← The Best People with Nicolle Wallace
The Best People with Nicolle Wallace
Bob Costas Steps Up to the Plate
00:46:00
Bob Costas believes that like in sports, certain things in politics are just common sense.
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- [00:01]
Bob Costas
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Interviewer
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- [00:43]
Bob Costas
SpecialOffer Terms Apply those who say stick to sports on his own merits. Hank Aaron was one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived. But his story and his significance in part is because he he faced blatant racism as he pursued Babe Ruth. And he triumphed over it, not just with his bat, but with his deep decency and dignity, which existed to the day he died. He was a genuine civil rights hero and a deeply decent man. That's part of his story.
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Interviewer
Hi there, everyone. You are in for a real treat. This week's guest said this one month before Donald Trump was elected a second time, quote, he if you're an essentially decent person, I don't think there's any position other than to be appalled that such a reprehensible person was once president of the United States and seeks to be so again. If you're surprised at all to hear that legendary sports broadcaster, the face of NBC's Olympics coverage for decades, Bob Costa, said that then you haven't been paying close attention because he also came out swinging against Disney, accusing it of paying a 15 million ransom when the company settled a lawsuit against George Stephanopoulos. He's also been a voice warning about the threats to a free press in America, saying this, quote, the free press is under attack. Democracy as we know it is under attack. So without any further ado, this is the best people. And this is Bob Costas. Thank you for doing this.
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Bob Costas
Hello, Nicole. Let's see how much trouble you can get me into. The first 45 seconds got me into
- [02:26]
Interviewer
some, I'm sure, but I think this is the conversation. Why is everybody afraid? I mean, people have turned to you at moments of national pride and celebration and tragedy, and they love you and they trust you because you tell them the truth. Why are people afraid of telling the truth?
- [02:43]
Bob Costas
Well, it's what they view the truth as.
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Interviewer
But the truth is the truth.
- [02:47]
Bob Costas
Not everywhere, not anymore. You could see this coming years ago. It's only accelerated. And it's worse now by degree. But we've long been living in media echo chambers in which anything you want to be true is true, even absent any logic or compelling evidence. And anything you don't want to be true is not true, even with a mountain of evidence and a choir of angels attesting to it. And so, look, this is what happens where I'm coming from has been misrepresented continually because it's always easier to have a strawman. So in certain quarters, I'm far left. Sportscaster Bob Costas. Look, I will stand by anything I've actually said and actually believe, but my beliefs are not far left. I'm kind of a classic liberal, if they exist anymore. And I am certainly not approving of and in some cases appalled at the excesses of the progressive left, which not only, in my view, are wrongheaded, but actually enable MAGA and the present Republican Party to take things out of context and say, anybody who opposes Trump and MAGA has to wear all of these things, all of this folly and fecklessness. You have to sign off on that. And that allows them to play a whataboutism game and never hold their false God to account.
- [04:17]
Interviewer
Well, the tricky thing is that 70% of the country basically agrees with your assessment. You don't have 70% of the country that. That agree on much.
- [04:26]
Bob Costas
Yeah, but to me, it has always been obvious that this was a question of a single individual. And whether that person was. Is fit intellectually, temperamentally, ethically to hold any position of public trust. That is not a rejection of conservative principles. But if the person who's carrying the banner is so fundamentally objectionable, I don't think you can say, well, what about the policies? If the person at the helm is, and by now this is beyond debate, fundamentally corrupt, fundamentally dishonest, and is in the process of attacking what once were fundamental principles of American democracy, where there was common agreement on those principles across the political spectrum. It's not a question of right or left to object to that. And in fact, principled Republicans and conservatives, to the extent they still exist, should be the ones most concerned about it because their party and supposedly their beliefs have been hijacked by a con man. At the same time, responsible Democrats should be concerned about the fecklessness of their party. They let Biden walk them to the precipice of a cliff, and it likely cost them the 2024 election, as I said. And this is all just common sense stuff, it's Emperor's New Clothes stuff. And by the way, I don't have that many at bats when it comes to politics. 99% of what I do is about sports. But you're on Bill Maher, you're someplace or other and someone asks you the question and you give an honest answer. And I said the Democrats are as feckless as the Republicans are shameless. And that Biden had a chance to be seen by history as a patriot, a guy who did, if he did it, what he clearly pledged to do, at least implicitly. I'm gonna be a one term president. My job is to get this back on track and be a bridge to the next generation. And then for whatever reason, those surrounding him, his own hubris, his own confusion, he decided that he was the best option to run against Donald Trump. And as I said on Bill Maher two and a half years ago, if Trump is a monster, is this the guy you're gonna send out to slay the dragon? Now, the people who say stick to sports. I don't have a medical degree, but I understood what was happening with both CTE and steroids because I talked to experts and it was obvious, so I said it. Now, most people involved in network sports broadcasting wouldn't say it. People in print wrote it, but I was kind of alone in saying it. But it was pertinent. I don't have a degree in geopolitics, but I'm a reasonably well informed person. And I pointed out the IOC's troubling affinity for authoritarian regimes. It's right there. It's right in front of you. And so I said it. So what I have said about politics, you don't have to have a degree from the Kennedy School at Harvard. You don't have to be Doris Kearns Goodwin to have the authority to say it, because it's all common sense.
- [07:52]
Interviewer
But why is it so fraught for people to speak obvious truths? Take yourself out of it and just think about an athlete or a coach or an owner with political views.
- [08:04]
Bob Costas
Well, some of them do. Some of them do.
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Interviewer
Small handful. Pop did. Doc Rivers does. Steve Kerr does.
- [08:10]
Bob Costas
Right, right. And by the way, informed and thoughtful people on the right have that right. Also, of course, the great irony is the stick to sports crowd really means stick to sports when you're saying something I don't wanna hear. Part of the problem now for any of us, and that includes what I've just done, right Here, probably against my better judgment, is that nothing stays in its context, in both content and tone. Nothing stays there anymore. There are vultures who will jump upon whatever is said. They will extract from it whatever helps them to push their own narrative, regardless of whether it misrepresents what you've actually said and what you actually believe. Because if they can make a strawman out of you, they can make their own argument more effectively. And so that puts the brakes on expressing points of view which you hope you do in a thoughtful and informed way, and an aspect of this which has nothing to do with politics. I was doing something at the Paley Center a few months ago and it was about some of the non sports things that I've done. I used to do a late night show after David Letterman on NBC, 1:30 in the morning. 1:30 in the morning?
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Interviewer
Yeah. And everybody watches before we get.
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Bob Costas
I don't know if everybody watched it.
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Interviewer
It was before we could doom scroll.
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Bob Costas
Yeah, well everybody that was awake.
- [09:32]
Interviewer
Yeah. Which now they're doomscroll.
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Bob Costas
New mother athletes who played night games. College kids, entertainers. Yeah, college kids were good. So one of the examples I gave was of the great actor Anthony Quinn telling me that one of the ways he got into a scene in the movie Zorba the Greek, when he was talking about his young son Dimitri having died as a small child and how he got up and danced at the funeral when everyone else was crying. And he just opened up and said, I live with the death of a child which my own research had not told me. I didn't realize this. He had a three or four year old son who drowned in W.C. field Swimming Pool in the late 1930s. And he said, I live with that. But to me he's not dead. I've created a whole life for him. He's an architect, he lives in San Francisco and I talk to him every day. I've told this story before and I still get choked up by it. The cameramen, you could hear them. There was no audience for the show. You could hear them stifling the sniffles. Other than that, the room went dead quiet. I wonder in today's atmosphere, even if he felt comfortable enough with me and with the setting of the show to say those things. Would you say it now knowing that what you said intended to be seen at 1:30 in the morning, heartfelt and honest in that context, that that's not where it stays. It's not confined to someone the next morning. Did you see what Anthony Quinn said last night? It was amazing. Now people will use it for their own purposes and not do it justice. Everyone has to consider, whether it's a political point of view or a personal story they're telling, a book they're writing, there's a much greater chance that something that might kind of move the needle on page 129 will be seen by more people than who actually read the book. These are all modern considerations that cause people to be cautious, but you're not cautious, and you're not cautious enough.
- [11:47]
Interviewer
But I guess what I want to understand, and I'd like to think that, I mean, we're talking about and we're diagnosing the ills of the extreme. Do you think they've won? I mean, I'd like to think that every human being, and certainly every parent would be moved to tears, as you still are, by the story of someone who lost a child. I mean, I've interviewed Esther Salas, judge, federal judge Esther Salas, whose son was murdered by a disgruntled litigant. And she has the courage to come on my show and talk about threats against judges. And I like to think that she is someone that breaks through, that there's no way to pervert or distort that clear strength and beauty and mother's love. And that whatever she's saying to whomever she's saying, it, I think breaks through, not in a partisan manner, but to say, this happened to me and I don't want it to happen to anybody.
- [12:41]
Bob Costas
Yeah. And one would think that you'd have near universal agreement with that sentiment. But one of the things you cited right at the beginning, what I said about the free press, I said that to a gathering of journalists at a Newhouse school at Syracuse University, the journalism school there. There were no cameras there. Someone in the back of the room held up a cell phone, and there was a sketchy video of what I said, a portion of which went viral. Interesting that this person, whom to this day I've never met, didn't come up to me afterwards and ask me to elaborate or interview me, because that person had what they wanted, and that just gets posted. And then people can use it for their own purposes, including, oh, why did he just come out and say this? Well, I said it in front of a group of journalists. It was pertinent to talk about what was happening with Trump's FCC and Trump, and now Trump, Jimmy Kimmel. Yeah, and now Trump's doj. People have to realize that neither CBS nor ABC capitulated and paid, quote, settlements because they thought that an actual legal case would be one in which Trump would prevail or that there was any merit to his claims. They were just paying a nuisance fee. If you're Paramount, CBS and Paramount, you wanna affect a merger and his FCC can stand in the way, then, okay, this is like paying a toll. This is like, you know, you park your car and a kid comes up and says, watch your car. And that really means, give me 20 bucks, go in and have dinner. But if you don't give me the 20 bucks, when you come back, your windshield's gonna be smashed. Okay? That's what this is. There's not any merit to it. I'm going to assume for $10 billion, the case has zero merit, could never be won. This is like the manager is the umpire in a game in which his team is playing. You know, what could be more ridic than this? And so now we'll settle for 1.7 or $1.8 billion. And this is all happening right in front of us. This is not stuff on which there should be two sides. This is not. Here's a principled and thoughtful conservative side. Here's a principled and thoughtful liberal side. There's always been that tension. There's always been that back and forth. And very often it helps us land in a somewhat nuanced middle or close to the middle. That's the yin and yang of what it's supp supposed to be about. But when one side feels it has to either defend or worse yet, valorize, or at the very least look the other way, at some point, this has to reach critical mass where reasonably intelligent, reasonably principled people say, this has nothing to do with right wing or left wing. This is about one person and what he has inflicted upon America and what he has done to what was once called the gop.
- [15:51]
Interviewer
Why is it so dangerous for people who have to broadcast across this moment in our politics? Why is it so dangerous for athletes or broadcasters around a sporting event? Charles Barclay has spoken out a bunch this season. Like, why is it so far?
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Bob Costas
Charles is virtually bulletproof because he's Charles Barkley. He's a unique personality, but it's always
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Interviewer
covered in the same way, right? It's taken, it's dissected.
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Bob Costas
I think a lot of it with Charles is, oh, that's just Charles. And we love him and he's terrific. And he does say a lot of things that are not political, that are just blunt about sports. He just says blunt things about sports that everybody knows is true.
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Interviewer
And about immigration, he spoke out about immigration. And immigrants this year in a way that I agree with you. It was obvious. But nobody else said. But he said. Is it just that everyone else is afraid to say what is obvious?
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Bob Costas
Well, you know that you're gonna be attacked in some quarters. Social media is a huge part of this. It's just changed the game. And there are already academic studies. And we know what the algorithms do. The algorithms elevate that which plays to people's resentments and anger, that which is more sensational than nuanced, that which, depending upon which echo chamber you're in, affirms your beliefs rather than informs, so that you can perhaps reach a more nuanced understanding of what's going on. And in fact, if anything winds up on the Internet, and let's say the clickbait, if you want to call it that, headline is Costas and Wallace have nuanced conversation about state of journalism. That's gonna get much less than Costas rants against whatever.
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Interviewer
But at the end of the day, who cares? I mean, Jason Bateman came on and said some things, and they played it on Fox, and he said, I'm so happy Fox saw what I said, because I've got lots of Mo Maga friends, and I'm glad when they say what I say.
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Bob Costas
Well, look, I get a lot of this. I used to really like him until he made everything political. That's objectively false, right?
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Interviewer
I get that, too. I get that from the right, where she used to be smart until. And I always say, until when? Until what year? Until what year was I smart?
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Bob Costas
Until you started saying stuff that they
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Interviewer
didn't want to hear. I didn't change Trump, change the party that I was a part of.
- [18:11]
Bob Costas
That's true. But here are some objective facts. There were more than 100 halftime segments, many of them essays that I did on Sunday Night Football. Two. Two could be called in any sense, political. One was about gun violence in the NFL and in the country was not about the Second Amendment or about gun control. In retrospect, I wish I had taken a different tact. I thought what I was saying was self evident.
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Interviewer
It was about domestic violence.
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Bob Costas
Yeah, but I should. I should have emphasized the domestic violence aspect to a greater extent. But when I went to set the record straight, not because I was backtracking, I was just clarifying what I really believed. And I've done it in many, many places. That doesn't really work, because if people have a strawman, they're not gonna let go of that strawman. And the other one was about what was then the Redskins team name. And all I said was, think what the equivalent would be. And I actually preface it by saying, objections to some team names or political correctness run amok. But in this case, get a dictionary. Every dictionary defines Redskins as pejorative, an insult, a slur every dictionary and consider what the equivalent would be if applied to Asian Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, any other ethnic group. That doesn't mean that there aren't issues of greater concern to Native Americans than the name of a football team. But if this is the question, which it was, it was out there in the zeitgeist. And the Redskins, as they were then called, were playing the Cowboys on Sunday Night Football. Kind of pertinent if someone was gonna address it, that someone was gonna be me. And I thought it was a well crafted two minutes. But by that point, I was already somewhere to the left of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders because that was good for their purposes. So how are you gonna work your way out of that?
- [20:14]
Interviewer
Well, why would you want to? I mean, it seems like if you're triggering them, you're obviously getting through in a way that nobody else is.
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Bob Costas
Yeah, but I'm not looking for attention other than for. Other than for, I hope, the quality and content of what I've said. So when people say, oh, he fills his sports broadcasts with politics, that just isn't untrue. It's about 99.9% untrue. I never did it during the Olympics when Michael Phelps was gonna jump in the pool or Usain Bolt or Simone Biles are gonna do their thing. But there are little interstitial moments where the host can, if he or she chooses, call attention to pertinent issues or ask pertinent questions during interviews. That's what I sometimes did when I was calling NBA games or MLB games. There wasn't a thimble's worth of politics. Now, if I was doing the NFL and Colin Kaepernick was kneeling, you have to note that as part of the atmosphere. You have to note it parenthetically. But there are other places to discuss it. Pre game shows, post game shows. I never allowed any of that to get in the way of the games themselves or the events themselves. But somehow that notion is out there.
- [21:30]
Interviewer
We'll take a quick break right here. When we come back, much more with legendary sports broadcaster, host of Sunday Night Baseball on NBC, Bob Costas. Stay with us. I'm Cyndi Lauper with fellow Cosentyx advocate chef Michelle Bernstein. We'll share our experiences with plaque psoriasis with psoriatic arthritis, and Dr. Panico will talk about the possible connection.
- [22:02]
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Interviewer
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Interviewer
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- [23:53]
Interviewer
And the tension is that it's such a small part of your massive body of work.
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Bob Costas
Well, that's true.
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Interviewer
Also, that's universally admired. But it's a true part and it's a small part. And it was always thoughtful and nuanced.
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Bob Costas
I hope so.
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Interviewer
And your regret, if I'm hearing any, is that it gets disproportionately labeled on top of you by detractors.
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Bob Costas
Yes, and also misrepresented for what it was in the first place. But on the other hand, hardly a day goes by when I don't hear from people who appreciate.
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Interviewer
Well, that's what I was gonna say. Like I I think that everything you've said is newsworthy because no one says it.
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Bob Costas
At least no one among network sports broadcasters, many of them, nobody with your
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Interviewer
platform, as you just said, whether I'm calling, no one else anchors the Olympics and NBA and NFL and mlb. The reason the right goes nuts when you say it is because no one reaches de to our safe spaces, the places where we're sitting with family members. I live in a politically divided family, and the only thing we have where there's no politics is sports still. And I think most people in divided families welcome it when someone utters the truth.
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Bob Costas
Well, but again, it's not like, hey, everybody gathered around Thanksgiving, bunch of football games here. But before that, let me tell you, hey, on healthcare, I didn't do that. I did not do that.
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Interviewer
I guess the tension you feel is. I admire it because I'm happy that the truths were uttered. But you've got people on the right that will smear you with this broad brush that you're like, basically like walking around with a DNC flag when you've simply.
- [25:28]
Bob Costas
I'll stand by whatever I have substantially said and what I actually believe. But this through the looking glass thing, where everything is immediately distorted, it's kind of a fool's game. A fool's game I may be playing right here because this is not. This is not confined to this space.
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Interviewer
No, no, no, look, I mean, I. I think that what's happening in sports is right under the surface from here. And I think that the reason that everything Steve Kerr says is so amplified and people project onto it whether it endangered his job right at the end of this season, it was projected onto Steve Kerr in that period of uncertainty, that it was his politics that led to the uncertainty, not the extraordinary run he'd had. And maybe politics was part of it.
- [26:14]
Bob Costas
And also the warriors are in decline now and Steph Curry was hurt for a portion of the year and they were without Jimmy.
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Interviewer
Barbara was hurt.
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Bob Costas
The entire Draymond Green, who's always been a handful, is getting up in years. So it might be time for Steve Kerr, who's had a glorious career and life and who has other options. He's an excellent broadcaster. It might be time, having nothing to do with politics, to step away.
- [26:38]
Interviewer
But your point is that it's so amplified if you're in sports, if you say any. And Coach Kerr and. Well, Doc has spoken out about a lot of issues and does it in a news cycle and does it so much that Doc Rivers. Yeah, I don't much blowback. He gets. But Steve Kerr would always take a moment and weigh in on politics, especially gun violence, because of his, his own family history, his father's history. Pop used to talk a lot about gun violence in a place where the fan base was divided about that. But you're saying that everyone takes a risk in their position or yours, because there are plenty of people on the right that will either smear you with a broad brush, paint your politics all over your whole body of work. And that's uncomfortable.
- [27:20]
Bob Costas
Yes. But there are also people on the left who, no matter how thoughtful and reasonable something is expressed by someone with whom they may disagree, and no matter what that person's track record and life history is, you have veered from our playbook here, even if it's only 2 or 3%. You know, if you said something, oh my gosh, you've lost your progressive credential
- [27:49]
Interviewer
and that's the cancel culture that rails again, successfully.
- [27:54]
Bob Costas
Yes.
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Interviewer
Yeah. So what's the answer?
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Bob Costas
I know the questions. Smart enough to know the questions. I don't know that I know. I don't know that I know the answers.
- [28:03]
Interviewer
What do you see out there in terms of broadcasters who are getting it right in this moment, not just in news, but in the whole landscape in the podcast world? And you mentioned Bill Maher. I mean, what the viewer has said is that I'll get my information wherever I want to get it. Thank you. Some of them are getting politics from Jimmy Kimmel, which is fine, or from Joe Rogan, which is also fine. What do you see out there that is positive?
- [28:28]
Bob Costas
Well, anyone who's asking the right questions in an informed way from both sides. But where we started with this is if you're talking about Trump, the idea that you're going to say to someone who says the earth is flat, I'll be reasonable and concede that it might be oblong. That's not both sides. Okay, so anyone who is perceptive enough and willing enough to make that very not just valid, but in this moment, essential distinction is someone I admire. I'm not necessarily a scholar. I hope I'm reasonably well read and I hope I'm getting this quote right. George Orwell at one point said, we have now reached the point where the first obligation of thoughtful people is to restate the obvious. The first obligation of thoughtful people, including rock solid conservatives, many of whom have done this.
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Interviewer
Yeah.
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Bob Costas
Think of all the people.
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Interviewer
It starts with Bob Corker. Right. And then Liz Cheney and then Adam Kinzinger or John Christianity or Mattis, Mattis Kelly. All the generals Massie now most recently Cassidy. Here's the thing that I learned from covering Trump for nine years as an ex Republican when I can use the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Jonathan Turley, the conservative legal scholar Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Jim Mattis, John Kelly to make the arguments that I may have wanted to make, it's more effective. The calls are all coming from inside the House.
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Bob Costas
A lot of them. A lot of them. But in the second term, those who would speak up from inside the House
- [30:10]
Interviewer
get kicked out of the House.
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Bob Costas
Pretty much been cast out. Pretty much been cast out.
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Interviewer
Yeah.
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Bob Costas
Didn't Doris Kearns Goodwin write about a cabinet of rivals?
- [30:17]
Interviewer
Maybe I have a team of rivals,
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Bob Costas
which is what an intelligent and principled man like Lincoln wanted. Let me hear, tell me when I'm wrong, challenge what I have to say. Let's see if we can arrive at the right answer with smart, principled people talking about it openly from the world of sports.
- [30:36]
Interviewer
When you have a franchise that sort of implodes on its own hubris. And I don't know. I mean, look, I'm a Mets fan and I'm deeply concerned about the decisions that the top of that organization made to blow up my favorites. I mean I love Nimmo. We are die hard, crazy, irrational, delusional Mets fanups in my house and see
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Bob Costas
cult like thinking should be confined to sports. I think it really should, but it
- [31:00]
Interviewer
leads to delusional grown ass men, which is a different conversation. But I was devastated when Nimmo and Diaz. My son has been 39 since he was 9 because of Edwin Diaz. He's not even a pitcher, but he's been number 39. He's a travel baseball player. So I look at the top of this organization and I'm sure that Mendoza will be fired at some point, maybe by the time this airs. Mendoza didn't decide that Edwin, Diaz, Nimmo and Alonzo were the problem. I'm sure someone above him did. From covering teams and franchises and organizations, what do you see about the ones that pull out of dire moments?
- [31:35]
Bob Costas
I'm not around day to day like I used to be, so I don't have an insider's view very much anymore. I'm just a fan, but from from an informed distance. Steve Cohen, perhaps the wealthiest of all 30 MLB owners and a lifelong Met fan, cast his lot with David Stearns, who had had great success in Milwaukee. The brewers continue to have success under his successor, Matt Arnold, with very limited resources, whereas the Mets payroll, if you don't count deferred Payments. The Mets payroll is actually higher than the Dodgers. The return on investment here is worse than dismal to be in last place and also as we speak to be playing such a shoddy brand of baseball. Last night I happened to be at the Met game against the Reds and it wasn't just that they lost and they were behind big early. So many sloppy plays and booze raining down. You know I saw a political cartoon but it was really a sports cartoon meant for New Yorkers and someone's reading the paper and it's like Dickens. The best of times, the worst of times. Nick's Knicks. Mets. Yes, that's the times worst of times.
- [32:53]
Interviewer
Well, I'm on a group chat with a bunch of fellow suffering Mets fans and we all decided we'll be fine.
- [32:58]
Bob Costas
How masochistic.
- [32:59]
Interviewer
Well, we say we'll be fine until you know, early June when the, you
- [33:03]
Bob Costas
know, hopefully the Knicks go away. Yeah, we can turn all of our attention but maybe the Yankees will be doing something good.
- [33:10]
Interviewer
Yeah, and like got a 14 year old. I'm thinking maybe the right thing to do as a parent is to take him to some Yankees games because I think people in politics have a self absorbed way of making it about politics. But at the end of the day, we've been talking here today about obvious truths and fear and fear of leaders and fear of confrontation. I think the reason sports is so powerful is because sports is one of these last sort of emotional touchstones. But I wonder if you think that ownership are responsive enough to fans. I mean I don't know any Mets fans that aren't feeling really angry and really betrayed by the leadership decisions, not just their performance on the field.
- [33:49]
Bob Costas
Here's the thing. We're not talking about customer service at Citi Field. They're great, right? They are as a matter of fact. Steve. Look, Steve Cohen and David Stearns and Carlos Mendoza want to win even more than the most avid fan wants the Mets to win.
- [34:06]
Interviewer
Do you think the players still do?
- [34:09]
Bob Costas
There are some players who, especially if it's in a non winning environment, will give less than a full effort. That does happen. May have happened to the Cleveland Cavaliers in their series against the Knicks once they blew a huge lead, almost impossible to blow that late in the game and lost game one and the tide began to turn and they're losing big. There might have been a fall off there in games 3 and 4. People looking for their flights out of town in the beginning of their off season. That happens be to sometimes in sports but it's hard. The only redress of grievance that fans have is to not come to the ballpark or to boo, which is so
- [34:49]
Interviewer
hard because everyone is someone's kid. I can't boo.
- [34:52]
Bob Costas
Well, that's because you're such a nice person.
- [34:54]
Interviewer
Well, I'm just a mom. I think moms can't boo.
- [34:56]
Bob Costas
Yeah, I just can't. You'd be surprised.
- [34:58]
Interviewer
Were they booing a lot last night?
- [34:59]
Bob Costas
Oh, yeah, they were. They were booing a lot.
- [35:05]
Interviewer
My conversation with Bob Costas continues on the other side of this break. We'll be right back. I'm Cyndi Lauper with fellow Kosentix advocate Chef Michelle Bernstein. We'll share our experiences with plaque psoriasis with psoriatic arthritis and Dr. Panico will talk about the possible connections.
- [35:34]
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- [36:19]
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- [37:10]
Bob Costas
This is a little bit off the topic but somewhat connected the nature of sports fandom and I found this even with very well educated, otherwise rational people. Fan is short for fanatic. Every national broadcaster will tell you exactly the same story. They do a big Game, playoff Series, World Series, super bowl, and they hear from fans in both cities that they hate their team, they were unfair to their team, they were biased in favor of the other team. People hearing exactly the same words, interpreting it as some sort of bias against their team. But as I've always said, none of us has received a letter back when people wrote letters, an email, heard from it on social media, something like this. Dear Mr. Musburger, Nance Michaels, Tirico Costas, I happen to be a fan of the Seattle Mariners, and since they weren't involved in this year's World Series, I had no real rooting interest. However, I found your bias toward the Toronto Blue Jays or the Los Angeles Dodgers to be absolutely unconscionable. Not once, not ever. It all comes only from fans of the competing teams. And it's stirred up by social media and by talk radio. Some of these people on talk radio have to know better. But what gets the phones ringing, what gets people worked up? It doesn't run by and large on sweet appreciation. It runs on anger.
- [38:43]
Interviewer
Well, I mean, and that starts, I mean, very toxically at a young age. You know, some of my closest family friends or the other families involved in travel baseball with my son. And I saw some stories over the weekend about terrible youth sports conduct in the Midwest. And some of that toxicity and fanaticism is showing up in youth sports.
- [39:04]
Bob Costas
There was a guest editorial, not specifically about sports, in the New York Daily News this week about the death of dignity and how our, our political climate seeps into a lot of different things. And what is the coin of the realm on the Internet and in social media or on talk radio, no matter what direction it's coming from. And even think about what some of talk TV was in the 80s and 90s, Jerry Springer and all the rest of that kind of stuff, where this kind of behavior was thought to be entertaining. You know, so a lot of civility, and I'm not talking about snooty, you know, don't enjoy yourself, all propriety, you know, where does a salad fork go? You know, I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about basic decency and civility. While it still exists, I think it's not as prominent as it used to be. And God awful behavior that once was universally condemned is now well tolerated and even in some cases encouraged. And so youth officials, like referees and umpires, it's getting harder and harder to hire them. An umpire at a Little League game could be getting 20 bucks a game, and he's 17 years old. Does he need to take that kind of abuse from parents who think that they are, you know, managing in the major leagues or that they're Vince Lombardi coaching, you know, Pop Warner football? And some of this also is when you get at certain levels, travel teams. Those parents are investing a lot of money, hoping that this is going to lead to college scholarships and maybe pro possibilities. So their view of this is not, oh, let's hope they have fun loving in the moment. Yeah, yeah, let's just hope the kids have fun and my little boy or girl does. Well, there's more of an edge to
- [40:59]
Interviewer
it than I still think that you can look to sports for real heroes. I mean, I've gone over my Warriors, I like fan as fanatics. I guess I'm a fanatic, fanatical fan of the Warriors. But there's still athletes doing really lovely things. Not just the superstars, but all the humility. Like, I still think that my most comfortable space is my son at a baseball game, my son watching baseball, my son on baseball reference. Like, do you still feel romantic about sports and baseball?
- [41:28]
Bob Costas
A lot of, you know, I think you become a little jaded just with the passage of time and with age and.
- [41:34]
Interviewer
And money. There's so much money involved.
- [41:35]
Bob Costas
Yeah, there's so much. There's. It's hard to escape some of the cynicism and what appealed to you, whether it's music, first romance, your first team, or your favorite player, that always resonates more from your youth. But this was something I saw just yesterday that I thought was really sweet. There's a player who's not famous and not yet a star, if he ever will be, named Mickey Moniac, who plays for the Colorado Rockies. He happened to have gone to school in Southern California with a niece of mine, so she roots for him. So Mickey Moniac writes a letter to Mickey Mantle, who's been dead since 1995, and this letter showed up. I guess the Rockies or someone posted it. It was on MLB.com, and he's telling Mickey Mantle, if I ever met you, I would say thank you, because you're part of the reason why I grew up loving baseball. My name is Mickey. Mm. MickeyMoniac. Mickey Mantle. My grandfather played in the minor leagues in the 50s. He knew Ted Williams, et cetera, et cetera. We're in a baseball family. You know, I was always obsessed with baseball, and I learned about you when I was a little kid. Now, this guy isn't even born until after Mickey Mantle dies, but that's part of the history of baseball more so than other sports where the history matters. And here's a major league player talking in effect to the ghost of an all time person and feels compelled to write this letter. It's so childlike and innocent and sweet and if I ever met you, I would just say thank you.
- [43:14]
Interviewer
I think it's also this place where I've interviewed Scott Galloway a bunch about Matt.
- [43:19]
Bob Costas
Now, there's a guy who talks sense all the damn time and gets in
- [43:23]
Interviewer
trouble all the time on the Internet, but he doesn't, I think he doesn't have an obligation that you feel to sort of speak across the ideological divide.
- [43:30]
Bob Costas
You know, also, it, also it's this, that's his stock in trade. People came to know me from hosting or calling sports events. And while no one is universally popular, I think I was pretty well received and appreciated. And so there are people who say I used to love him until just like, you get this stuff.
- [43:51]
Interviewer
Nevada, she used to be smart and chill, right? You got really dumb in 2015.
- [43:57]
Bob Costas
Look, here's an aspect of this. I saw something in a right leaning publication that supposedly showed that Saturday Night Live, the vast majority of their jokes are against Republicans. Well, yes, they are. Are generally speaking, the entertainment industry leans left. But when Clinton was president, Saturday Night Live made fun of Clinton. Dana Carvey spoofed Joe Biden. You know why? It was harder to make fun of Obama? Not because of policy, but because Obama is so damn cool. Whereas with Trump, it's not just that he is the president, like Bush was the president or whomever that you want, Reagan, whoever you want to talk about Trump on a daily basis says and does so many buffoonish and ridiculous things that all you have to do is show him speaking at a rally. He writes the stuff for Jimmy Kimmel. He writes the stuff for Saturday Night Live. To expect that, you know, when people say, why don't you just be like Johnny Carson and gently chide both sides. There was no Donald Trump when Johnny Carson was the host of the Tonight Show. I'm not claiming expertise that I don't have, but I think my general big picture notions are correct. And almost everything I've said that is characterized as political have been general big picture notions.
- [45:27]
Interviewer
Right. That 70, 60, 70% of Americans agree on.
- [45:31]
Bob Costas
Yeah. How about this, right? 50th anniversary of Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth's record. And those who say stick to sports on his own merits. Hank Aaron was one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived. But his story and his significance in part is because he faced blatant racism as he pursued Babe Ruth. And he triumphed over it, not just with his bat, but with his deep decency and dignity, which existed to the day he died. He was a genuine civil rights hero and a deeply decent man. That's part of his story. So on the 50th anniversary of him hitting 7:15, and I tick off some Giants fans by saying 715 was a monumental moment, 762 is just a statistic. Hank Aaron is the enduring home run king. Barry Bonds, for obvious reasons, is the statistical career home run leader. I think that's a reasonable distinction. That's not political, but it's the kind of thing that within sports that I'm willing to say I'm not the only one. A lot of people in print do it, but not as many on the broadcast side are willing to do it. And so I do this essay about 7:15 and I play all three calls. Curt Gowdy called it on NBC. Nationally, Milo Hamilton was the radio voice of the Braves. And his call is really good. But they happen to be playing the Dodgers. So fortuitously, Vin Scully is on the radio. And Scully calls the home run. It's good. But then he says, and Vin seldom ventured outside the foul lines. Then he says, what a beautiful and marvelous moment this is. What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a, what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep south for breaking a record of an all time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us. I still got choked up because it's my craft. And when it's done well, it's not just a good sports broadcast. And there are Times. Jim McKay at the Olympics in Munich in 72, Mike Tirico, in his own way, his conclusion in Milan was beautiful. It's different than the way I would have done it, but I applauded it anyway because it was beautiful. So Vin Scully says, a black man is receiving a standing ovation in the Deep South. Breaking the record. You know, this is age. You get old, you start, you know, you start weeping at like the state fair. Breaking the record of an all time baseball idol. In two sentences, he captured the whole story, the whole sociological story in the moment. You know, somebody today would have said, ah, why bring race into it? Because that was the central part of the story, you know. So anyway, so I do this and MLB.com puts it out on the Internet. That and you know, the comments are very appreciative, but a couple of the comments are God bless Hank Aaron. Bleep Bob Costas okay, All right. Now I just did the appreciation. Okay.
- [49:02]
Interviewer
We weren't going to do this much on politics. Do you.
- [49:05]
Bob Costas
Oh, but we did.
- [49:07]
Interviewer
Do you regret it?
- [49:08]
Bob Costas
Oh, yeah.
- [49:09]
Interviewer
Do you want to unsay any of it? Do you feel unburdened? Do you feel.
- [49:12]
Bob Costas
No, no, I don't feel unburdened because I've said it before.
- [49:15]
Interviewer
Bob Costas, you've been so generous with your time and your candor. We're grateful to you. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much for listening to the Best People. All episodes of the podcast are also available on YouTube. Visit Ms. Now. The best People to Watch the Best People is produced by Vicki Bergelina. Our associate producer is Nico Vinuela Yodar and our intern is Colette Holcomb with additional production support from Ayan Chatterjee and Pat Elliott. Our audio engineers are Bob Mallory, Mark Yoshizumi and Hazik bin Ahmad Fared. Katie Lau is our senior manager of audio production. Pat Berkey is the senior Executive producer of Deadline White House, Brad Gold is the executive producer of Content strategy, Aisha Turner is the executive Producer of audio and Madeline Herringer is Senior VP in charge of audio, digital and long form. Search for the Best People wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to follow the series.
- [50:31]
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