Bob Costas breaks silence on unexpected retirement decision

The Baseball Gods Giveth. The Baseball Gods Taketh. Bob Costas knows.

For the first time since announcing his retirement as a play-by-play announcer, the 72-year-old broadcaster reflected on an illustrious career and what prompted his decision to step away now.

“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 on “MLB Tonight” on Monday. 

“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 began his career calling baseball games for NBC in the 1980s. And while he would grow to fame and prominence over the ensuing decades — becoming a household name and a preeminent voice in golf, football and the Olympics — criticism had grown in recent years.

The broadcaster, most recently with TBS, was on the call less and less frequently as of late. At no time was the consequences of that more clear than during the 2024 MLB playoffs. 

Fans and network executives alike recognized a series of incoherences and miscues, like the ill-timed Kevin Bacon-Aaron Boone comparison tangent the announcer took his audience on during the ninth inning of a tight ALDS Game 4. Or the erroneous and premature call of a hit, on a rather evident catch, just one night prior. 

For one of the all-time greats— a member of the sports broadcasting hall of fame, with 44 years of baseball and three World Series under his belt, the blunders were uncharacteristic. 

They were, Costas admitted to Verducci, a signal of a fall. The end of his end. 

“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 said. 

“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.”