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Back in university, my group of friends liked to play a game in which we would devise our ideal fantasy presidential tickets. Our favourite such pairing featured Bob Costas for president, with Costas Mandylor (he of Mobsters and...er, Mobsters) as his running mate, together forming the "Costas/Mandylor" ticket. (We were a large and lonely group, freakish and shunned, but in our way, we learned to love.)
While our affinity for this particular pairing was born mostly of the pleasure derived from saying "Costas Mandylor" over and over and over again, you have to admit that, as far as fantasy presidents go, Bob Costas makes a pretty good choice. Sure, these days everyone's sitting around wishing that Martin Sheen were president, but back then he was still shilling for Tony Robbins.
Bob Costas, however -- now there was a voice of reason, intelligence, and humour. Costas came to prominence as the play-by-play man for NBC Baseball, and in his sports broadcasting, he's always managed to combine almanac-quality knowledge with offbeat popcult references, like an unholy offspring of Vin Scully and Dennis Miller. (The latter, of course, is now sportscasting himself, in what is no doubt a ham-handed -- and, as it turns out, largely unsuccessful -- effort to replicate Costas's unique charms.) Perhaps my favourite Costas moment came when he was hosting an NBA pregame show with Steve "Snapper" Jones, and following segment in which the elfin Dick Enberg interviewed Magic Johnson and some other giant player, Costas quipped that, squeezed in between the two mammoth players, Enberg "looked like Zelig." There may have been the off-camera echo of one lonely gaffer laughing, but as far as Steve "Snapper" Jones was concerned, Costas might well have been speaking Hungarian.
But Costas truly proved his mettle while hosting Later with Bob Costas, a talk show that featured no audience, no house band, no monologue, and no sidekick -- only a half-hour conversation between Costas and his sole guest for the night, who could be anyone from Mario Cuomo to Mel Brooks. (This show went on to become Later with Greg Kinnear, which is kind of like replacing Niels Bohr with L. Ron Hubbard.)
Since he left Later in 1993, Costas has sort of wandered in the wilderness -- yes, he still does sports, but he seems slightly out of place, his skills underutilized and even dormant, like a high-school valedictorian come back to host the talent show years after he's already graduated. He's currently hosting an HBO sports talk show called On The Record, which does afford him the opportunity to spar with the likes of Vince McMahon, with entertaining results. But the problem is that sports is not an arena generally known for its eloquent interlocutors; in short, Costas is too smart for the room. In fact, this has always been the one knock against him: he's too smug, too pleased with himself, taking an inordinate joy in his own cleverness, like a MENSA version of Paul Lynde. In our books, however, "MENSA version of Paul Lynde" is about the highest compliment you can get.
We think Costas just needs to find the right fit. As much as we love hearing him call a ballgame, he's clearly outgrown the wide world of sports. Some guess that he's angling to be named the commissioner of Major League Baseball, a speculation fueled by his recent book, Fair Ball: A Fan's Case for Baseball. We think he should aim his sights a little higher. Come on, America: isn't it time for a President who can make a decent pop-culture reference? The Democrats need a leader, and we've already got his running mate picked out.
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