Bob Costas hopes NBC return extends beyond this MLB season

NBC Sports is reuniting with Bob Costas as the network revives its MLB coverage, and the relationship is expected to continue beyond this season.

Nearly seven years after quietly departing NBC, Costas returns to the network and sport he is most prominently associated with. Thursday morning, NBC announced Costas will host Sunday Night Baseball and its Opening Day broadcast March 26 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks.

More details on the reunion were offered later in a conference call, where Costas said this will be “at least the first year” of his partnership with NBC, per Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch.

“Beyond that, we’ll see what happens,” Costas added on the call. “But I think I’ll be a contributor. As long as I’m upright and haven’t lost my fastball completely, I’ll be a contributor as long as I have something to contribute.”

Costas decided to step away from play-by-play after calling the 2024 ALDS for TBS, believing the performance didn’t meet his standards. But he has never shown any decline as a host or commentator.

Additionally, Costas will contribute to coverage of the NBA on NBC, which he already did with a brief cameo to start the season last October. But Costas returning to NBC appears to be much more than a feel-good nostalgia hire. The 73-year-old broadaster is returning to NBC as a prominent contributor.

“While I’ve been gone from NBC since 2019, we have been in nearly constant contact since shortly after that and just waiting for the right time and the lineup of the right circumstances to come together for me to return. And now those circumstances have perfectly come together,” Costas added. “Nothing that I will do will overlap with what others are doing. Others are in the primes of their careers and I’m an icing on the cake guy now, a contributor, a role player, and I look forward to it, especially just because it’s under the NBC umbrella.”

Since leaving NBC in 2019, Costas has maintained there were no hard feelings. But the quiet exit wasn’t fitting for a Hall of Fame announcer who had spent 40 years as the face of the network’s sports coverage. Hopefully, this reunion can fix that.

“I don’t need a brass band and a parade,” Costas said on the call. “But if we could do some good work, have some fun, and it feels like the right concluding chapter, I think everybody will be gratified by that.”