Hiestand: Costas' 12-year MLB playoff absence ends

[JonLP24]

6:51AM EST October 10. 2012 - On the day the New York Yankees beat the Seattle Mariners to win the American League Championship Series in 2000, USA TODAY was asking whether Alonzo Mourning could somehow overcome his just-announced kidney disease to return to the NBA? What would happen to the Indiana Hoosiers as they started practices for the first time in 29 years without Bobby Knight? Would the Dallas Cowboys replace quarterback Troy Aikman, who had just thrown five interceptions in a loss, with backup Randall Cunningham?

But as NBC's Bob Costas called that Yankees' victory Oct. 17, 2000, nobody would have thought to ponder this: Was Costas, synonymous with TV baseball, about to disappear from MLB's postseason until, say, the then-nonexistent Washington Nationals made the playoffs?

The 12-year streak ends today as Costas, with analyst Jim Kaat, call MLB Network's St. Louis Cardinals-Nationals playoff game (1 p.m. ET). Costas, 60, who already calls about a dozen MLBN regular-season games, says the chance to call one of two first-ever MLBN playoffs games "is a bonus. At this stage of my career, if you'd asked me a couple years ago if I'd do postseason baseball again, I'd have said no."

Costas realized being obsessed with baseball didn't guarantee he would always be able to call playoff action even before NBC lost MLB TV rights in 2000. "Everyone thought baseball would be on NBC forever, like the Masters on CBS, until we lost it (to CBS) in 1989," he says. "NBC's Game of the Week was a legendary franchise. ... Now, you understand it's the nature of the business, and you don't feel entitled to anything."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/hiestand-tv/2012/10/09/hiestand-nfl-mlb-playoffs/1622587/

[TZ]

1. Doesn't matter

Since most of the fucking home area can't fucking see or HEAR this game! Thanks for screwing over the team with the best record in baseball Selig!

[FSogol]

3. Can't you pick it up on the radio on 106.7?

Charlie Slowes and Dave Jageler's broadcast will be much superior to anything that Costas has in his prepared notes.

[TZ]

4. I have work I have to get done this afternoon anyway

as I'm leaving for a week+ vacation on Friday, so I can't afford the distraction of listening to the game. Banning myself from the web until I'm done unfortunately.

[FSogol]

2. Luckily, I'll be at the game and won't have to hear Costas fall in love with the sound of his own

voice again. Costas is a smarmy little jerk who repeats phrases he thought up previously.
Sports is about the moment. Good sportscasters don't need to write out lines to recite.

[Auggie]

5. That sanctimonious hack called an inning of a Giants game last year ...

and sucked.