Bob Costas: What Dave Roberts Should Tell the Dodgers Facing a 3-0 NLCS Deficit

Bob Costas came on The Rich Eisen Show with a costume change. While watching the previous segment, he noticed the show's bumper used the same photo of him from a decade ago it always uses, realized he had the same basic shirt on underneath, and ran upstairs to grab the jacket. "Just for continuity's sake," Costas said.

Rich called him the Benjamin Button of broadcasting. Costas was not having it. The 10-years-ago version wins, he said, "undoubtedly."

What followed was one of the great Costas hits: a BASEketball confession, the definitive account of the Kirk Gibson home run on its 38th anniversary, a scouting report on the Brewers, and a clear-eyed look at baseball's looming labor fight.

**The BASEketball paycheck story**

It started with Costas noting that at some point in the '90s, Kevin Pollak and Al Michaels looked like the same guy. That led straight into the movie Costas and Michaels made together, the one Costas says still burns them both for being "snubbed by the Oscar committee."

His agent at the time, the late Barry Frank, read the script and told him it wasn't very good and he shouldn't do it. Costas, who figured he was much hipper, saw the Zucker brothers of Airplane and The Naked Gun plus the South Park guys and said yes. An equal reason: he and Michaels were already friends but had never worked together. So Costas called Michaels and talked him into it.

They shot on the last day of production, never meeting anyone else in the cast. But their mock play-by-play tied the whole film together, which made their scenes essential.

After three hours, they broke for lunch. Michaels said he didn't think the movie was very good. Costas said at least it was a decent payday. "What are you getting?" Michaels asked.

They flipped a coin, and the loser had to reveal. Costas lost, and told Michaels his number, which was five times what Michaels was getting.

"We don't need to throw a charity banquet for Al Michaels," Costas said. "However, he's among the most competitive people on the planet."

Michaels called his agent from the trailer and said to get him what Costas was getting, or he walks. The producers said he had signed. Michaels said, "Fine. I'm walking." Without him, everything they had shot that morning was useless. So they relented, and Michaels got an extra 10 grand on top as his version of punitive damages. "So he's now getting 20% more than me," Costas said.

Rich was crying laughing.

There was a postscript. Costas's infamous line made the trailer, which ran in theaters alongside Saving Private Ryan. Costas went to see it in St. Louis, the trailer played, and from the back of the darkened theater he heard one word: "Bob." A guy had seen him at the box office. On the other hand, Costas noted, his son was 12 at the time, and he and his friends thought the movie was a masterpiece.

**Kirk Gibson, 38 years later**

Rich then asked for the story of the Gibson home run, which Costas witnessed from the corner of the Dodgers dugout.

"It is the most dramatic and theatrical baseball moment I have ever personally witnessed," Costas said.

As the pregame host, the first thing Costas told viewers was that Gibson would not play, with multiple injuries, not even suiting up for the anthem. Late in the game, NBC's cameras kept panning the dugout as Vin Scully noted the Dodgers were without their main guy. Gibson, by his own testimony, heard that, said screw this, and put on his uniform.

Costas, waiting to interview someone after the game, heard a thwack from down the hallway. He walked back and found Gibson hitting balls off a tee in the batting cage, then told producer Mike Weisman in the truck through his IFB.

In the bottom of the ninth, down 4-3, with Dennis Eckersley on the mound, Tommy Lasorda sent Dave Anderson to the on-deck circle as a decoy while Mike Davis batted. Eckersley, careful with a former teammate who had hit 27 home runs in Oakland, walked him. Here came Gibson.

He hobbled to the plate, took a few feeble swings, and could barely run up the line on a foul grounder. At 3-2, he called timeout, remembering a scouting report that said Eckersley would throw a backdoor slider in that count. He got it, and hit it into the right field pavilion almost flat-footed, all arms.

Costas also had Lasorda marching the dugout, yelling about what Costas was doing there and claiming NBC thought the game was over. "That's just Tommy," Costas said, as players snickered.

Costas's own contribution came after. He told pregame producer David Neal the at bat reminded him of Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs in The Natural. Neal worked into the morning in Burbank intercutting the two at bats with Randy Newman's soundtrack, down to Wilford Brimley and Lasorda each leaping just high enough to slip a lineup card under their cleats. Gibson still says he remembers the moment half as it felt facing Eckersley and half the way Scully described it, Harry Coyle directed it and Neal "mythologized it the next night."

**Why the Brewers lead 3-0, and what Roberts should say**

On the present, Costas didn't hedge. "Because they have been baseball's best team this year," he said. They won 103 games, and he highlighted a stat you are seeing more: errors made against a team. The Brewers and Rays pressure defenses by taking the extra base, running everything out, stealing and bunting. Then in Game 3 they hit three home runs, with Jake Bauers and Garrett Mitchell going back to back. Mitchell, a lefty, had gone deep only once this year against a left-handed pitcher before Blake Snell.

If the Dodgers survive tonight with Tyler Glasnow against a Brewers bullpen game, Costas said, it sets up Jacob Misiorowski against Tarik Skubal in Game 5.

And Dave Roberts's message, in Costas's view, writes itself: he was on a team that came back from 3-0, a team that hadn't won the World Series in 86 years. The Dodgers are two-time defending champions. All they need is to win one, then Skubal gets them back to Milwaukee. "And if we get back to Milwaukee, they're the ones who are sweating."

**The labor fight**

Rich closed with the question listeners keep calling about: with low-payroll teams thriving, does any of this change what is coming at the bargaining table?

In the court of public opinion, yes, Costas said. A Yankees-Dodgers World Series would boost the owners' argument that things are out of whack. A Brewers matchup with the Rays or Guardians lets the players association point out that three of the four semifinalists are low-payroll teams, that Milwaukee is the smallest market of 30, and that the Yankees have been to one World Series since 2009.

Rich asked why owners can't demand to know where revenue sharing money goes. "The answer to that is salary floor," Costas said. "No salary cap without a salary floor."

His larger point was that this "should no longer be a holy war. It should be a hard-nosed negotiation." He called the owners' offer the most comprehensive and thoughtful they have ever put forward: a guaranteed 50% of all revenues to players, pooling all media rights to be split 1/30th per team, eliminating blackouts, and likely a higher minimum salary with graduated increases, plus possibly free agency after five years, improved pensions, and expansion from 30 to 32 teams, which he estimated means 80 to 100 new jobs.

That, Costas said, is an appeal to the rank and file over the stars. A lockout will almost certainly happen, but if it reaches deep into the regular season, the average player with a three- or four-year career "starts to get a little bit jittery."

"Sorry for chewing up so much of your time," Costas said at the end.

"It was delightful, as always," Rich said.