Voice behind the iconic Sandberg Game, Bob Costas, is hanging up his microphone

Forty-four years after calling his first MLB game, Bob Costas is retiring from play-by-play work. At 72 years old, he's been a sports staple for decades - and, in Chicago, he's best known for calling Chicago Bulls playoff games during the team's illustrious run in the 1990s and his work on a fateful afternoon at Wrigley Field in the summer of 1984.

Costas, inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2018, sat alongside Tony Kubek for NBC's 'Game of the Week' between the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals at Wrigley Field. That game turned out to be one of the most iconic affairs in baseball history: what is known today, simply, as 'The Sandberg Game.'

If you're reading a Cubs blog, you know what took place that Saturday afternoon. Looking to declare their arrival on the national stage, Chicago erased an early 7-1 Cardinals lead and Ryne Sandberg turned in the game of his life, collecting five hits and driving in seven runs in an extra-inning 12-11 Cubs win.

The Cubs second baseman tied the game with an unbelievable home run off shutdown Cardinals closer Bruce Sutter in the ninth and, for good measure, took him deep again in the tenth, sending the bleacher bums into a chaotic frenzy and shocking everyone watching - Costas included.

"This is the game that marks Ryne Sandberg as a front-runner for MVP,” Costas said. “The game was legendary almost right away."

As Costas noted, this game put Sandberg on the radar of baseball fans across the country - and was a huge factor in his winning NL MVP honors that year. He finished with 8.5 bWAR (that's more than Juan Soto finished with in 2024, just for context) - leading the league in triples and runs - and brought home a Gold Glove and Silver Slugger, to boot.

Costas' career continued over the decades, ending with this year's ALDS matchup between the Kansas City Royals and New York Yankees. He'll still be on MLB Network, but his play-by-play days are over. For Cubs fans, he'll always be synonymous with one of the most unbelievable moments in history - where the impossible became possible and the Lovable Losers became real contenders.