The Big Lead

MLB News: Bob Costas breaks silence on retirement, admits he lost his fastball

By J.P. Hoornstra

Apr 10, 2019; Houston, TX, USA; MLB Network broadcaster Bob Costas answers questions during an interview prior to the game between the Houston Astros and the New York Yankees at Minute Maid Park. Mandatory Credit: Erik Williams-Imagn Images
Apr 10, 2019; Houston, TX, USA; MLB Network broadcaster Bob Costas answers questions during an interview prior to the game between the Houston Astros and the New York Yankees at Minute Maid Park. Mandatory Credit: Erik Williams-Imagn Images / Erik Williams-Imagn Images
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Bob Costas recently announced that the 2024 season would be his last broadcasting baseball games. Costas, 72, handled play-by-play duties for TBS' coverage of the American League Division Series between the New York Yankees and Kansas City Royals.

It was his 42nd season calling baseball games. After the season, his contract with TBS expired.

In a new interview Monday with "MLB Tonight," Costas reflected on the end of his career.

“I knew for more than a year that this would be the end of it — I felt that I couldn’t consistently reach my past standard,” Costas told Tom Verducci. 

“There might have been individual games, or stretches within games, or moments in games that were just the same as if it was the 1990s or the early 21st century. But I couldn’t string enough of them together.”

Costas made some obvious gaffes in the ALDS, like his premature call of a base hit on a catch by Anthony Volpe, that some took as a sign Costas had lost his fastball.

Costas called games on NBC from 1982-89 and again from 1994-2000, according to the Associated Press. He was one of the announcers for the 1995 World Series and then the main play-by-play voice for the Fall Classic in 1997 and ’99.

Costas had been with TBS the last four years, and with MLB Network since its inception in 2009.

“I have too much regard for the game, for the craft, and for whatever my own standard has been to hit beneath my lifetime batting average,” Costas told Verducci. “And I just felt like in the last couple of years, I couldn’t quite reach that. And what I hoped for this year … I just hoped to end on a grace note.”

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