SO HERE I THOUGHT DAN BERNSTEIN WAS COSTAS WHEN, GOD HELP US, HE WAS NOT
There was a time when a Chicago sports talk host reminded me of Bob Costas, yet he never left the city, preferring to discuss the Bears — and succumbed on social media by threatening a user's kids
He wasn’t the Bob Costas of Chicago, as I once wrote after listening to Dan Bernstein hosting sports radio. He was brilliant, probably too brilliant for 670 The Score. It was odd, I must say, to have walked past his car and seen dozens of newspapers in which I made the Costas link.
Fine. He was an egomaniac. Aren’t we all? But he never left the city, preferring to talk about the Bears and not realizing that one end of the world wasn’t Peterson Avenue and the other end wasn’t Roosevelt Road. This happens to fanboys who prefer to embrace the teams of their youth as adults in their 30s, 40s and 50s. He never went away.
Had he been in another town and gained a grip on his senses, Bernstein wouldn’t have flown into a rage last week. He caught a 32-inch northern pike, or so he said, and posted a photo online. “This was a helluva fight,” he wrote. Who cares?
Someone did, which is typical of a place that annoys flamboyant media people into a farcical state, as I know. Did Bernstein kill the fish? Well, yes, when you fish, you wiggle the rod and bring it in. In Islamorada, somewhere in the Florida keys, I caught an 80-inch tarpon and won a Miami Herald award. The lodge keeper charged me $250 and mounted the tarpon, which I lost in college.
Everyone has a fishing story. Not Dan, who instead of ignoring the questioner decided to start a fight on X. A sportscaster always loses these verbal brawls. “What the entire (expletive) is wrong with you? It was released successfully. Took off like a torpedo. Go (expletive) yourself,” wrote Bernstein, before adding, “I never respond to trolls, but questioning my sportsmanship and conservation awareness sets me off. Wanna fight? I’m a bad enemy, (expletive).” At this point, after a series of disturbing comments and bizarre confrontations through the years, he should have thought about his career. A call to Bob Costas would have helped.
Instead, Bernstein suggested he would publish malicious information about the user. The talker posted, “Where you at? I have your address and phone numbers. Want it all public? Do I worry you yet? … Want your kids involved?”
That ended his career. And his relationship with Camp One Step, where he served as a director of a charity for kids with cancer. The community wrote: “Camp One Step brings happiness, support, strength and hope to hundreds of children each year. Recently, Dan Bernstein made comments on social media that don’t reflect our mission. As a result, we’ve removed him from our board of directors.”
Friday, the station’s vice president made the killer announcement in early afternoon. “(We) want to let all of you know that Dan Bernstein no longer works at the Score,” Mitch Rosen said. “We thank Dan for his time here and wish him nothing but the best. Please reach out to me if you have any questions. Thank you.”
Shock jocks have made uglier errors. Howard Stern, Steve Dahl in Chicago, you name it. But Bernstein was a sportscaster who picked fights in a town that loved fighting back. Why would he be so foolish to clash on the air with Eddie of Barstool Chicago, who is so far beneath him intellectually that Dan should have excused himself for a bathroom break. But he fired back, which put him in crosshairs with his bosses, who should have sat down with him instead of letting him expire. Once, Ken Harrelson was the blowhard who didn’t like me — a Reinsdorfian character — and purposely kicked my chair as I sat working in the press box in Minneapolis. I was supposed to accept his crap. I didn’t, walking up to him and suggesting he wouldn’t have a beak for a nose if he did it again.
I returned to Chicago. A program goof named Len Weiner wouldn’t let me talk about it on the air. Weeks later, Weiner asked me to sign documents that I wouldn’t criticize the White Sox or the Bulls. I refused. My broadcast ratings, at ESPN 1000, were far better than The Score’s. Weiner and Jim Pastor fired me anyway.
Don’t ever give a radio executive a chance to nail you. Dan Bernstein did, many times.
I tried. I called him Costas. I think he made fun of me a week later.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.