When It Comes to Talk Shows, You’ve Gotta Love That Bob

The waiting is finally over and the gang is back on HBO: Tony and Junior, Christopher and Paulie Walnuts, Silvio and Furio.

And a new character, Bob.

Bob is a wise guy, although not quite the type usually seen on “The Sopranos.” Too short, for starters. Different ammunition too. Bob comes armed with statistics, computer graphics, canned sports footage, roving camera crews and an intellectual feistiness that packs its own kind of heat. Just ask David Stern.

Bob Costas has joined the HBO family with his weekly hour-long gig, “On The Record With Bob Costas,” which had its debut, of course, on the anniversary of a famous gangland hit: St. Valentine’s Day. Costas is no gangster, but he is a player--his reputation in the business such that he can land interviews with President George W. Bush, Tom Hanks, Phil Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Joe Torre, John McEnroe, Stern and, for reasons yet to be satisfactorily explained, Jerry Lewis.

Costas is trying to put a new spin on the sports talk show and all we can say is good luck. Everything within the format has already been done and redone, usually poorly, sending most listeners screaming and lunging for the remote so they can evacuate to another cable channel, which is airing . . . another sports talk show.

Costas is doing everything he can to mix it up: Live one-on-ones, taped interviews, round-table discussions, essays, commentaries, even a mock quiz-show in which a “surprise guest” pops up on the set to ask Costas nine questions in 90 seconds, with the point being . . . well, there is no point, other than to give Costas a chance to chide surprise guest Darrell Hammond of “Saturday Night Live” for his less-than-dead-on impersonation of Costas. “It isn’t happening,” RealCostas informed PseudoCostas.

But after three installments, “On The Record” has succeeded in separating itself from the pack because of what Costas brings to the show: his drawing power (although, for the record, Shaquille O’Neal turned down an invitation to appear), his journalistic skills, his expertise and his old-school curmudgeonly view on all that is wrong--and, on occasion, right--with sports.

The Costas sermonette has found a home; better here than in the middle of the seventh inning of a World Series game at Yankee Stadium. Here, riffing against the backdrop of the latest head-shaking headline, the host sounds less like a baby-boom crank longing for the games of his youth and more like an unassailable Voice of Reason.

His take on the Gary Sheffield saga:

“Our interest in sports is largely dependent upon a sense of connection. And that sense of connection is now assaulted almost daily.

“When the Dodgers finally rid themselves of the cartoonishly self-absorbed Sheffield, a guy with a career-long rap sheet of putting his own perceived interests above that of his team, there will be no feeling in L.A. or anywhere else that a Dodger has left town.

“Why? Because much of modern baseball feels like nothing more than a giant rotisserie league, a disorienting rent-a-player world in which even supposed stars represent no team, really, no group of fans, no emotional connections of any kind. We associate them with no uniform, no indelible memory or moment, only statistics. Impressive ones, in the case of Sheffield, who last year hit .325 with 43 homers, but still just numbers.

“Cold and impersonal. Just like the numbers on their contracts.”

Tough to argue with that.

Less effective was Costas’ overcooked exploration of sports’ connection with jazz, working off the hook of Ken Burns’ recent PBS documentary and larded with such run-for-cover phrases as “the spirit of improvisation” and “inspired performers” achieving “artistry” by jamming basketballs through orange metal hoops. Sorry.

Jazz might have been the soundtrack of the times when Willie Mays was still patrolling the Polo Grounds, but that was 50 years ago. Now, it’s Eminem, the Baha Men and Allen Iverson rapping on his new CD, “I’m a giant, y’all midgets.”

Costas used that lyric to segue into a round-table talk on the troubled state of the NBA that had the league’s commissioner, Stern, grimacing from the get-go. It was quite a sight--Stern, for years given the almighty-sage treatment from the media, squirming and wincing as Costas peppered him with stats (the average NBA ticket price is more than $50) and quotes (Rasheed Wallace’s infamous “I don’t care”) and observations that even in the old good days, Michael Jordan simply “disguised the developing problems of the league.”

Costas is unafraid to ask the tough question, and knows how to frame it so the guest won’t walk off the set. Or trash it. He told McEnroe, frankly, that he did not like McEnroe’s on-court bullying of referees and opponents as a player and wondered if McEnroe had “an emotional problem.” McEnroe shrugged and suggested maybe they invite a psychiatrist onto the set. Costas asked Dennis Miller, a caustic social commentator on his own HBO show but just another cog in the NFL propaganda machine when working for ABC, why he doesn’t tackle the league’s larger issues, such as “franchise extortion and guys acting like thugs.”

Miller, tellingly, shook his head and said, “Listen, Jack Whitaker’s great at that stuff. I’m a comic trying to be the third man in the booth on a football game.”

Well, yes and no, as Costas observed once the taped interview had finished.

“I think where Dennis is selling himself short is in backing away from the idea of commenting about the NFL beyond the specific game on the field,” Costas said. “No league gets a free pass on TV like the NFL . . . To take on the league over issues that really count, you don’t need to have played the game or to have carried a press pass for 20 years. You just need brains and guts. And Dennis Miller has both.”

You could say the same for “On The Record,” which, so far, is holding its own on the “The Sopranos” network. Smart, pugnacious and not without a sense of humor. Costas signed off one show while sitting on a pile of phone books, demonstrating how he was tagged with the nickname given him by the late Al McGuire, who thought the short one needed some help to properly call a basketball game.

McGuire’s nickname for Costas? “Yellow Pages.”