Bob Costas repeats the call verbatim 20 years later, even if he doesn’t realize it.

“The New York Yankees: world champions, team of the decade, most successful franchise of the century.”

That was his call after the final out of the Yankees’ sweep of the Braves to win the 1999 World Series, their third championship in four years.

“I think Keith Lockhart was the last batter against Mariano Rivera,” Costas said. “It occurred to me while the ball was in the air that the outcome of the game and the series was not in doubt. I tried to kind of put the ribbon to tie around it.

“That holds up pretty well 20 years later, I think. With a moment like that you are not exactly reaching for poetry; you just hope you don’t screw it up. When you’re at Yankee Stadium now, they play that in the highlight reel; they play that last out and that call.”

Costas has spent enough time in The Bronx this season to know. He has called several Yankees games nationally for MLB Network, and in early August he filled in for an ailing Michael Kay for a split doubleheader against the Red Sox. Costas, 67, will be back there again Friday night, with MLB Network broadcasting Game 1 of the ALDS against the Twins, as the Yankees hope to begin another World Series march.

Costas has spent much of his broadcasting career, either as a host or play-by-play man, close to baseball’s biggest moments. He was behind the mic for the Jeffrey Maier game, was waiting in the Red Sox clubhouse for a championship celebration that never happened during Game 6 in ’86 and two years later was the first to interview Kirk Gibson after he limped around the base paths.

“Perspective is the right word,” Costas said of how he’ll approach Game 1 from the booth, where he will be joined by John Smoltz and Tom Verducci. “It’s a big deal because it’s a playoff game, but it’s not the fifth game or the wild-card game and win or go home.

“You have to be properly engaged, properly excited, but you don’t oversell. It’s Game 1, it’s not Game 7 and it’s not yet an epic game. You have to leave yourself somewhere to go. If as a broadcaster you are at a fevered pitch in the first inning, you’ve got nowhere to go if something more intense, more dramatic happens subsequent to that. The game and the series has to build to that and the announcer has to go along with it.”

It is one of two games Costas will call this postseason as he’ll take Game 3 of the Astros-Rays series on Monday in what will be the end of his season. Costas, who split with NBC earlier this year, called approximately two dozen of MLB Network’s games during the regular season on top of these two playoff broadcasts.

“Whatever they come up with,” Costas said, “whether it be the Hall of Fame shows, the roundtables we do, documentaries, the kind of stuff I’ve done over the years for them, I am game for it. I didn’t come over just to do play-by-play even if that’s the primary thing right now, especially at this time of year.”