboy: Do you often talk to the TV?

[A]Costas: Sometimes. But here's the kicker. A month later, somebody else gets terribly sick or dies tragically. And the same person will say, "You know, this really puts it all in perspective." And my question is: What happened to the perspective you gained a month ago? Did it disappear in the mistaken belief that every utterance of a third-string outside linebacker was terribly important for Sunday's broadcast?

[Q]Playboy: Is this your only pet peeve?

[A]Costas: It's part of a long list.

[Q]Playboy: What are some others?

[A]Costas: Sports talk radio. With some notable exceptions, sports talk radio is all about heat over light. It's all about attitude taking the place of informed opinion. It's about, Who can we fire potshots at? I remember the last couple years of Don Shula's career in Miami; people on the radio, who on the best day of their lives will never be a tenth as good at what they do as Don Shula was on his worst day, were ridiculing him. It's so moronic. Hey, sports isn't brain surgery, but neither should it be brain-dead.

[Q]Playboy: Anything else?

[A]Costas: Here's another thing that makes me gnash my teeth. Network coverage of college sports for thousands of combined hours every year. And with the occasional exception of Bob Ley's Outside the Lines on ESPN, or Bryant Gumbel's Real Sports, they never acknowledge the fundamental corruption of college sports. That huge numbers of football and basketball players would have no prayer of being at the university if there were no football or basketball teams. How much would it hurt to acknowledge these things? And if you're not going to, then please don't hit me with hearts-and-flowers features on the small percentage of athletes who truly are excellent students. They show you this feature with violins and tinkling piano music in the background and a soaring conclusion that this is what college football is all about.

[Q]Playboy: We have a feeling you're not done----

[A]Costas: Almost. There are notable exceptions, but generally speaking, sports coverage is at one of two extremes. It's either a bunch of yahoo hype where energy for its own sake is confused with personality, where bombast is confused with wit and where the cleverest person is the person who talks the loudest, all with the idea that your audience is somebody whose fondest wish is to be at the 50-yard line with his shirt off, waving a giant foam finger with his face painted green. At the other end, you have the most maudlin stuff designed to make you believe every sports event is supposed to tug at your heartstrings. So you watch the opening tease for the Greater Greensboro Open and you're supposed to believe this isn't just a golf match, it's a treasure trove of sepia-toned memories you will cherish for the rest of your life. [Pause] Have I gotten carried away?

[Q]Playboy: We were going to segue----

[A]Costas: What was the other thing that drives me nuts? Oh. Athletes proclaiming that the outcome of the game was a result of their faith in Jesus. Now, someone professing his faith in whatever form, I respect that completely. But I just find it to be a subkindergarten view of religion to declare that Jesus, Allah or the man in the moon determined the outcome of a contest. This is an insult to everyone's intelligence. I mean, who believes in a God that is so occupied with irrelevancies and minutiae that he micromanages a football or basketball game but allows people to be shot dead in churches?

[Q]Playboy: Let's get personal. Next to some of the guys you interview you look positively tiny. Does the height of some athletes make you feel uncomfortable?

[A]Costas: No. In fact, as a practical matter, if Shaquille O'Neal or Warren Sapp gets angry at me, or gets angry at a guy who is six feet, 190, the extent of the jeopardy is the same.

[Q]Playboy: How good an athlete are you?

[A]Costas: I'm not saying I was Chip Hilton or an All-American in four sports, but I could play, and I can still play. I used to win money playing horse and shooting free throws against guys who were on the St. Louis Spirits when I did their games in the ABA.

[Q]Playboy: You hustled them?

[A]Costas: Until they got wise. That's when I was 22. I was smart enough not to hustle Steve Jones, who does color now on NBC--Steve "Snapper" Jones. But I could take some of those guys, the forwards and centers, and start shooting three-pointers and I was winning lunches of 20 bucks. Until they got wise.

[Q]Playboy: What's your biggest fear when you're in the booth?

[A]Costas: I've had this dream, it's always a football game. I've shown up in the booth and I don't know who any of the players are or what their numbers are. It's like some college game that I've been pressed into service for--SMU against Texas Christian. It's just before kickoff and, forget about anecdotes or insight, I don't know who the kicker is. I'm trying to figure out who these people are by looking at a roster as the play is unfolding. I'm with somebody, John Madden or Dan Dierdorf, and they're looking at me like, not only what's wrong with you, but you're ruining my life. I've had that dream at least half a dozen times.

[Q]Playboy: In the past you've turned down opportunities--The Today Show, 60 Minutes, the CBS post-Letterman show. Do you think you'll someday want a bigger world than the press box?

[A]Costas: The honest truth? I still get a tingle walking into an arena or ballpark, especially before a big game. You're operating without a net, it's a drama without a script on the field, you have no script in front of you. It's a great challenge, and for all of its flaws, sports still cuts across many lines. You're talking to more types of people than you possibly could by doing almost anything else. I don't want to give that up. But there are times when I wish I could do other things in addition. With the program on HBO, with the book and maybe somewhere down the line with a nonsports interview program, I would fill in all the places on the spectrum.

[Q]Playboy: One final thought. Although some people think of you as a baseball romantic, you resist that. How do you see yourself?

[A]Costas: I'm more of a Bull Durham guy than a Field of Dreams guy. I never do literary references or say, "Under cerulean blue skies, the greensward unfolds----" I never do that.

[Q]Playboy: Come on, you do it so well!

[A]Costas: I could do the whole game as a mockery of obsessive baseball romance. [Clearing his throat] "And now the crafty right-hander, though the years have passed him by, reaching back for just a flicker of his past glory, staring not only at Mark McGwire but also at Father Time as he peers in to the catcher, clad in armor that obscures his face but not his gifts. And the pitcher, with the notion that there's something left in that dwindling arm, rocks into his windup and brings it home out of the sunshine and into the shadows and into a slice of history he shares with names that tumble down the corridors of time--Johnson, Gibson, Koufax--and joins them now in the pantheon of our great national pastime, his name reverberating from Comiskey Park to Cooperstown as the bottom of the sixth ends. White Sox 3, Cardinals 2. Back in a moment."

[Q]Playboy: Point made. And you never even took a breath.

[A]Costas: But I am taking my leave.