I read that both Daniel Hudson and Alex Kirilloff announced their retirements. In Hudson’s case, he leaves after his team won a World Series (his other ring – Washington). He had the longer and more travelled career – a starter until his elbow left him (a year after going 16-12 for Arizona), then a reliever for a number of seasons – 15 in all plus one he missed in its entirety. Did you know Hudson batted .222 in the majors? Kirilloff’s career was four seasons, but more or less two seasons of games. On the other hand, his MLB debut was in a playoff game in 2020, which is kinda cool, no? Kirilloff said his body wouldn’t allow him to give his full effort (a serious lower back injury), so he’s going to try something new.

Best wishes, gentlemen…

The third retirement was that of Bob Costas, sort of, who announced that he’s done as a baseball play-by-play guy. I hope that means he sticks around doing other things – his knowledge of baseball history provides great context for other TV products. And I’ve been a fan of his for at least 40 years.

As a kid, the weekend football studio host roles were performed by Costas on NBC and Brent Musburger on CBS – so we all got a lot of the two of them. Musburger was good – but he’d occasionally veer in odd directions. Costas seemed more charming – I remember him appearing on an episode of Late Night with David Letterman one New Year’s Eve and he was unbelievably funny. That one bit – doing live reporting from a hospital awaiting the birth of NYC’s first baby – put him on the top shelf. I think I’d prefer to watch a game with Costas in the seat next to me.