Cardinals fans will remember Bob Costas' St. Louis days and moments after retirement

Famed sports broadcaster Bob Costas, to whom the Baseball Hall of Fame awarded the 2018 Ford C. Frick Award, announced his retirement from baseball play-by-play duties this week. While Costas was involved in NBA and NFL broadcasts with NBC, it was baseball that he considered his favorite sport. Costas finished his Hall of Fame career by announcing the Yankees-Royals ALDS matchup this year.

Bob Costas actually got his start in professional broadcasting in St. Louis. In 1974, Costas was hired by KMOX to do play-by-play of the American Baseball Association's Spirits of St. Louis. After two years of ABA broadcasting, Costas also did play-by-play for the Missouri Tigers basketball games until 1981. In 1994, Bob Costas was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.

Concerning the St. Louis Cardinals, Bob Costas broadcast some treasured moments in franchise history. Costas gave game-by-game breakdowns of the 1982 World Series before the famed Game 7 at Busch Stadium II and was in the Cardinals clubhouse where commissioner Bowie Kuhn awarded the Commissioners Trophy to Gussie Busch and Whitey Herzog. 

In 1996, Bob Costas was on the air for Game 3 of the Cardinals' NLDS matchup with the San Diego Padres. He called Brian Jordan's ninth-inning home run off Trevor Hoffman "a dagger through the heart" to manager Bruce Bochy and the Padres. 

Bob Costas gave St. Louis Cardinals fans plenty of play-by-play memories

Costas has long shown an affinity for the city of St. Louis. In 2018, he threw out the first pitch of the June 25th game at Busch Stadium with Ozzie Smith. Three years later, in an interview on KMOX, Costas explained what makes the St. Louis Cardinals fans different from other Major League Baseball fanbases.

The combination of knowledge, passion and relative civility distinguishes the fans in St. Louis. St. Louis is the place where Albert Pujols comes back and gets an extended standing ovation of appreciation. But it's also the place where a lesser player, as long as he was a contributor, and in some sense was viewed as admirable, that player is going to get his props when he comes back playing for another team or when fans sense that this is his last time at bat because his career is ending.

When Bob Costas and NBC parted ways in 2019, my colleague Russ Robinson vouched for adding Bob Costas to the Fox Sports Midwest broadcast. Think about how cool it would have been if Bob Costas started and finished his career in St. Louis. 

Nevertheless, congratulations on a marvelous career, Mr. Costas!