 And Bob, first of all, thank you for coming back. How you doing? Good, Michael. Hi, Don. How's it going? Good. Good. Now, since the lighting open, we just had there. Absolutely. We just felt bad. Hey, how about this weather? No, no, no. We felt bad because you didn't say hello to Peter, and Peter idolizes you. Yeah, it's all right. It's OK. It's OK. And now he's in Vegas, where I thought the heavyweight fight last night was between Warren and Bloomberg. Hey, oh. Hey, Bob. I'll tell you what, if the heavyweight tattle fight on Saturday is anything like that debate, we're going to have a great fight. Whoa. All right, so I've never, in all my years covering baseball, it's about 35 years now. And you have a longer stretch. Have you ever seen baseball players go on the record and hammer other baseball players? No, even during the height or depth, if you prefer to put it that way, of the steroid era, you heard from players maybe off the record that was mumblings or generalities when you're testing on concern. But calling out individual players, never. So this is entirely different. I guess players view this circumstance differently than they viewed PEDs or other transgressions. Plus, you've also got the reality of social media. So players have Twitter. They have Instagram. And they feel more emboldened, I guess, to offer personal opinions. But that doesn't invalidate those personal opinions. And baseball has to take into account, even after they've rendered their initial verdict. They've got to take into account just how heated this reaction is from players. And they've got to understand that if they don't get a handle on this going forward, they're never gonna get the end of it. Now, the assumption, Bob, is with all these players complaining, and I haven't done the math, but I would think the overwhelming majority of teams have been represented by a player that is maled off about the Astros. The assumption then becomes, well, that obviously means that the Astros were the only team that cheating couldn't have been rampant because these players wouldn't be outspoken the way they are. Is, could that be a false assumption? I think it has to be a false assumption. Common sense tells us that it might've been going on in one way or another. And within the report, I don't have it in front of me, but someone on the Astros suggested that they suspected that other teams might've had schemes, not exactly theirs necessarily, but schemes of their own. So it would be naive, I think, to declare flatly. It's the Astros and only the Astros. Do you believe that Manfred must reconsider and maybe take their title away? No, I don't think that's going to happen. And I think that Manfred has gotten a bum rap in one respect. When people say because there were no penalties levied on the players, that it's no deterrent, consider the practical reality here. The coaches and managers going forward, if any team were to cheat, they would have to know about it. Hinch knows about it and now regrets that he didn't do something about it beyond damaging a couple of monitors. No manager, no coach, is going to risk the fate of AJ Hinch or Carlos Beltran or Alex Cora to have their careers either completely destroyed or significantly derailed. You can't have a player scheme like this without other players and the coaching staff and the manager being aware of it. And now those coaches and managers recognize the jeopardy that they're in if they don't do something about it because those penalties were severe. So I think as a practical matter, it does act as a deterrent. As I also said, the day that the report was issued and the penalties came down, I think the next step is that in the next collective bargaining agreement, which is upcoming, they're going to have to codify penalties against the players. It'd be similar to what happened with PEDs and steroids. The players' association was resistant, but eventually their membership said to them, look, the majority of us are victims here. We're not perpetrators, we're victims. That's true in even greater extent if you talk about this kind of cheating. So I think the players would be all in favor of some kind of uniform penalties if players should be involved in this kind of stuff going forward. They'd be notified. They would know that there were penalties awaiting them and it was proven that they were involved. They'd have to pay that price. But Bob, the one thing I don't understand is there's so much of a resistance to take the title away, and although what you said might serve as a deterrent, although nothing happened to the players other than their reputation seem somewhat stained. Well, that's no small thing. It is no small thing, but they could still say that they're world champions. Carlos Correa is saying we didn't do anything wrong. They're not world champions, they cheated. What would be the harm of saying there is no title in 2017? I don't think there would be harm in that. There's no baseball precedent for it, but there's always a first time for everything. I understand what Manfred's rationale was in not doing that, and I'm not terribly troubled by it because as I mentioned to you before, I put it in the same category as Barry Bond's career in single season home run records and the records of others, or at least the statistics of others who are obviously artificially enhanced, knowledgeable people are aware and in their own minds they have an asterisk after it. And I know that Don has made the point, well, what about 50 years from now? What about 100 years from now? Does this sort of thing sort of just fade from consciousness? I guess so, but we still know about what happened with the 1919 Black Sox. So I'm not terribly troubled by it, but if on the other hand Manfred came out tomorrow and said, look, we've decided upon reflection that we're gonna vacate the title. We're not gonna award it to the Dodgers because maybe the Yankees were cheated out of it around before that, but we're just gonna vacate it or put an asterisk next to it. I wouldn't be troubled by that, but I'm not losing any sleep about where it stands right now either. I just think that the comparison to the 1919 Black Sox scandal, that has legs because eight players were banned, including maybe the best player in the game at the time in Shulish Joe Jackson. If Kennesaw Mount Landis had made an announcement saying we're gonna stand by the court and we're not gonna do anything to the players, I'm not sure we would even remember what happened in 1919. You know what Don, that's a very good point. You're persuading me. I'm a man who's open to reason. That's a very good point. I need your guidance on this because this broke today where David Ortiz called Mike Fires a snitch. Now, Jessica Mendoza of our company has said it. Pedro Martinez has said that as well. It just feels wrong that the guy did the right thing and he's being called this pejorative phrase. So, I mean, why would Ortiz, I mean, did he say anything when PED guys were doing it while he was playing? He didn't say a word and he's saying he should have said it at the time. Nobody said it at the time though. No, nobody said it at the time and this might have continued in one form or another or other teams might have been emboldened without what Fires did. So, I think that history will treat them pretty well. And you're right about the steroid era. Everybody knew it was going on. A whole lot of players, many, many more than were involved in this kind of cheating or steroid in PED users. And that obviously affected contemporary competition. Who knows how it affected pen and races or post-season outcomes, but it most definitely affected the careers of players who weren't using or it caused some players to use against their better judgment and against their conscience, just to keep up and to keep their job or maintain a position in the starting lineup instead of winding up on the bench. And it most definitely poisoned the record book in the sport where the record book in generational comparisons matters more than in any other sport. And also with Ortiz, I mean, it's the elephant in the room. He was on that list. And even Manfred kind of threw him a lifeline while there were mistakes on that list. He's gonna get into the Hall of Fame, but if you're David Ortiz, don't kind of sit this one out because even Alex Rodriguez has been conspicuously absent making any comments about the ass shows. I mean, guys that live in class houses, sit this one out. I think he should have listened to your advice if you had gotten to him ahead of time. Yeah, he should have sat this one out. A-Rod is well advised to sit this one out. Whenever an issue comes up, whether it's in politics, in sports, whatever, the people who might be directly involved or implicated or aren't in a position to pass judgment are better off just holding their tongues. Now, we're talking about Bob Costas here on the Michael case. So one of the reasons I wanted to have you on today is yesterday Adam Schefter broke that they're going to add two more teams to the NFL playoffs. It could happen as soon as this year. There'll be another wild card game. So there'll be three on Saturday, three on Sunday and everybody goes, great, great, it's great. More money, everybody loves it, more football. But then when the baseball stuff came out, that Manfred actually had proposed or didn't officially, did Joel Sherman, broke that story. People felt like religion was being actually challenged. So why is there such a difference between football and baseball? I don't get that. Well, two reasons. One, obviously, football plays about a tenth as many games as baseball. Baseball has the longest season of any sport and that regular season has to be respected. Even though there have been changes in the playoff format in baseball, baseball still has a history of a pennant race which is different than playoff qualifying no matter what the playoff format might be. So as I told you last week, I think it's perfectly wise for baseball to think about ways of modernizing, to think about ways of creating more postseason inventory and involving more teams in their fan bases in the pursuit of playoff spots. And I also don't have any problem with a selection show or even with the idea that maybe the higher ranking teams in the wildcard round could pick their opponent. And it certainly makes great sense to make the wildcard best two out of three. I do that right now even with only five playoff teams. I'd make the wildcard best two out of three and play all three on the home field of the higher ranking wildcard. And beyond that, they could make the first round the division series best out of seven. And that's a way to create more postseason inventory and therefore more television revenue and more interest from the networks without distorting the regular season. My point and my larger point though is, while I'm all for innovative ideas that create more revenue, create more interest for casual fans, involve the fan bases of more teams, you've got to do it in a way that respects the long season. So under the present proposal, if you had the three division winners and then four wildcards, which is what they threw out there. And as I said last week, that's just a trial balloon. That's just, you know, there are some interesting ideas in there. Maybe they wind up exactly there, but maybe they wind up someplace else after some discussion and exchange of ideas. But if that's the format, then what you have is only one team, the best division winner getting a buy. As you well know, three teams in the American League, one more than 100 games last year. Two of those three teams would have been thrown in with the wildcard group. And we also know that in baseball, it happens all the time that a team that would win 90 or 100 games, 90 plus or 100 games loses two out of three at home during the course of the regular season to a team that isn't a contender and will be under 500. Now it's perfectly reasonable in the wildcard rounds since you've come in through a side door, it's perfectly reasonable to have that be one game or best two out of three. Just as it's perfectly reasonable if teams in a pennant race played it with dead heat to have them play one game or best two out of three because they played it with dead heat over the long season. But does it make sense to take a team that is one more than 100 games and throw it in at least in theory possibly with a team that finished under 500 in a best two out of three? You have to, yes, you have to modernize. Yes, maybe they need to expand the number of teams in the playoffs certainly create more posting to season inventory but you have to do it in a way that respects the long season and two possible ways to do that and then I will stop this monologue. Two possible ways to do that would be even with the present number of teams and divisional alignments, if you added one wildcard so now you have six playoff qualifiers and the first two division winners get a buy out of the wildcard round and only the third best division winner gets thrown into the wildcard. Now could that still be a 100 win team? Yeah, last year it would have been but it reduces the chances of inequities based on the long season or they could wait until they expand some day to 32 teams which is probably inevitable then reconfigure them into two 18 divisions based on geography per league and then you have a perfectly logical and perfectly equitable idea of giving the two division winners in each league a buy and then you have four wildcards and you go from there, you get all the additional post season revenue, you get that one week of feeling like the NCAA tournament to some extent with multiple games going on at once and many of them are elimination games and then you could expand the division series to best out of seven and you'd accomplish that kind of modernizing while at the same time protecting at least the basic concept that baseball's regular season is different from the regular season and any other sport. Now I'm out of breath. Now, let me just address what you said about honoring the long season. At this particular point in the 21st century is the long season set up for the sole purpose of trying to find the true champion, a war of attrition, 162 games or is it really outlived as useful as for that and now is more, hey, that's how the Dodgers get $2 billion from their television. By adding more playoff teams, in effect it's like the other way you could do it is just shorten the season but nobody wants to do that because they lose money. Yeah, I think you would have to if you change the playoffs in any of the ways we discussed, you'd have to at least cut it back to 156 which is one three game series at home for each team and then that way you wouldn't find the World Series going into November. Yeah, look, teams don't wanna give up their revenue, they don't wanna give up the revenue from their regional sports networks. The Yankees don't wanna give up a portion of the revenue from the Yes network and the Cardinals don't wanna give it up from Fox Sports Midwest or whatever they be and season tickets. So obviously there are business considerations but part of your business always is how does this appeal to your customers and baseball fans, even if they like basketball, hockey and football equally as well as they like baseball, baseball fans still view that sport somewhat differently than they view other sports. Can you change it? Yeah, but you still have to have some core value about the value of the regular season. Now, before I got into broadcasting, I was a newspaper writer and I used to like scratch my head when ball players would jump me when I walked into the clubhouse and go, I can't believe the headline on your story. And I say, well, I don't write the headline and I just said, well, they're just overreacting because when people read the story, they'll know exactly what I meant because I do not write the headline and it's funny. You know, you're actually tweaking that whole system that Joel Sherman wrote about. And then Andrew Marshan wrote a story about you, Bob. And the headline said, almost like you were a cheerleader for that very such thing. Now, the story didn't say that, but the headline did. And I wonder if it's come back to you, wow, Bob, you really agree with everything that was put out there? Yeah, some people, not people who know me or not people who listen carefully when I was on with you or read Andrew's entire article. But, you know, we're being bombarded by so much information and so many impressions out there that sometimes people don't get past the first paragraph or even that far. So when a headline says, Bob Costas and TV execs salivating over new playoff format, it makes it sound like there's a parade and I'm at the front of that parade waving the banner. I think these ideas that they've thrown out there are interesting and they have some merit and at least some aspects of them are likely to come to pass. But it's just a starting point and the points that we've been making here should be part of a discussion before we wind up with whatever is enacted. And there's at least a couple of years to have that discussion. Last time you salivated over something, what is it? Yeah, we'll keep it above four. I think it could have been a cheeseburger at 2 a.m. at PJ Clark's for a Yankee game. Yeah, that's one of the, you know, even if the game goes 15 innings, you know, PJ Clark's is still open. I'm standing. Bob, I've got one thing for you now on Baseball Related. I'm here in Vegas for the Wilder Fury 2 and it has a huge... Peter, is that you, Peter? That's me, Bob. Hi, Peter. Great to talk to you, Bob. But seriously, this is like the energy of these weekends every once in a while these days is still special. I'm curious, just you've been in the game so long, most memorable fight-related experience that you recall either being at or simply even if it was as a kid watching at home? Yeah, pretty easy. Ali Frazier won. I was a freshman at Syracuse University. I went to the Lowe's Theater in downtown Syracuse. A ticket was five bucks. And if you are old enough, those in the listening audience old enough to remember what the atmosphere was, Styles bake fights, and unless they killed each other, Ali and Frazier could have fought 10 times and almost all those fights would have been very, very close, whereas Frazier couldn't possibly handle Foreman, but Ali did. So those fights, just as fights, were great fights between Ali and Frazier, but it was freighted with so much sociological stuff. We know what Ali represented. And there was Frazier who unfairly was cast as a white man's champion. It hurt him very, very much. He was the son of a sharecropper from South Carolina and I thought that he was unfairly treated as an individual. But of course, Muhammad Ali was a much more profound figure. He was an international figure who transcended sports. But all those emotions and all those feelings were at stake that night at Madison Square Garden. And then the fight turns out to be terrific. It goes 15 rounds. Where I was watching it, there was a very substantial number of African-Americans in attendance and the great majority of them were rooting for Ali. And as a young person who grew up in the 60s and 70s, I too was rooting for Ali, but I felt empathy for Frazier and I felt admiration for Frazier. There was so much emotion and so much texture to that that went beyond just the boxing match that that's the one that I remember as the most significant. And it was significant for me, Bob, for this reason, because I think it was like in first or second grade and I bet a kid a quarter, which I didn't have. And I bet that Joe Frazier would win. I mean, it felt like I hit the lottery and I won a quarter the next day. There you go. It leaves me to a story if you want to hear it. Yes. My dad was an embedded gambler. He didn't go to the track. He didn't play poker or play craps. He bet on ball games. So with a bookie, you know, what you could do now legally, he had to be talking to guys who literally had names like Fury and Freefinger. A guy named Nunzio showed up at our door one time to collect and I was instructed to tell him that my dad wasn't home, even though there were two cars in the driveway. I'm 11 years old. I'm a frontman for my father who's fleeing guys who are in the mob. Okay, but by the time I was 11 years old, 12 years old, if you said to me on a Monday, there was no Monday night football then, the Giants are playing the Eagles on Sunday. These would be the YA Tittle Giants. I would give you the line off the top of my head within a point and I don't always be right. So now I'm in high school. I'm like 15, 16 years old. And I know who's a jet fan, who's a giant fan, who's a MET fan, who's a Yankee fan. So I was running a bookmaking operation in the cafeteria and I would give them a false line. I would, if the Giants were a favorite, I'd make them 5.6 points more, but the giant fans would still bite. Wow. And then often I'd hit the middle because I'd create such a space that people who root for one team would take the underdog, others would take the favorite. And at worst I'd break even, but a lot of times we'd land in the middle and I would collect. This is a true story, I swear. Right, so now in the top drawer of the dresser in my bedroom in Comac on Long Island, I'm stashing my winnings. And you know, in 1967, 68, I've got 65, 70 bucks in cash underneath the socks and the underwear. Nice. And I'm going through it at one point. My father walks in the door and I've got the sheet with the lines on it and everything. And it was, first he was very angry and he had a volatile temper. And then he just looked me in the eye and I can still feel me like squeezing my hand that at first I thought he was going to whack me because fathers did that in those days even when they loved their kids. And he just looked at me and tears welled in his eyes. And he said, Robert, I can't stop. You got to stop right now. And I did. Wow. Wow. I got to tell you, to quote the breakfast club, the movie, my image of you is totally blown. Yeah, that was mind blowing. Also, here's what I thought, Bob. I mean, thank goodness this show's doing very well. A lot of people are listening and all that. The people that you rocked, they heard that. They're coming after you. Yeah, they've been. That's all you know about the story too. Hey, Michael, you know what the story became. It's the same thing for you, which is this. My sister lived on Long Island for a while, a long while after I had gone on to St. Louis and other things and then I'm on NBC and she would periodically tell me, you know, I ran into so-and-so at the bakery or at the grocery store and he tells me how much he loves watching you and you were his best friend when he was in school and he always knew you'd do well. And then I said, what? That guy wanted to kick my ass. That guy was a preacher. He couldn't stand me. Wow. But he revised his opinion. Of course, they've come out of the woodwork when the Yankees or the Mets were in the World Series or whatever. Hey, you know, I remember us in high school and we used to play pick-up basketball, whatever. Can you get me two tickets for the World Series? Oh, yeah. Yeah, you get those calls a lot. Bob, thank you for coming on. We have to do this more often. We love having you on. You got it, guys. Thanks a lot. Bye.