Bob Costas

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Bob Costas bigraphy, stories - sportscaster

Bob Costas : biography

March 22, 1952 –

Robert Quinlan "Bob" Costas (born March 22, 1952) is an American sportscaster, on the air for NBC Sports television since the early 1980s. He has been prime-time host of a record 9 Olympic games. He also does play-by-play for MLB Network as well as hosting an interview show called Studio 42 with Bob Costas.

Interests

Love of baseball

Costas is a devoted baseball fan (he’s been suggested as a potential commissioner) and wrote Fair Ball: A Fan’s Case for Baseball in 2000. For his 40th birthday, then Oakland Athletics manager Tony La Russa allowed Costas to manage the club during a spring training game. The first time Costas visited baseball legend Stan Musial’s St. Louis eatery, he left a $3.31 tip in homage to Musial’s lifetime batting average (.331). Costas delivered the eulogy at Mickey Mantle’s funeral. In eulogizing Mantle, Costas described the baseball legend as "a fragile hero to whom we had an emotional attachment so strong and lasting that it defied logic." Costas has even carried a 1958 Mickey Mantle baseball card in his wallet. Costas also delivered the eulogy for Musial after his death in early 2013.

Costas has been fairly outspoken about his disdain for Major League Baseball instituting a wild card. Costas believes that it diminishes the significance of winning a divisional championship. He prefers a system in which winning the wild card puts a team at some sort of disadvantage, as opposed to on an equal level with teams by which they were outplayed over a 162 game season. Or, as explained in his book Fair Ball, have only the three division winners in each league go to the postseason, with the team with the best record receiving a bye into the League Championship Series. Once, on the air on HBO’s Inside the NFL, he mentioned that the NFL regular season counted for something, but baseball’s was beginning to lose significance.

Costas serves as a member of the advisory board of the Baseball Assistance Team, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to helping former Major League, Minor League, and Negro League players through financial and medical difficulties.

Political views

U.S. President George W. Bush at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.]]

George W. Bush

On May 26, 2007, Costas declared that the presidency of George W. Bush had "tragically failed." Some people may wonder about the [political] feelings that I’ve expressed, and I won’t get into all the particulars. I think it is now overwhelmingly evident, if you’re honest about it, even if you’re a conservative Republican, if you’re honest about it, this is a failed administration. And no honest conservative would say that George W. Bush was among the 500 most qualified people to be President of the United States. That’s not based on political leaning. If a liberal, and I tend to be liberal, disagrees with a conservative, they can still respect that person’s competence and the integrity of their point of view. This administration can be rightly criticized by a fair-minded person smack in the middle of the political spectrum on a hundred different counts, and by now they’re all self-evident."Pierre, Dave (June 6, 2007). . NewsBusters. Retrieved August 1, 2012.

The following summer, Costas would interview Bush, as Bush made an appearance during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Gun control controversy

During a segment on the Sunday Night Football halftime show on December 2, 2012, Costas paraphrased a report by Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock in regards to Jovan Belcher’s murder-suicide the day prior, stating that the United States’ gun culture was causing more domestic disputes to result in death, and that Belcher and his girlfriend would not have died had he not possessed a gun.

Critics interpreted his remarks as support for gun control, resulting in mixed, but mostly negative reactions. Many (including former republican Presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Herman Cain) felt that Costas should not have used a program typically viewed as entertainment to publicize political views on sensitive topics, Lou Dobbs criticized his remarks for supporting the abolishment of the Second Amendment by quoting a sports writer, while Andrew Levy remarked that he had been given a civics lecture by someone who had "gotten rich thanks in part to a sport that destroys men’s bodies and brains." However, Erik Wemple of The Washington Post praised Costas for speaking out for gun control on the broadcast, feeling that the incident’s connection to the NFL provided him with an obligation to acknowledge the incident during the halftime show, stating that "the things that [NFL players] do affect the public beyond whether their teams cover the point spread. And few cases better exemplify that dynamic as powerfully as the Belcher incident."