Daily staff writer Kyle Oppenhuizen spoke to acclaimed sports

broadcaster Bob Costas on Thursday. Here are Costas’ thoughts on

steroids, race and economics in baseball and calling Michael Jordan’s

last NBA Finals appearance:

Kyle Oppenhuizen: When Mark McGwire was chasing the home-run record,

people didn’t make a big deal out of steroids. Do you think the issue

of race has anything to do with people’s perception of Barry Bonds as

opposed to the perception of McGwire in the late 1990s?

Bob Costas: I think that is an illogical and idiotic conclusion. First

of all, the all-time home-run record is held by Hank Aaron, not by

Babe Ruth. The last time I checked, Hank Aaron was black. Hank Aaron

is a legitimate baseball hero and American hero, who faced true racism

and conquered it in pursuit of the record he now holds. The reason why

people are skeptical about Barry Bonds has to do with the obvious,

undeniable fact that he’s a steroid user, that he’s juiced from here

to Pluto and back again. That’s the issue.

Is Barry Bonds an all-time great player without steroids or

performance-enhancing drugs? Absolutely. Is he a first-ballot

hall-of-famer based on his merits? Absolutely. But he would have never

been able, never been able, even in the prime of his career, let alone

at what should be the tail end of his career, do what he has done for

several seasons, even for a month or two months, without

performance-enhancing drugs. It’s obvious, it’s true, everybody knows

it, and it’s not an authentic performance.

Now, the reason why people didn’t focus on McGwire and Sosa is that

most people, not all, but the overwhelming majority of people did not

have a grasp on the steroid issue.

Subsequently, they did have a grasp

on it, and you see Mark McGwire got less than 20 percent of the

[Hall-of-Fame] vote, when based on his statistics it would have been

near unanimous. So when they eventually caught up with the story, that

story came back to bite Mark McGwire, and nobody thinks that even

though Sammy Sosa hit 60 home runs three times in his career and 50

another time, nobody groups Sammy Sosa with the all-time great players

he is near or has surpassed on the all-time home run list, because

they view that performance as inauthentic.

The reason that the heat is on Bonds is because he’s still active, and

he’s pursuing the record. McGwire doesn’t hold the single-season

record, McGwire doesn’t hold the all-time record. Bonds does, or he

will. If Hank Aaron’s record was 855 and Bonds had no chance to reach

it, I think there would be less of a furor over it. When both the

single-season and all-time home run records are going to be held by a

guy who cheated to do it, that’s an issue, and that issue has nothing

to do with race.

K.O.: How do you think baseball has handled the steroids controversy?

B.C.: I think baseball has done a very good job, although belatedly,

improving their program concerning performance-enhancing drugs,

testing for more substances, testing more often, ratcheting up the

extent of the punishment. It’s still far from perfect but it’s still

much better than what it once was.

But they’re stuck with the results of their inaction for many years

prior to this. All of this stuff went on and a whole era of baseball

is tainted, and the record books are distorted because of what they

allowed to happen. It was apparent to a lot of us, even in the

mid-’90s. It should have been apparent to everyone at the very least

by 2000, and now they’re stuck with the consequences of their action.

Unless there’s an injury or an indictment, [Commissioner] Bud Selig is

going to have to stand there when Barry Bonds hits number 756, and

he’s going to have to congratulate Barry Bonds for a bogus

achievement.

KO: Do you think teams like the Cubs this year, or the Yankees in the

past, buy their success as less of an achievement than teams like the

Twins who build up their farm league with a lower budget?

BC: Every team’s circumstances are different. You have to give the

Yankees credit. They have overwhelming resources but they’ve made good

use of those resources. Baseball’s economics have improved

tremendously over the past decade. The revenues coming into the sport

have, I think, tripled since the early 1990s, so you have a lot of

teams awash in cash, and they’re willing to spend the cash.

I don’t have any problem with that; I don’t have any problem with the players

being enriched.

The problem is, when the competition is so skewed that some teams

start out several rungs ahead of other teams. That defeats the essence

of what competition is. People talk about a free market. Yeah, you

have to have a free market, and the players should flourish, they

deserve a lion’s share of the money, but a league is a different setup

than other businesses.

You can’t have a league where competitors are simultaneous partners if you don’t have rules in place that give each

of those partners at least something close to an equal chance to

compete. That doesn’t mean equal outcomes, it means an equal

opportunity to do well. It doesn’t mean every team around .500, or 30

different World Series winners for 30 consecutive years. It means that

every team, if they’re smart and a little bit luck, has at least now

and then a chance to win.

That circumstance exists for example in the NFL. No one thinks the Green Bay Packers are at a competitive disadvantage to the New York Giants, but they know the Milwaukee Brewers are at a competitive

disadvantage relative to the Mets or the Yankees. The reason why the

Arizona Cardinals stink is because they have bad management, not

because the structure of the NFL forces them into that position.

People realize that the structure of Major League Baseball, although

it’s improved, is flawed to the point that Kansas City just doesn’t

have the same shot as Philadelphia would have. In the NBA, you had

teams contend to win in San Antonio, Sacramento, Salt Lake City.

You couldn’t even put Major League Baseball franchises in those cities.

They couldn’t survive. The structure of Major League Baseball is

flawed to the point where some fans realize the deck is stacked

against their team.

KO: You were at the NBA Finals where [Michael] Jordan had his last

shot with the Bulls. How does that compare to your all-time career

highlights?

BC: It’s in the top five or six moments that I have been a part of. I

think it would have ranked higher if he had stayed retired. At the

time, we thought it was his parting shot, and no athlete in a major

American team sport has ever had a better closing act than that. This

was just perfect. And Michael, who’s always had a pretty good sense

for drama and theater, I guess his itch for competition just overtook

his sense of the best way to close his career out. When he came back

to play with the Wizards, that took a little bit of the luster off the

way he ended his career with the Bulls.