October 20, 1974

One of sports broadcasting’s greatest careers nearly ended in its first few days.  Bob Costas was twenty-two years old, fresh out of Syracuse University, when he got the job as play-by-play man for a new entry in the American Basketball Association, the Spirits of St. Louis, on that city’s radio megastation KMOX.  In the Spirits’ opening game, they had a five point lead with 1:10 remaining, took a quick shot, missed, turned the ball over, and wound up blowing the game, losing by five.  Two nights later, the Spirits again had a lead with about a minute to go, this time seven points.  Costas was working with color man Bill Wilkerson, and as Costas recounted to Terry Pluto for the ABA history Loose Balls, “I turned to Wilkerson and said right on the air, ‘Bill, it would seem that the Spirits have this one well in hand.  But you can bet that the last thing Coach Bob MacKinnon wants to see is a repeat of Friday night’s blow job.’”

Wilkerson’s jaw just dropped and his eyes got wide.  Costas figured he was sure to get fired, but there was still a minute to go in the game, and the engineer signaled to him to keep talking, so he did, the Spirits won -- and nothing happened, no firing, no reprimand, nothing.  To this day, there are people in St. Louis who go up to Costas and say, “Remember when you were first doing the Spirits games…” and then tell the story.  After that beginning, there was nowhere to go but up.