Sports: Costas still busy without baseball

Costas still busy without baseball

By SHARON GINN

Bob Costas, the seven-time Sportscaster of the Year who has hosted NBC's Olympics coverage for nearly a decade, spent some time recently with the Times' Sharon Ginn, chatting about his new late-night HBO sports interview show On the Record, which just completed its first season; whether Michael Jordan should return to the NBA; and, of course, the mess that is major-league baseball:

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Q: How did you fit On the Record into your schedule?

A: This took a few years of planning, because NBC at first was reluctant to let me do the show. People associate me with NBC, and I've been well compensated to be there. ... I said, "If you want to give me a show like this, I'll do it here." But as a practical commercial situation, they're not going to do that. I saw the opportunity a year and a half ago. Marv Albert was starting to do (NBA) games on TNT, and I went to (NBC Sports Chairman) Dick Ebersol and said, "Look, the public is perfectly willing to accept Marv back and he should come back. He can have his job back, and I can go do the show I've always wanted to do."

Q: For me, growing up, Mr. Olympics was Jim McKay. Now you've filled that role. Is that something you wanted or expected?

A: I always admired McKay and ABC's coverage of the Olympics. But a lot of what has happened in my career was not something I expected. What I expected was to be a play-by-play man for baseball and maybe for basketball. In fact when I first started, my conception of that was on the radio. When I was younger, the radio voices for teams would also do the games on television. That was the model in my head. ... If I ever thought of the Olympics, I would have thought of myself calling the 100-meter dash. ... It's been a great thing. It's always exciting to do and prepare for. It wasn't what I expected, but I'm glad it turned out that way.

Q: If you were baseball commissioner, what do you do with the Florida teams?

A: The first thing I would have done is not allow them to exist. No disrespect to anyone involved. I do think that one of the ways to deal with the financial problems is contraction, but that alone is not the answer. It's part of a larger, comprehensive plan. The real problem is, though, the ideal number of teams is 24. They need to get rid of six. And that is tough. Montreal can go, the two Florida teams can go. If you want to be really ruthless, Oakland can go, despite the fact that they have a good, competitive history. You don't need two teams in the Bay area, and they're the ones without the new stadium. But then you'd really have to get tough. You'd basically have to say to Kansas City and Minnesota, "We will now make you the victim of baseball's economic injustice." Because Kansas City and Minnesota were both excellent franchises, both in attendance and on the field, for years and years before the financial inequities overran them.

So if you got to 24, you go back to two six-team divisions (in each league), no wild cards, true pennant races. The scheduling would make sense; you can even work in interleague play. But like I've said and written (in his book, Fair Ball: A Fan's Case for Baseball), they got so shortsighted that they went for every short-term revenue grab they could. ... How can you not have any day games in the World Series? Here's how: Because you have to take every last nickel because there's a sense of economic desperation. And they've distorted and weakened the game.

Q: Do you think contraction will happen at all?

A: I think it's a possibility. If I had to guess, I would guess that it doesn't happen, but I do think it's a possibility.

Q: Is the game irretrievably broken?

A: It's not. If people could get past their narrow agendas -- the players association and some owners both -- it not only could be saved, it could thrive. Some of the owners may have, but there's no evidence that, as a group, the owners or players association have as their primary motivation the overall health of the institution.

Q: Do you still think Michael Jordan should come back if he wants to?

A: Obviously he should do whatever he wants to just like you and I should. I would prefer that he not. He had the greatest exit in the history of American sports. Ted Williams hit a home run in his last at-bat, but it wasn't in the World Series. You can't much top what (Jordan) did. Of course I know what the argument is: "That doesn't change what I did. I'm 38 years old, and for the next 50 years I can reflect on the memories. But it's only for the next couple of years that there's even any chance at all that I can do the thing that God blessed me to do." But from where most of us sit, that's the biggest anticlimax you can ever imagine. It's like the curtain coming down after the fifth thunderous standing ovation. People are already wandering out, they're in the lobby, and the guy comes out and goes, "One more thing. . ."

Q: And (TNT analyst Charles) Barkley seems to have found his niche, too.

A: He's great on TV. He's tremendous. He's one of the few people in TV sports that you watch for the sake of watching him or her. ... Obviously a studio show is different, but he's a reason to watch, no doubt about it. He's funny and he says stuff that's provocative.

Q: So if Jordan does come back, does the NBA run the risk of putting all its eggs in this one basket?

A: I think they'll be too smart to do that. In spite all the gloom and doom talk, they have recently had the emergence of stars where the public is responding. Some new, fresh teams. They can't divert attention from that. If Jordan is some icing on the cake, fine. But they can't make him the cake anymore. Let's just say for the sake of argument he comes back and is the best player in the league -- and I don't think there's any chance of that happening. So it lasts for a couple of years, and they have to go through the same cycle, the NBA without Jordan again. They may be dreading this more than welcoming it.

Q: Is any athlete worth $252-million?

A: Tiger Woods is worth whatever he gets in endorsements and appearance money and prize money. ... But you have to make a distinction between team sport athletes and prizefighters and tennis players. Almost no one ever makes this point. They say fans resent athletes' salaries. But you never hear anyone complain about prizefighters' purses, even if the fighter stinks, he's a stiff, you can't even figure out which belt it is he holds. Because there's a direct relationship between his performance and the size of the purse.

But in team sports, what one person gets affects the salary structure of the overall sport, and it affects what you have to pay for even a roughly comparable player in another market, regardless of what the revenue potential of that market is. People use these glib analogies all the time between athletes and entertainers. And I continually try to make the point, it's not about resenting the money. It's about resenting what it does to the structure of the league.

Look at Alex Rodriguez. It isn't where Texas is in the standings right now that indicates he's not worth it. He's going to have tremendous numbers at the end of the year. But if they have to even consider trading maybe even the greatest catcher that has ever lived in Ivan Rodriguez -- or if by keeping him and paying him what market value is, which is partly established by what Alex Rodriguez makes -- if they have $45-million a year for the foreseeable future tied up in two players, and they have a pitching staff that is horrid, how are they going to be competitive? Unless they further reestablish a new salary plateau by spending to get $110- to $120-million in total payroll, which then reverberates throughout baseball.

If Tom Hanks gets $20-million a movie, and he's probably worth every penny of it, if you live in Tulsa, you contribute only a Tulsa-sized fraction of that overall pie. ... It's all figured in. But in baseball or any other sport, if Alex Rodriguez is worth $25-million, then automatically a guy that's half as good is worth $12-million. That's nuts. If Barbra Streisand gets $500,000 a night to play a concert, it doesn't mean that the violinist, who may be very good, gets $100,000. It doesn't work that way. It only works that way in team sports. ... (A-Rod) is great. If anybody deserves it, he deserves it. But in the long term, what this will do to Texas' team, and what it has the potential to do to baseball's salary structure, is not a good thing.

Q: Should Beijing get the Olympic games?

A: The IOC has a decidedly different view of this than most Americans. Their view is, let's move it around. ... They want it in Asia. As soon as possible, they want it in Africa. Many IOC delegates come from countries that are not that democratic, or their version of democracy is a good deal less free than ours. They're not as taken aback by some of the things that we are. If you consider what the Olympic ideals are ... a country that suppresses human rights ought not be hosting. The counterargument is, that if you give them the Olympics, it will actually help the cause, because in an effort to court world opinion, they'll clean up their act, especially leading up to 2008.

Q: Does that argument have merit?

A: I think there is some merit in the thought that by giving them the Olympics, you encourage them in the direction of reform, and also because they wouldn't want to risk it, you perhaps curb any tendency toward aggression. ... If (they) feel that the Olympics hang in the balance, that may temper their act. But I'm not in the State Department, so that's just a guess.

Q: Your contract with NBC is up next year. The network doesn't have the baseball rights anymore. Is that disappointing, and is there anything else you want to do?

A: The thing I really wanted to do is this HBO show. The only thing I'd like to do is some kind of in-depth interview show that is not a sports show. Which is what Later (his old NBC late-night show) was. Maybe I can accomplish that in the HBO show. ... Other than that, everything I've wanted to do, I've been lucky enough to do. I'm a little disappointed to lose baseball, but that's the way the business is. And it's not nearly as disappointing as it was when we lost it at the end of the '80s. Because then it was like baseball was the birthright for NBC. ... (Baseball is) not going to affect any decision that I have in the future. I think what I have to try to do is come up with the best jigsaw puzzle. As loyal as I am to NBC, they can't present everything that I'm interested in doing, and as great as the experience is at HBO, they can't replace live, big-time events. ... So I've got to cobble together some kind of combination.