Justin Verlander\u2019s retirement served as a reminder for Bob Costas that he wasn\u2019t satisfied with the end of his own MLB play-by-play career.<\/p>\n
Costas recently joined Molly Knight and Joe Posnanski on The Joy of Baseball podcast. During the podcast, Costas reiterated how the baseball portion of his Hall of Fame broadcasting career remains closest to his heart. And while Costas is a widely celebrated baseball announcer and historian, he does wish the end of his play-by-play career went out on a higher note.<\/p>\n
\ufeff<\/p>\n
\u201cJustin Verlander has had a Hall of Fame career. Last few years doesn\u2019t match that, but he got the grace note,\u201d Costas pointed out to Knight and Posnanski on the heels of Verlander pitching his final game.<\/p>\n
Verlander was not a front-of-the-rotation pitcher during the last three seasons of his MLB career. But his final outing last weekend was decent enough, especially since he hadn\u2019t made a start since March. It allowed Verlander to go out to a standing ovation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought about that with me,\u201d Costas continued. \u201cI don\u2019t have much reason to complain. I\u2019ve had such a blessed career and life. But that is one I wish I could go back, and maybe in retrospect I shouldn\u2019t have done it at all. Maybe I should have realized I was losing something on my fastball. But in fact, in 2022, which was the first of the three years I did with Turner, a lot of the broadcasts with Jim Kaat and with Tom Verducci were very, very well received.\u201d<\/p>\n
Costas said he went back and watched broadcasts from the end of his career and compared them to games he called in the \u201880s and \u201890s, seeking to find out, \u201cWhy wasn\u2019t I able to do this as well as I once did and end on the note that I wanted to end on?\u201d<\/p>\n
2022 was the first time Costas called a full MLB playoff series<\/a> in nearly a quarter-century. He continued to call the Division Series for TBS in 2023 and 2024. And while there was much anticipation to hear Costas call a full playoff series again, his style drew plenty of criticism.<\/p>\n Costas has been very candid<\/a> about those last few playoff assignments not being up to his standards. But those are some pretty high standards. Yes, Costas was not as sharp as he was 25 years earlier, but some of the criticism he faced probably snowballed to the point where it was excessive.<\/p>\n Verlander got a grace note not because his last start was dominant, but because everyone knew it was the last start of his career. Fans are more willing to give grace when they know it\u2019s the last time they\u2019ll watch or hear a performer. And if Costas announced 2024 was his final season<\/a> calling MLB games before he retired, he probably would have been given more grace. Costas still may not have been satisfied with his own work, but his critics probably wouldn\u2019t have been as\u00a0<\/a>critical<\/a> if they\u2019d known it was the last time they\u2019d heard\u00a0a Hall of Fame announcer call a playoff baseball game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justin Verlander\u2019s retirement served as a reminder for Bob Costas that he wasn\u2019t satisfied with the end of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,9099,72563,388,99557,99558],"class_list":["post-818236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-bob-costas","tag-joe-posnanski","tag-justin-verlander","tag-molly-knight","tag-the-joy-of-baseball"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117361347391513503","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}