Hold My Cutter
A Pittsburgh Sportscasting Legacy Guy Junker
Ever found yourself reminiscing about the local legends that shaped your own journey? Join us for a heartwarming and insightful conversation with Pittsburgh's own Guy Junker, a broadcasting giant who's shared the airwaves with the city's most iconic figures. We're cracking open the treasure chest of memories, digging into the times Guy set pins in a bowling alley and sold hotdogs during the legendary Immaculate Reception. It's a story that's as much about the man behind the microphone as it is about the sports he's brought to life for countless fans.
As we swap tales of friendship and mentorship within the broadcasting realm, you'll feel like you're at the heart of a Pittsburgh sportscaster reunion. Guy's anecdotes of late-night shows and jazz club escapades with industry greats like Stan and Bill Hillgrove will make you laugh and ponder the unique bonds that this field creates. These narratives aren't just a walk down memory lane—they're a testament to the enduring relationships and shared wisdom that keep the sports broadcasting spirit alive.
Buckle up for a ride through the dynamic world of sports media, where we not only tackle the evolution of athlete-media relations but also share the personal triumphs and tribulations that come with the territory. Guy opens up about interviewing Michael Jordan and mastering player pronunciations, while I share my own pregame rituals and the rush of calling the game from the stadium. This episode isn't just about looking back; it's about the excitement of what's to come and the winning mindset that drives us all, both in the press box and in life.
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!!!!
www.holdmycutter.com
Ever found yourself reminiscing about the local legends that shaped your own journey? Join us for a heartwarming and insightful conversation with Pittsburgh's own Guy Junker, a broadcasting giant who's shared the airwaves with the city's most iconic figures. We're cracking open the treasure chest of memories, digging into the times Guy set pins in a bowling alley and sold hotdogs during the legendary Immaculate Reception. It's a story that's as much about the man behind the microphone as it is about the sports he's brought to life for countless fans.
As we swap tales of friendship and mentorship within the broadcasting realm, you'll feel like you're at the heart of a Pittsburgh sportscaster reunion. Guy's anecdotes of late-night shows and jazz club escapades with industry greats like Stan and Bill Hillgrove will make you laugh and ponder the unique bonds that this field creates. These narratives aren't just a walk down memory lane—they're a testament to the enduring relationships and shared wisdom that keep the sports broadcasting spirit alive.
Buckle up for a ride through the dynamic world of sports media, where we not only tackle the evolution of athlete-media relations but also share the personal triumphs and tribulations that come with the territory. Guy opens up about interviewing Michael Jordan and mastering player pronunciations, while I share my own pregame rituals and the rush of calling the game from the stadium. This episode isn't just about looking back; it's about the excitement of what's to come and the winning mindset that drives us all, both in the press box and in life.
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!!!!
www.holdmycutter.com
Welcome to another episode of Hold my Cutter coming your way from Burn by Rocky Patel, just a couple of blocks away from PNC Park, where we hear our guest this episode every night when the Pirates are playing at PNC Park, and Guy Junker brought with him our featured smoke this episode. Guy told us about this. It received a 93 by Cigar Aficionado. It's the Vintage 2003 Cameroon. It has the Cameroon wrapper, nicaraguan and Dominican binder and filler, as you know, fort Notes of cedar, black pepper and coffee with a caramel-like finish.
Speaker 2:So, guy, thanks for your recommendation. I love the black pepper.
Speaker 1:You can taste it. Yeah, it's really good. 93 by Cigar Aficionado. We give Guy Junker a 100 all the time. Almost 44 years in the broadcast business. He is a very well-known and popular personality. Retired full-time just a couple of years ago from the biz but, as we said, he's now the PA announcer at PNC Park with the Pirates. Guy thrilled to have you here. What is it like being retired to a degree well, full-time from the broadcast business but still have an opportunity to do the PA at PNC Park?
Speaker 2:Perfect Brownie. The main reason I didn't want to do full-time local news anymore is just the schedule. I wasn't burned out. It wasn't that I didn't want to do the work. I had to work Christmas Day. The last year I was there I couldn't get it off the travel and all the things that I've missed over the years, the weddings. I finally said I've worked seven days a week most of my career. I think I can. I'm going to take a little time, while I still have my health, to play golf. Well, tim Tabacco retires right as I quit and I did my last sportscast on Channel 4 on the last day of April, saturday night. The next day I did the PA, sunday afternoon at the Pirates' Pond.
Speaker 2:Long retirement, my wife said your retirement lasted 12 hours.
Speaker 3:My wife said your retirement lasted 12 hours Getting to know Stan and Guy. I've gotten to know you over the last, you know, probably six months. You guys are workers. Like you guys are the epitome you, greg Brown, stan, there's a lot of guys that you are the epitome of. What I think of when I think of Pittsburgh. You're just grit grindy, you're going to figure it out, you're going to make it work, but also you do incredible quality.
Speaker 2:So, like there's no doubt that someone's going to pull you in, well, I think you know I've spoken you guys probably have too to Lanny Frateri's class out in Waynesboro a few times and I've always told those young broadcasting students that homework is what makes good broadcasters.
Speaker 2:The third guy 10% of what you know should get on the air. That's it. And there have been times, especially with high school sports, I'll get to the second half of a basketball game or the third quarter, and I've pretty much exhausted my knowledge of those, Because you're not getting a media guide and you have to do all that work yourself. So have more information available than what you're ever going to say on the air, and you'll never be stuck for something to talk about.
Speaker 1:Well, guy Junker for those that don't know his incredible story, first of all, I mean, he's a yinzer through and through.
Speaker 3:Through and through, I mean.
Speaker 1:I think a 13-year-old newspaper boy he used to. You don't remember this, but years ago they actually had when you played.
Speaker 3:What do you mean? I'm the vintage 2003.
Speaker 1:That's my graduate, yeah, but you're also like 22 years old, still the Fort, so it used to be where they didn't have the automatic pin setters and bowling alleys A lot of bowling alleys you went to. Somebody would be behind there and setting up the pins manually. Guy Junker did that.
Speaker 2:He'd step on a lever and 10 prongs would come up out of the floor and the pins had a hole in the bottom.
Speaker 3:That sounds like torture.
Speaker 2:You'd set them all on there let go and then push the balls manually back down to the people that were bowling.
Speaker 3:Was there ever like a crazy incident during that? Well?
Speaker 2:there were, especially when you got Dangerous. I did some women's leagues. They didn't throw the balls hard. Some men pins were flying all over the place. You ought to pay attention. I mean, I got nailed by bowling pins off the net but you could really handle the balls.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so anyway, as we were saying, we're talking about but also what did I?
Speaker 3:say what did I say? Nothing.
Speaker 1:Here's a hot dog vendor at Three Rivers Stadium.
Speaker 2:I was selling hot dogs at the Immaculate Reception. I watched Frank O'Harris. We always see it on TV. Frank was running from right to left. I was watching it from left to right because I was on the opposite side of the stadium selling hot dogs. Did you actually see?
Speaker 1:it though?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you know what happened, greg. People don't buy hot dogs at a football game with three minutes left in the game. But we had to stay out walking through it. So I had gone out on the ramp I forget which gate, I think it was gate A and I was trying to sell to some people as they were going to the parking lot. All of a sudden people started pouring out of there and they're all complaining. When I left, the Steelers had been leading and I said to the one guy I said what happened.
Speaker 1:He goes same old Steelers, stabler, beat them, it's the same old crap.
Speaker 2:So, I just sort of wandered back in dejected and the game wasn't over. So I sat my hot dog container down and stood there watching it and this guy, I don't know is jumping up and hugging me. I said I don't think that's going to count. I think that was a deflected pass. So it was a pretty interesting experience.
Speaker 1:No replay back. Don't you wonder, though, what would have happened had replay been involved back then, to the Immaculate Reception Would that have ruined that great moment, probably not because it was called on the field that way, we'll get into whether you like replay or not down the road, because this is a get off my loan episode.
Speaker 2:Get off my lawn Bowling hot dogs. Newspaper boy, I was a mailman, mailman like a traditional. I fill in in the summer, but yeah I guess you drive the car, yeah, with the steering wheel on the other side. Yeah, that was, it was weird. It was real strange, although I lived in england for a while so I was already for europe. That was weirder because you were on the opposite side of the road.
Speaker 1:At least here you're still on the same side of the road uh, two different stints as the anchor wtaTAE TV and, of course, one of the most popular talk show hosts in Pittsburgh history with the late great Stan Savern Sportsbeat. He and Stan actually created a phrase that is still part of the Pittsburgh lexicon Stan Guy, love the show. That is unbelievable. That's all Jimmy Crenn, oh it was Crenn.
Speaker 2:Jimmy Crenn's the one. What I love. The show that is unbelievable. That's all, jimmy Crenn. Oh, it was Crenn. Jimmy Crenn's the one. What I love about.
Speaker 3:Pittsburgh. He just threw the credit somewhere else. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:He had a character on DVE called the Scorekeeper. Oh yeah, and he would do these skits and he would do this thing. Stan Guy, first off love the show and he would do hypothetical questions like and then the one was okay. Tom Barrasso is standing in front of a bakery, jack Lambert's outside and wants a bagel.
Speaker 1:Does he get in? I love hypotheticals. He's so good that is crazy.
Speaker 2:That was part of the game, Stan Guy love the show. Hey, I got to tell you I was cooking kielbasa on the grill.
Speaker 3:I can't do creme as good as creme does creme.
Speaker 2:And he says and down in the charcoal it formed Danny Murtaugh's face. I swear to God.
Speaker 1:So it was creme who started creating. That Creme started God, so it was Crenn who started creating that, and then people just started picking up on it.
Speaker 2:Actually, to this day, people call Someone says that to me a couple times a week still, and I got fired in 2003.
Speaker 1:Unbelievable. Wow. People call talk shows now and just say love the show, and you know where it's from, it's wild, you know it's funny.
Speaker 2:I was at a. I was doing a cable show down in Mountaineer Raceway and we went to shoot one week and they had a Sopranos lookalike contest. Well, I loved the Sopranos back in the day. And so we're there, we're shooting a show, and they said hey, some of the cast members from the Sopranos are coming in for a little party up in one of our rooms. If you guys want to stay and meet them. I'm like, oh my goodness, yeah, I was hoping Meadow was coming, but she didn't. She wasn't one of them. But James Gambolfini was one of the three that comes in, and so he's standing there with Bobby Baklava and you each got to go up and get your picture taken with them and a professional photographer.
Speaker 3:As I walk up to him I said, oh, guys love the show and I immediately called myself like people are always saying that to me, and that's what I said to them.
Speaker 2:That's great. I still got that picture with James and it was funny to hear James Gandolfini speak regularly, because he didn't have that whiny Jersey accent. He actually spoke very eloquently how wild very eloquently.
Speaker 1:So how wild, what uh? When you think back on this incredible careers or one moment person that Stan I guess Stan comes to mind. Of course, you're such great friends. We want to get into that too. But yeah, we have talked to these guys about Mike Lang being my Yoda, um, so maybe that's the question who, who, who was, is your Yoda? Who is the one person you you look to or called for advice?
Speaker 2:Well by the end of it. It wouldn't be Stan, I mean, and it wouldn't be just advice on Stan. Stan, after his divorce, would ask me dating advice, which was always very. I said, stan, I've been out of the game too long, I don't know that I can help you out here, but Call Cervelli.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right, I mean with that, with that style and the coats and everything, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:No, he didn't have as much trouble. He anticipated problems before they were even there. But yeah, our friendship. We talked about everything. Years before we were partners on KBL. I produced his 11 o'clock show at Channel 4. I didn't realize that, so we spent about. In fact he was with me the night I got the call that my mother had passed away and we would talk about everything. So we were before we ever became an overnight sensation on TV. We were pretty good pals to begin with, but I always respected what he thought. Bill Hillgrove too was another guy. Bill accepted me. As you know, I once won a birthday party off at WTA radio when Bill was a discharge by 1967, my mother won a birthday party and Bill was the DJ and I kid him about that all the time, but he never looked down his nose like who's this kid? What does he know? He accepted me from day one, in fact.
Speaker 1:real quick, I'll give you a great bill hill girl story don't be quick, okay, that's a great thing about the hold my cutter podcast.
Speaker 2:You can, so they spend time talking and smoking a stogie they send us to the big east basketball tournament one year to cover pit, bill, of course, was doing the play-by-play, and they played at noon on a thursday. Now the plan was, if Pitt was playing during the 6 or the 11 o'clock news, I was to do the live shot from New York. If they weren't playing, bill was to do the live shot and I would then produce it for him. So Pitt loses the first game on Thursday. They said, well, just stay there for the weekend. Find out if they're playing any NCAA tournament Sunday, which today they would never do. They would have us on a flight back here and we'd have been doing something else. So Friday comes and Bill calls me at the hotel. I was just going to go over to the garden and watch some more games. Hey, me and Dick Rode, we're going to go out to racetrack. You want to go?
Speaker 3:out and bet some ponies with us.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm a 25-year-old guy. Dick wrote and Bill Hillgrove wanted me to go to travel. You're going? What time? We go out? We're at the racetrack all day drinking pretty good. We get back to town Bill's a big jazz fan, he goes. Hey, I know a club down in Greenwich Village to like a, I think like a speakeasy in Chicago slid open and I see this pair of eyes in there and it closes and they take us in and we sit down. Well, I'm looking around and I'm a little bit nervous about things and there's a band up on stage and there's a guy that sort of looks like Ray Charles playing the piano. He's got sunglasses on, he's playing. I'm just sort of looking around getting my bearings. In the middle of the song the guy stops, he goes. Mr Hillgrove, mr Grode, how wonderful to see you again.
Speaker 3:I'm like okay, we're all right. Yeah, we're good.
Speaker 2:We stayed up like four in the morning. They finished playing, bill was drinking with the band and he was buying up their cassettes at loves jazz. We get in a cab, we're heading back to the hotel, it's starting to get light and Dick Grote goes. Hey, I know a deli to chill open. We can get up a strong. Now I'm 25. I couldn't keep up with them. I got back to the hotel, I missed all the games on Saturday and slept till seven o'clock that night. Well, did they have to? When did they have to?
Speaker 1:work.
Speaker 2:They didn't have to. We had to do a story on Sunday on who Pitt was playing. That was it, Because they announced that Sunday who they were going to play in the first round.
Speaker 3:And how old was Dick at the time?
Speaker 2:Well, Dick just passed away Was Dick 90?
Speaker 1:I think he was 90. I want to say 92.
Speaker 2:He's a good 20. I would say they were in their 50s.
Speaker 1:And I was in my 20s.
Speaker 2:They were still going when Dick was still doing Pitt basketball. That's amazing, but I was recently out of college. I could hold my own, but not with those two.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's funny guy. You know, I did my. I got my phil when I spent a year on the road with lang and blast. I was, I was 20, 23, maybe 24 years old. I was doing, uh, kind of pre and post game stuff, interviews, yeah, and what an awakening. That's incredible what those guys can do.
Speaker 3:I was just at Fantasy Camp. I couldn't keep up with anybody, especially Black. It's amazing. He's in his 80s now. He might as well be 22. He hasn't changed.
Speaker 1:Unreal. It's crazy, it's wild. You said you rely a little bit on Bill on occasion.
Speaker 2:I don't have much going on now but yeah, bill was always a good mentor and there was also a guy named Jack McMullen who gave me my first ever job in Uniontown. What was that job? That was doing some Uniontown and some Albert Gallatin football games on the radio, mbs, for $10 a game. No, I went up to MBS, they weren't interested in me at all. And he said there's a little FM station up on the hill, doggone. Maybe they need somebody.
Speaker 2:So my dad took a bus to work that day because I borrowed the only car we had in the family. This rusted out Ford LTDs. And I go, I'm trying A Morgantown Hill, I believe, is the name of the road. I can't find this other radio station they're talking about. So I go down to it. There's a Kmart there and I stop and there's a cashier. I said this cashier, you know there's a little FM radio station. She says yeah, there's a gas station up the road and in a field behind it, about 100 yards, you'll see an antenna. Oh my gosh. And there's this little yellow brick building 100 yards behind a gas station with an antenna.
Speaker 3:I go in. You could have gotten murdered at this point.
Speaker 2:This Jack McMullen guy comes out and he has the voice of God. I mean he sounded like John Facenda, oh man. And he says, oh yeah. He says actually I don't want to do the high school game, I'm actually looking for somebody. I'll listen to your tape so I leave A. A week or two goes by. I didn't hear anything and my mother's like did you call that station? I said they have my information. If they're interested they'll call. So she's on my case for days to call. So I finally call up. He goes I'm so glad you called. I lost your resume. I loved your tape. Can you work this Friday?
Speaker 3:Thanks, mom, you know because I didn't want to be blocked. It really is that way.
Speaker 2:The first Friday game I do is 1978. The Pirates are playing the Phillies in that doubleheader. Oh yeah, they needed to sweep the four games. So I'm going up to do this game and all I'm caring about is I'm listening to the Pirate game on the way up. Wmbs is set up in the press box downstairs with all the lavish stuff. I have a card table on the roof of the press box to do the game. I get up there during the national anthem. Now, I had a little.
Speaker 1:I had a little um transistor radio earpiece in listening to the pirates.
Speaker 2:No, during your well up, right up until the kickoff, I mean nice prep work guy for your first gig hey, right, as they're playing they're playing the anthem and augusta wind comes up and blows my lineups down into the stands. Oh, until they're. And I'm not. I don't even have a color guy. I knew the quarterback, the running back, maybe a receiver, I didn't know, and I'm just sort of making it up as it's going along.
Speaker 2:There's no electronics for you to go to no None. We take a break at the end of the first quarter. I run down in the stands and try to get a program. The guy's selling program. I said I'm with the radio station WPQR. He goes I don't care, it's two bucks or whatever. So I had to buy a program. Go back. I thought I did a terrible job. The next day Jack called me hey, you were fantastic. Do you want to do the games the rest of the year? I was like, yes, okay, but I used to call him and talk to him a lot too. He's since passed away.
Speaker 1:He must have caught the second quarter on. He must have missed the beginning. You sounded like Bob Prince doing hockey, that first quarter you heard those stories.
Speaker 3:We got it, they got it.
Speaker 1:Now he's gone. They tried Prince doing penguin hockey. We got it. They got it, they scored.
Speaker 3:Hey Brownie, do you? We've talked about we don't like networking. It's the relationship.
Speaker 1:I didn't like networking.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean saying in the sense of like you shouldn't have to try real hard, and everybody we've brought on and guy, I think, is epitome of it, and you are too is like you just do the job, you do it well, you do the best you can, you don't complain.
Speaker 3:Networking comes along, yeah, it comes along with relationships where you think about the three guys, you long-standing relationships and they were a part of his life for a long time. I think that's once again what I've been mind-blown about this region and what the Pirates and Pittsburgh is all about. It's almost a family and that's what is amazing, because you were talking about Stan. No wonder the show was good, you had a great relationship and I think that's so awesome.
Speaker 1:By the way. How did you guys ever get teamed up you and Stan in the first place?
Speaker 2:Well, so I produced for him at Channel 4, and then I took a job. I wasn't getting the break I thought I deserved at Channel 4. I did sports on Jack Bogut's radio show. I'd get to anchor to weekends. They hired a guy named Lonnie Haskins I don't know if you remember that name and he didn't turn out, so they ended up getting rid of him before his contract was there. They didn't turn out, so they ended up getting rid of him before his contract was there. They put me back on anchoring and then they took me off again and hired Albie Albie auction writer, who's a great friend.
Speaker 2:But I was getting frustrated. I was getting close to 30 and I wasn't able to get on regularly and producing was okay but I wanted to be on the air. So I had a chance to go to Washington DC and anchor for this outfit called SNN. It was like a sports version of CNN. So I left Pittsburgh, went there and it went bankrupt within a year. So when I came back, gil Lucas called me. I was tending bar on Carson Street and Gil Lucas called me and says hey, we're thinking of, because all they had at the time were some.
Speaker 1:Ah, we're thinking of starting a. You'll just do something. You're just going to be on the air.
Speaker 2:My dad's got a bar and my mother will make costumes. We'll do a show the late, great Gil Lucas. He was the best. But so he thinks about starting a show. So they put it together and it was myself and Bob Pompeiani the first year, oh I didn't know that we did it?
Speaker 2:They had a trade deal with KDKA. Bob and I would use their studios to do the show and then in the seventh inning stretch, patty Burns would come on, or between periods of the Penguin game Patty Burns, mostly Patty Burns, and, if I recall, ray Tannehill might have still been around my gosh and they would come on and do a brief news update talking about what KDKA was going to have on at 11 o'clock and that, in turn, let us use their studios. Well, that only lasted one year and Katie didn't think they were getting enough out of it, so our thing expired. I thought the show was going to go off the air. Channel 11 then picked us up so we could. We didn't have our own studios like you guys do now, so channel 11 picks us up, we go up there. Well, bob couldn't do the show out of channel 11, obviously working for Katie K. Right as this is happening, we're trying to figure out what to do.
Speaker 2:Stan gets fired from Channel 4. And Gil and our producer, george Pryor, said what do you think? I said you can't afford him. I know what he makes over there. There's no way he's going to come to work for what? Well, somehow they, and there was a loophole. There was a loophole in Stan's contract at Channel 4 for the non-compete, because it didn't include Cable. Cable was still new. Oh, got him, boom. He was able to start immediately and they said oh well, you guys already know each other and that's how sports people are.
Speaker 1:Did you know right away no, no.
Speaker 2:To be honest with you, at first it was tough because Stan was used to doing his own radio show and he dominated the thing. I really had a fight to get a word in. Edgewise I would say it took I think a good six months to, maybe the first year to. I think it became a more even partnership.
Speaker 3:Yeah, did you have to recruit at all? Like, did you have to call him and talk to him and try to convince him, or was it?
Speaker 1:he figured it out.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. He just never.
Speaker 2:He never really did that, no, he didn't have anything on the line and like, like you said, you know, if you get a good enough reputation, you know someone's going to bring in. And I remember they had a big party the night. They said stands on board. I'm like fantastic, I never thought it would happen because we weren't making anything.
Speaker 3:Well, the fact he got fired, and then how excited another network is to have him. Sure, it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 1:Well, that was a political thing. So much is in broadcasting. It's not always about performance, so there's more politics in sports broadcasting than there is in politics. Yeah, I believe that there was nothing really like that to my knowledge in the country, was it? You guys were kind of trailblazers. You know what, brownie, I don't think if we did it, it would be as successful today.
Speaker 2:I mean, I remember when Myron Cope went from one hour to two hours. Yeah, and people were like two hours.
Speaker 1:What's he going to talk about?
Speaker 2:in the second hour. Now you've got 24-hour-a-day shows. You guys are doing four-hour shows, sports talks. Well, we were the only ones really doing it. Then Myron was near the end of his career and we were doing it on TV. Byron came on with us when he retired and he said you, gents, had the same thing that I did. I lopped on with the Steelers in the early 70s, right as they got good and became popular. At our first year doing Sportsbeat, the Penguins won the Cup and there were a lot of new hockey fans and I played hockey in high school and I'd loved the game since the Hornet days and I think we informed a lot of people that were new, didn't even understand the rules or whatever, and it was. It was just. I mean, we were lucky.
Speaker 3:It was a perfect time. Yeah, you're not lucky, you're also very, very talented. But how did it evolve? Cause, like you know, I'm not from here, I'm a y.
Speaker 2:First, Christmas party we had. I think there were 17 people there, that was like the entire company. That was me, stan the engineer, camera people and we changed names every week. I still have them. I still wear golf shirts. Kbo Prime Sports, prime Sports, net Fox Sports.
Speaker 1:We had different mic flags about every year. It was incredible.
Speaker 2:And every time. You know, when Fox came on it really became big time. They ingested money. We got our own studios and we were told a couple of times, hey, if something else comes along? I remember Bill Craig was a manager. He said, guys, we love the show, but we don't have any money. We don't have any money, we don't have any sponsors.
Speaker 1:Stan Guy loved the show, but not that much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, loved the show, but not the bank account.
Speaker 1:But with that, though, did you almost feel like it was going to last a lot longer. Right, it was a stunner.
Speaker 2:How long did it last when they kind of broke up the show.
Speaker 1:It was like 13 years, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, 13 years with me and Stan, and then I think he did five or six more by himself, saverin on Sportsbeat, which still worked, because Stan was so good. But you know, the day I got fired was such a hammerhead blow that I didn't see it coming at all. It was like I went into work.
Speaker 1:Can you tell us about what exactly happened?
Speaker 2:we were in spring training and we had a big meeting. In fact we had done a whole week's worth of shows from Bradenton and Saturday. They always flew us home on Sunday because the airline fares were cheaper if you stayed over Saturday. So that was our treat every year, after busting our butt all week, we'd have Saturday free go to the beach, play golf, do whatever. Well, they decided they were having a big meeting and flew down some executives on the Saturday and we're like, oh, the meeting in Florida, some executives on the Saturday. And we're like, oh, the meeting in Florida, we have one hour to ourselves. And they're talking about our 3000 show was coming up. They were thinking of renting the Benidorm Center. They were going to get Stan and Guy bobbleheads and they were going to invite anybody that ever had a porch tour show to come to the Benidorm to be our guest. Okay, this is all great. We got back to Pittsburgh. So that's early March, I want to say mid-March. April goes by and there's no more talk about it.
Speaker 2:I started feeling funny. I felt like people were ignoring. I said to Stan. I said I got a weird vibe around here. There's something going on. I said there's closed doors everywhere and Stan said you're imagining stuff, don't worry about it. So I went in one day and I said hey, what's up with the 3000 show? I thought we were going to do it and Paul Kasuth, who was the executive producer at the time, says we don't have to do it exactly on the 3000. No one will know how many shows we've done. We'll do it later in the summer.
Speaker 2:Ok, we were in the process of buying a house. My kids were getting bigger and the house we were in was too small. Three kids, three kids, three kids. My girls were in bunk beds in a nine by nine bedroom and I knew that was going to be World War IV or V, but that continued. So we're ready to close on the house. And my contract had expired and I went into. Larry Eldridge was the general manager. I went into his office one day and I said hey, I haven't heard anything about my contract. We're ready to close on the house. And he said close the door. I closed the door and he says I wouldn't put the money down on the house. Jeez, that was. That was the next week. We had a big meeting and they told me I was out man the week. The week. They let me go, stan, and I won the associated press best sports talk show in Pennsylvania award.
Speaker 1:I still got that plaque for what that was worth the week off I think that was Tuesday we got the plaque.
Speaker 2:Thursday I got a cardboard box to go out the door.
Speaker 3:My God, so your family thinks you're you're upgrading the house, Like how do you go home and like talk about that.
Speaker 2:My son. My son was making his first communion that year. This is going to be choked up when I think about it. So I go home and they were having first communion practice, so nobody's home. My wife's at the practice with him and took our two girls with her and I'm sitting in the rocking chair in the living room. They come bustling in and what are you doing here? And I looked at him. I said I got fired today. And my son's like what are you at six or seven? And he comes over and looks at me and he goes are you okay? And I said I guess he goes. You want to go shoot some hoops?
Speaker 3:and we went out in the driveway and shot some hoops.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing what a great kid. Six years old. He was six years old. You know the good thing you think about things happening for life.
Speaker 2:Thanks I then started coaching little league. I coached with the amateur penguins. You know the good thing about things happening for life Thanks, yeah, no problem. I then started coaching Little League. I coached with the Amateur Penguins for a while. My youngest was in kindergarten at the time. She was half-day kindergarten, so my wife went back to work. I would take her to work, so it was a full year before I really got going full-time again and it got me ingrained with the. You know, one night there was a Sunday night he's saying his prayers and this reminds me of the Dan Rather book. The Camera Never Blinks. He finishes his prayers and I said, okay, good night, pal, and he goes see you next weekend. Dad, oh man.
Speaker 1:So that kind of reset.
Speaker 2:It was a tough financial time, but it reset my priorities a little bit, it worked out.
Speaker 3:There's always a silver lining if you're willing to look for it. But thinking about that little boy saying you want to go shoot hoops yeah you want to shoot hoops.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So you were out for a while, but then you got back in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were talking before we went on the air.
Speaker 2:Then I got my real estate license. I was actually ready to get out of broadcasting Because as I started getting into coaching, Little League and stuff, I thought I'd like a more normal nine to five existence and not the real estate's nine to five. But you sort of can make your own scope. So I studied for my real estate license and the day I passed the test, ESPN radio calls offers me a talk show Incredible. So I did both for a while and then, while I'm doing the talk show, Channel 4 offers me their sports director's job and I'm back in it Now. I'm now'm going and the talk show was on ESPN radio, which was WTA's old studio, so I would get there at 8am and leave after the 11 o'clock news at night. 11th. I did that for four years, four years. So I had no time for the real estate anymore and that was the end of that.
Speaker 1:Was your first job, by the way, uh out of college, out of Penn, uh Magna cum laude, by the way, excellent student.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're bad. Oh, yeah, yeah, just so you know, just go ahead. C student in high school, but when I started paying the checks for the tuition, I went to class, but you also were out in England at the.
Speaker 1:University of Manchester worked intern for the BBC for a little while. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So but was your first job out of college at WNBA, cambridge, beaver Falls. That was my first full-time job, my first part-time was that one doing the games in Union Town.
Speaker 1:So you went from there to To WNBA. Yes, okay to WNBA.
Speaker 2:Which was the best. Wnba was the best years of my life. I made $100 a week. They sent me to the World Series. I was in Baltimore for the World Series in 79. I went to the Super Bowl. I got I DJ to shift here and there. I really learned the business in the time I was there and I made some friends that are still great friends of mine to this day and even though I was, I was literally living on food stamps.
Speaker 3:it was it was a tremendous experience. I literally thought he said W did you say WNBA? I thought you meant basketball. That was the best time of your life. You had a radio of the pirates before a football game. So it's the best time of your life. You had a radio of the Pirates before a football game, so that makes more sense. The station was upstairs of Action Tire, a tire garage you would need the headsets on and you'd be sitting there and you'd hear While you were doing it Did you say, hey, I'm just, I'm just got the pit crew working on me, no problem, take total 500 this way.
Speaker 1:We're getting ready? Was, wasn't, don Weissig? Was it, by the way, he owned it after I left, yeah, after.
Speaker 2:I got the job at B94, donnie bought it yeah.
Speaker 1:How long were you there at MBA?
Speaker 2:Two and a half years. And from. There.
Speaker 1:B94. Okay, and how long at B94?.
Speaker 2:Four years, while I was at B94. B94, I mean I went from Was that to?
Speaker 2:Banana Don in the morning? Yeah, banana Don was my morning partner. Yeah, but that was mostly news. There was very little sports with it. We did 94 seconds of news or whatever. We did so in the meantime. Paul Stargerwald I mean it's amazing how many great people I've met in my life. I was dating a girl at the time who worked for the Penguins and Paul was their marketing guy. Well, it was the year they added Paul to the broadcast for Mike Lang and he had been anchoring a Channel 33 in Youngstown on the weekends because he was trying to get on the air. He says to this girl I'm dating, do you think I would like to do TV sports in Youngstown? She goes, I know he would. He calls up, he goes I'm going up to quit today. You want to ride up with me? Okay, I ride up to Youngstown? Oh well, not today. It was the next week, so I didn't even have a tape I hadn't done any TV, any radio.
Speaker 2:So I call a buddy of mine at Channel 53, and he said, well, we could do. And they did a thing where they dropped the slides in over your shoulder while you're reading stuff. I take the tape up, paul goes in and quits and the news director up there at Channel 33 in Youngstown you worked in Youngstown he says, well, when's your last day? He goes. I can't even do this Saturday. It's the Penguins opener. I got to work but there's a guy out in the lobby at those radio in Pittsburgh who would be interested in doing it.
Speaker 2:So the guy comes out, takes my tape and looks at it and says can you work Saturday? You?
Speaker 1:can't even do that today. I mean you'd have to interview 800 people, or whatever.
Speaker 3:You can't have much better credibility. I mean the guy that's leaving brought you with him.
Speaker 2:That's amazing, that is hilarious.
Speaker 3:Sat out in the lobby of my suit and tie, while Paul went in and quit and, being the naive young guy, what did you say? Dropped behind you with the tapes.
Speaker 2:They used to load a slide projector. You know how graphics and video I know what a projector is, all this stuff, green screens, blue stuff they didn't have any of that then. Okay, so when a news anchor would be our sports anchor, say, my lead story was Youngstown State football, that day they would have a YSU slide and they'd have to go in in the order you're reading stories and those slides would go into a projector and that would be projected over your shoulder somehow. I'm not a technical guy that's how.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so whatever, that's how you made it say, and then I would move to the Browns or or, uh, steelers, then, like a Steeler helmet would pop in on the slide behind you. That's how archaic it was at the time.
Speaker 1:Kind of like setting up pins in the bowling alley. Yeah, exactly, it was automatic.
Speaker 2:Somebody's got to do it.
Speaker 1:How long were you in Youngstown? Only a year. That's a great place too. By the way, I was at FFJ for a year A little bit later after you were in Youngstown, you I was at FFJ for a year.
Speaker 3:a little bit later after you were in Youngstown. You guys are like the alphabet mafia talking about all these places.
Speaker 1:It's a lot Speaking of the mafia, the Barbaros owned everything that's right. That's right. They owned the.
Speaker 2:Penguins. They owned the Spirit. Yeah, Youngstown State. Mike Rice Sr was the basketball coach. Pat Narduzzi's dad was the football coach. Pat was on the team that I covered up there. I did not know that Boom Boom Mancini was fighting. It was before he killed that Korean guy by accident in the ring. Dave Drevecky was a Youngstown native. He was pitching in the. Youngstown was a sports capital. It was a great place to work in and we covered everything Pittsburgh and Cleveland. We were right in the middle, so there was always stuff going on, wow.
Speaker 1:Guy, now that you're doing PA, is that something you had thought about, or is that just something that came about?
Speaker 3:By the way, he's great at it.
Speaker 2:Oh he's tremendous. Well, first of all, R McKinnon is one of my favorite people that I ever met in my life.
Speaker 1:R McKinnon is. There's a guy that was the public address announcer back in Forbes Field. He was a bat boy back in the 20s.
Speaker 2:He worked the scoreboard for the 1927 World Series. Come on, babe Ruth came into the locker room during one of those. I know all this. I'll get back to that story in a second. So I'm filling in for Myron Cope.
Speaker 2:I think it was the 4th of July, it might have been, it was a holiday and I'm like, oh my God Myron's not on. I'm some punk 25 year old kid. Nobody knows I need a guest. So I had always admired Art and I said do you want to come on to be my guest? And he said, well, how long do you want me? And I said, well, for the full hour he goes. People aren't going to want to talk to him. So I really admired that guy. And then Tim DeBacco has just always been a guy I like talking to and a friend, and I thought he did a tremendous job. So I don't feel worthy to replace those two people, but I used to walk around, we were going to name our kids. We're trying to figure out the first name and the middle name. She'd be like Emily Grace, you get in this house right now. That's how she would see if the names fit together.
Speaker 1:And I tested out.
Speaker 2:I'd be walking around the house not adding for the pirates number nine, dylan junker. You know that's great, so I never thought I would do it, but I used to always fool around doing it.
Speaker 1:You know, do you have a favorite name yet? Fuca Pino.
Speaker 2:Mercano.
Speaker 1:I've worked for years as a PA guy with Art. Art's favorite was always John Bacabella. There's always a favorite name that you love to say. I've asked Timmy D about that Tim Tobacco. Andy Van Slyke was one of his favorite Maybe the favorite name. It's funny Public address announcers have one big favorite name that they love to say. What makes that your favorite? Just the way it rolls off.
Speaker 3:It really did roll off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can make it sound like like the item number six in an Italian restaurant or something.
Speaker 1:Speaking of names, what is your real name? It's Guy Junker. No, I mean your real name. I know that's your stage name, but what's your real name? No, it's Guy Junker. Baptized, Baptized Guy.
Speaker 2:Junker. No, no, I mean, you're real now I know that's your stage name, but what's your? Real name. No, it's Guy Junker, baptized. Baptized Guy Junker. Wow, I got a funny story about that. Someone said to me one time Guy Junker, you've got to be the only one on the face of the earth, so next time I'm on a computer, I'm like Hawaii, named Guy Junker. He sort of looks like Troy Polamalu. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:He's an artist, he has a studio.
Speaker 2:I send him an email and I said you don't know me, but I was just looking on the Internet and we have the same name and I thought I was the only one. He sends me an email pack. He goes I've read some of your columns in the Trib and I was wondering about you, my gosh. So he said I have a standing invitation, if I ever visit Hawaii, to stop in and see him. What?
Speaker 3:are you waiting on? Let's go? Yeah, we haven't been back since our honeymoon, but that was before the.
Speaker 2:Guy and Guy show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I told you it doesn't sound like his story is. But Well, guy is not. Is that Italian?
Speaker 2:Well, it comes from. My dad worked with a guy on the railroad named His first name was Guy who got killed in a train accident, and I got named after him.
Speaker 1:That's where they came from. Yeah, your dad worked on the railroad.
Speaker 2:He worked at Pennsylvania Railroad. My dad pitched one year of V-Ball for the Pirates and the Miners, got drafted, went to Korea, drove a tank and when he came back from there then he worked at the railroad. Yeah, in fact he was good friends with Bob Perky because I guess they pitched together.
Speaker 2:The late great Bob Perky and I turned 16, and my dad says, hey, we're going to go out and get you on the insurance for driving. We'll go see Bob Perky and I'm like, hey, I got a baseball card from Bob. He says that's him. I said he sells insurance. He goes well, he's retired now. So we get there. And Bob was real nice. And he says hey, your dad was a better pitcher than me. And I said why didn't you go back to pitching after you come back from Korea? And he said one, it didn't pay any money. And two, if I did, I wouldn't have met your mother and you wouldn't be here asking me these questions.
Speaker 3:And, like I told you guys, guy's not a real like normal name and that's my dad's name. Heard about Guy Junker. I'm like I got to meet him and it took us a little while, but yeah, that's really special. My dad actually goes by Cliff, but you know, I think it means more now because he's actually heard you and seen your work and his favorite was Stan on AT&T when we were formerly AT&T. So like it's kind of gone full circle for me to see all that.
Speaker 1:Didn't you tell us that somebody in the radio business when you got a job? Didn't somebody when I got hired at B94. B94. That's another alphabet.
Speaker 2:I went in for the interview and I'm there about two hours and they're showing me around the station telling me about the operation, what they're expecting, and the longer it went, the more I knew they were interested in me. Dan Valli, one of the best guys I ever worked for easy communications. I think he's in New Orleans now I'm not sure we finished the thing. He goes, guy, I don't have anything else to ask you. If you want the job, it's yours. I said I want it. And he says and that handle, guy Junker. Whoever hung that on you, you can keep that if you want. I said how about my parents when I got baptized? He goes, that's your real name. He said. If I ever thought that was a made-up Bumper Morgan radio name so good yeah.
Speaker 3:It is a great name. It's catchy. It'd probably be my favorite.
Speaker 2:I hated it all while I was growing up I'm at the Catholic school Every kid was Tom, mark, paul, matthew, and the kids made fun of it. Your mother couldn't think of a name God. And then you remember those deodorant commercials where the doors open from both sides and the guy would say hey how you doing guy, yeah, he'd use that forever.
Speaker 1:Hey, how you doing guy.
Speaker 2:I had never heard that before?
Speaker 1:Who was your favorite athlete growing up? Who do you, did you idolize?
Speaker 2:Bill Mazaroski. Really I have a gold number nine. My wife bought me when we were dating.
Speaker 3:What Cause I wore?
Speaker 2:number nine when I played in college too, as did I, oh man Did you see. Yeah, it's my favorite number. Yeah, well, you know how Maz is. I mean, he's a great guy but he doesn't have a whole lot to say. So Fantasy Camp 2000,. We're sitting at the bar at the Holiday Inn down there in Bradenton and I had written a whole series of columns about why he should be in Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1:He wasn't in yet. Then down there working, or actually attending.
Speaker 2:Actually, Fox sent me down to do a series of stories. It was the 40-year anniversary of the 60 Pirates, so they sent me down to interview the 60 Pirates that were going to be participating. But they said hey, you played college ball, why don't you play while you're down? It was fantastic. It was so much fun.
Speaker 3:I'm recruiting, so both you guys are actually the young ones at. Fantasy camp so.
Speaker 2:I can still run, then for it. I can't run, I can't run either.
Speaker 3:I had a guy holding it his hip when he got a hit to right field. It was crisis. These guys are amazing.
Speaker 2:First, the third on a single. I got to stop for a pizza.
Speaker 3:He had a ball and everybody fell down. I can't make this up. It rolls the wall. Seeing a ball roll to the wall, it's 70 guy, 70 year old man hit it. That is pushing his hip in. Just stops the second base.
Speaker 1:He could have, he could have crawled home. Just stop second base, he goes. I'm good, I'm good.
Speaker 2:Well, you won't remember this cause you do all this stuff, but I still have the week and it was one of the games that you did play-by-play for on the video. Oh my gosh. And every once in a while, when I want to feel a little younger, I put that in. I listen to Brownie Colby with my bases clearing doubles.
Speaker 1:So Maz obviously your idol.
Speaker 2:So he's sitting across the bar that night and I had written a series of articles on him and I had talked to him over the years, you know. But in fact we were in the Thermo Twin Window commercial together, me and Maz in Elroy Face, wow. But I'm sitting across the bar and at one point Maz goes Junker, come over here. So I walk around the other side. He says I owe you an apology. And I'm looking at him like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Something's coming up here. And he goes you came out to Wolfpack Park to interview me and Joe Garagiola during the All-Star game and he says I gave you nothing. He says it was so hot, I was so tired and I feel bad about that. I gave. And in my mind I'm thinking man, you're a great guy, but you never give me anything.
Speaker 3:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:Your interviews aren't that good. What's the difference? Yeah, and he pulls out a cigar and puts it, says to the bartender get him whatever he's drinking. He says I've read all the articles you've written about me and I know you wore my number in college and I appreciate it. Wow, I immediately went out into the hallway on a pay phone and called my dad. I said Bill Mazeroski just told me that he does have a wrist upper in college. I wanted to cry, but he was yeah, he was by far and away my idol. And I remember the first time I met him in an old-timers game to do an interview for WNBA in Ambridge, and I thought what if he's a jerk? Yeah, Because I hadn't met him, I spent my whole childhood. I once had 22 pieces of gum. That's the most I could get to make my jaw stick out like that.
Speaker 2:When I was playing, I used to put in aluminum foil at night. Next game, one fresh piece. Oh my gosh, I'd walk around with my jaw sticking out with that gum, and he couldn't have been nicer, and so it didn't ruin my childhood.
Speaker 1:Well, so he's no disrespect, but he's not a great interviewer. Look at his Hall of Fame speech.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes me like him all the more, actually, which was the best Hall of Fame speech ever, because I'm so short.
Speaker 2:But who was the best interviewer interview you've? Sports wise, your baseball has always been my favorite sport, but I think hockey players are the easiest to deal with. They're so accommodating and they'll let you do stuff. The favorite individual interviewer show I ever did was we had franco on during the. It would have been, I guess, the 25th anniversary of the immaculate reception and I had discovered this guy. Forgive me, I forget his name. He's an Erie insurance agent out in West Mifflin and he wrote me a letter and says I have the Immaculate Reception football. I'm like, yeah, right, and I got Roger Maris' 61st home run, so it's a slow day. I'm like I'm going to call this guy so I go out to visit him. He has this football. It's an official NFL football and he's got an authentication authentication letter from Pete Rosell and I found he really does have the football. He was a season ticket holder with his brother. They were at the immaculate reception game. Franco scores the touchdown. They all ran on the field well, he couldn't get everybody off the field.
Speaker 2:After all the confusion, they end up deciding it's a touchdown. They use the same ball, they put it in, they kick the extra point. He's behind the goal post and he catches it. Took it home on a packed bus. So he's asking me. He wanted season tickets for life and he was going to give it to the Steelers. The Steelers offered him season tickets for a year and he said that's not enough, I'm not giving this up for season what year, so he kept.
Speaker 2:He ended up on a safety deposit box for 25 years, so we stand.
Speaker 3:That's a big safety deposit box, by the way, stan, and I tell Franco we're gonna do a 25th.
Speaker 2:It was like December 23rd of 97, I guess it was. So he's, franco comes in to come on sports people to us. Well, here's this guy. So we're milling around, we go out, we're sitting on the set. The guy sitting where you are stands where Ford is and Franco's on the other side, and I know Franco's probably at this time like who the hell is this guy? Show starts Franco's not aware.
Speaker 2:No, he doesn't know. So this guy has the ball and we say, Franco, we got a surprise for you. We have the, and the guy throws it across the set. Now think about this too he could have thrown it. Wow, Franco could have dropped, it could have bounced on the floor. Sure, anything could happen. I think they got it wrong. He throws it across the set, Franco catches it, Franco kissed it, got a tear in his eye.
Speaker 3:Without a doubt, the best moment in my career on the air. He gave it to franco that that day, no he wanted it back.
Speaker 1:Franco had it the whole show. We told all the stories. As it is, the show ended. So it's great tv, great story.
Speaker 2:Had he walked out, the franco takes it walks out the door with me, what I, what I, what I thought he should do, that I said donate it to canton and just have them put your name on the display.
Speaker 1:Donated by and I'm sorry and did you eventually do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because when the Heinz History Center it was when they had the Canton display, you know they had the traveling exhibits I went down to do a story and there it was and his name was on it. So I guess it is in Canton now.
Speaker 1:So that was your best. That was a great broadcast moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a tremendous show, tremendous how cool would it have been.
Speaker 1:If he's throwing it to franco, you reach up and you tip it and franco reaches down, just keeps it off the ground.
Speaker 2:That would have been cool, and and stan is bumping into stan's jack playing him and takes my head off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that could happen. You never know. So that that was your great, but but what about does that because you mentioned hockey, guys does? Does someone stand out in terms terms of just sitting every time you talk to them? Or maybe it was a one-time deal, that interview with that athlete? He was so great, I imagine Mario and Sidney and those guys.
Speaker 2:Sidney Crosby are the best human beings I've ever come across in any walk of life.
Speaker 1:Is he a?
Speaker 2:great interviewer? I don't think he's a great interviewer. Mario's never a great interviewer either. One of my favorite people to talk to when he was willing to talk was Andy Van Slyke Extremely intelligent and very insightful when he wanted to be, and didn't always want to be, but I always loved talking with Kevin Stevens, just at any time. He'd give you something too. They were playing the Capitals in the first round of the playoffs.
Speaker 2:I can't remember the year and Stan Stigie, mike and I did a pre-Stanley Cup show from the Igloo Club at the Civic Arena. We taped the whole Sportsbeat show and we're all talking about it. We all thought the Capitals were going to win this series. I forget why we thought that Maybe it was what they did in the regular season. So we go to the last commercial, we come on and we're like okay, time to give our predictions. Now, guy, what do you think? I said Capitals in six. All three of them take the Penguins. The light goes off. I said you all said nothing. We're not going to say that on the air. Thanks a lot, thanks a lot.
Speaker 2:I get to the arena for game one and Harry Sanders is the Penguins PR guy at the time he goes. Kevin Stevens is looking for you and he is pissed Really. And I said what? Because you took the Capitals. Kevin Stevens scores the winning goal in the seventh game, or one of the big goals in game seven.
Speaker 2:And I used to do what Dan Potash does Now, I would interview the player of the game. So I have to interview Kevin Stevens and I'm like Artie I know you're mad at me and he puts his arm around me with that big donkey and he goes. I'm just kidding, we just didn't need any negativity. And then he just gave me a great interview gushing about how and one other hockey player, so Yager, gets traded to the Capitals and they're going to send me to Washington to interview him the first time the Penguins play down there and he could be a kind of a different kind of cat to deal with.
Speaker 2:And I'm petrified the whole time. It's all set up to their PR. I'm petrified. He's going to stiff me and they're spending money to send a producer, two cameras, me. We're making an old show out of this. So we're above the, the uh, their practice facility and a thing above the ice. And I'm sitting there and it's about 20 minutes after he's supposed to be there and I'm really sweating. All of a sudden he bursts into the room. He goes. Stan Guy, love the show did he not?
Speaker 1:did he really? And?
Speaker 2:he gave me a tremendous. He gave me a really good and that was one of my favorite interviews what a great line.
Speaker 1:By the way, yeah, that's good. I love the show, not hey.
Speaker 3:I have a question. So you guys have both talked about good interviews. What's your definition of a good interview? And what makes a good interview, because you know good question Like I get it Like. But Andy Van Zyke doesn't have the best you know reputation, so like I'd love to know like what makes that good interview.
Speaker 2:I remember Andy Van Zyke on from out at the Sandbar at spring training. We go, we started talking about politics and started talking about education in America and just I mean it was. It was interesting to hear an athlete's opinion on some worldly things. But I just think it's being honest and talk. You know, if you don't like somebody, you don't like the situation. Just being honest, not not jock speaker, coach speaker, the same old, take it one game responses.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, it just seems like and I think a lot of it has to do with these guys being taught now how to work with the media, and they're taught now to be very reserved, don't say anything, and so now they're taking, in many respects, the personality out of the game, or games Guys today everybody and his brother has a podcast.
Speaker 2:Everybody and his brother has a cable show. I remember when chuck knowles weekly press conference first started being, uh, broadcast on the radio, there was a, an area smaller than where we're sitting now at three river stadium. Every week they'd have cold cuts out on a counter. So it would be, I want to say, steve alvonik, ste Steve Hubbard, were the Post Gazette and press writers, if I remember, myron Jack Fleming, me from WTA, goose Gosling from KQV, maybe seven of us You'd stand in line making a chip tam sandwich with Noel and we'd all go into this room and sit around a little round table and talk.
Speaker 3:I think it was incredible.
Speaker 1:In baseball it used to be Leland would be sitting in his office and it wasn't scheduled. You'd walk in, there'd be some of the coaches, you'd sit down, talk a little ball, might ask them a question about last night. What about this lineup tonight? It's not like okay as it is now. You used to go into the office, now it's a press conference.
Speaker 2:It's harder and harder unless you work for the team or the rights holder. And I got a one-on-one sit-down with Sidney Crosby right before I retired because we did some of the Penguin Games on ABC two years ago and that was fantastic and I talked to him about it a lot and that was a good interview, because I talked to him about diets. I said look how old you are and you've still got a flat stomach. He goes I love chocolate and it was just fun. That kind of stuff that you don't get in the normal, like hey, why'd you throw a curve ball? The base is loaded. You know it wasn't that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:Well, I think the relationship and the human element kind of has fallen off. But, like, do you think both you guys ask this question Cause I really wonder what the NIL guys are having to brand themselves? Image and likeness matters more than ever and do you think that may help these guys, or do you still think there's going to be almost a mirage in front of some of these interviews, because it still is really stale at times? I think it's more like what Greg says.
Speaker 2:I think all that does is teach them earlier, not to say anything controversial. And athletes? The other thing is athletes no longer need the media to get their. I mean, they can work the media too. You're unhappy with a situation, or you're playing time, or this or that. They used to go. Now they all have their own social media. They don't need us anymore. I've had guys in recent years.
Speaker 3:No, they just think they don't until they do. That's, that's what I've seen, because like it's, it's not the same. Like you guys guide and make things flow, you you stop it, you start it. It's a completely different animal when you have someone that can actually produce right, do a lot of different things. I mean, I'm a former athlete. I've really enjoyed getting to know the whole entire scene that gets a game going, whether it's an interview or sit down in long form, it doesn't matter. They need you and there's a reason why it started that way and I feel like it's going to come back around because it's not the same.
Speaker 3:Not everybody has a gift that you guys do and a lot of these you know names in Pittsburgh that have been phenomenal. It's the best in the business, my opinion, because it's not easy. It's not easy at all. They think it's just a camera, it's easy at all. They think it's just a camera. It's not easy to do what you guys do the reads, all the things they go into it and it all goes back to the prep. You guys all talk about the prep. You guys are bar none, phenomenal at how you do it. It's like how we work at our craft. You can't make up that time and I think they think they can if they just look in the mirror and say, hmm, if I think I can do that, maybe I should look at them and say they could probably be in the big leagues, because that's the same equivalent, and they just don't look at it that way.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, especially with baseball players I said, they're usually not as accommodating. I also understand that if I was doing a job 162 days a year and had some guy in my face after every day of work asking me why I did certain things while I was working, I would get sick of it too.
Speaker 1:You think about what a manager in the major leagues has to go. I think about that with Shelton all the time. We do the pregame. Joe Block and I flip-flop so we go to the pregame.
Speaker 2:He's got a weekly appearance on the fan every night after the game he's got to do the media in the press conference room before and after every single game.
Speaker 1:What are you going to say? What can you say Every single game? It didn't used to be like that and certainly wasn't as formal back then.
Speaker 3:So, as I said, you'd walk into the manager's office and just shoot the ball a little bit. That's where the best conversations happen. You know where it's really organic. I mean, let's be honest. I mean you walk in and you just have ball talk and you get a lot and me and Brownie have talked quite a bit.
Speaker 3:It's like used to, I knew all the media guys and they would sit with the managers in the back of the bus in the minor leagues and the relationships, the reports. So when you walked up it was a conversation with yeah, it happened to be a professional athlete, someone you're interviewing, but it's also a friend, a dude that you've had long conversations with. So they open up and I feel like the last couple of years it's been hard to have that type of relationship.
Speaker 2:Well, I think from an athlete's perspective I mean, I don't know how suspicious you are guys, mike, but I think over the years I think when I started in business the athletes liked the media a lot more than they do now. I think they're a lot more suspicious of guys taking a picture of them in a bar somewhere.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I forgot about that. You can't go out and hang out in a bar, right, they're not hanging out in bars. What? Would Babe Ruth's reputation be if he were alive during social media? Yeah, you're right. Yeah, he would have had to tone it down.
Speaker 2:You're asking about it. I just thought of another interview. That was a real interesting thing. So Michael Jordan's trying out for the White Sox Name drop. We're in Bradenton for our week of pirate coverage and our producers and I already had done a story on Jordan trying baseball from material that I got from ABC or from whatever network feed we got, so I wrote a story, I had video of him at Sarasota. I had an interview with him. We get done, he goes. You got to get out and get Michael Jordan. I said Michael Jordan is not going to talk, doesn't know me. From that he insisted I go and try. I was dreading the whole drive to Sarasota. We get down there and it happened to be a miserable rainy day, so they're hitting inside and I saw Mike LaValliere was there actually with the White.
Speaker 2:Sox. So I saw him and I said, hey, spanky, what's going on there, what's this?
Speaker 1:like he goes, it's an effing circus every day and he, so you knew you wouldn't get a straight answer, right then he laughed, or whatever.
Speaker 2:So I go up to jordan's lockers a whole pile of guys around talking to him afterwards and after they left I introduced myself. I said, michael, you don't know me. I, I do the pre and post post-game show for the Pirates. I was wondering if, while we were down on the floor, I could get a few minutes of your time. He sort of looks me up and down, he goes can you wait while I take a shower? I said absolutely. I talked to him for 15 minutes, no way.
Speaker 2:The only time I met the man in my life and I've heard my wife was furious because that was like her favorite athlete. Give me an autograph, no autograph. I said I'm working, it's professional, I can't.
Speaker 1:Guy David Junker, you didn't get me Get in this house. You could have dropped a keto Francona on him Because he was his manager in the minor league oh that's right yeah.
Speaker 2:That deep on the bus for the team. Oh, remember that. Yeah, yeah, he bought the bus for the travel. I forgot about that, but Frank, could have managed him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow, that would have been nice to have Michael Jordan on a minor league team. He bought the bus. I didn't know that. It's like I don't travel this way.
Speaker 1:Is that what he's saying? So he goes and buys the bus. He bought him a or a spread.
Speaker 2:I'll buy them a bus. Hey guys, I got a case of the Corsi Extra gold.
Speaker 1:We're talking about good interviews. You asked what makes a good interview. Do you ever think I do it all the time look around a clubhouse or a locker room and wonder which one of these guys is going to end up in the media. You never really know, because some of them are jerks and end up in the media and I just it's comical, steve Carlton, burt Bleileven.
Speaker 2:I mean, those guys were very different, and I'll say this not because we're sitting here. Michael, you were a peach when you played me.
Speaker 1:We didn't really know each other. It's just not a surprise that you're into this. Yeah, you would have been a guy.
Speaker 3:I mean the most surprise, neil Walker.
Speaker 2:Natural. So I do think that more often not guys that you think will end up in the media, because they usually do there are some that end up and you're like. I never thought he would do this.
Speaker 1:Bob Wok is the last guy on the face of the earth. I thought would be a color analyst.
Speaker 3:And why is that? Because they called him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he didn't expect it he didn't expect it, they called him. He and I talk about it all the time. Mark Driscoll was the director of broadcasting. He passed away several years ago, but I would love to have asked him what was it that you saw of? How did his name come up? He would never lobby for it. Brilliant, yeah, because Wacky is so good?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's so good, but I often wonder about that when you're but why did you think he wouldn't be a guy?
Speaker 3:Because you got to see him in both facets, like I think that's interesting.
Speaker 1:It's not like he was.
Speaker 2:He wasn't mean, he just didn't, he didn't refuse, he never had much to say.
Speaker 1:I get on him because I was in the front office for the Pirates for a number of years and I used to ask guys to go on the caravan and do like autograph sessions and we joke now. But I said you know you were such a jerk and he goes. You never asked me. I said that's true, I don't know. There was something. It seemed like he was aloof.
Speaker 3:He gives that aura. Was he intimidating a little?
Speaker 1:Yeah, big guy, yeah, but he's like a big teddy bear.
Speaker 2:I'm not surprised. Blast wild big guy, yeah, but he's like a big teddy bear. But anyway, I'm not surprised blast wild up in it? No, and I didn't. I didn't cover the team when he was pitching, but he, he was working. He worked for jostens or belfort, I forget jostens and he came into, uh, when I was doing the sports on jack bogut's radio show on wtae back. And then he came in to be a guest one day and I was excited to meet him. You know, his career was over by the time I was out of college and I didn't know what he was like and I wanted to ask him did he ever figure out what the heck happened? He went from one of the best pitchers and just fell off a cliff. So once I saw how nice he was, I said, steve, did you ever figure out what went wrong? What happened? And he says, yeah, well, I went to spring training in 73 trying out a new pitch. It was called a strike.
Speaker 1:You probably heard that one and. I thought it was you know, and then he went into all the letters that he got.
Speaker 2:People told him to wear.
Speaker 1:You know less tight fitting underwear and all that, but it's everything. It's just such a fascinating subject. It is fascinating. I've become really good friends with him and I've pretty much stayed away. But we were coming back from the year he retired, in 2019, and we were coming back from, I think, dunedin and traffic was bad on 19. It's an hour trip anyway, but we happen to have something on the radio that triggered the conversation.
Speaker 3:Somebody say Steve Blast, no, no.
Speaker 1:There's a story, though, about the Steve Blast. It might have. No, there's a story, though, about the Steve Blast disease, but it might have been Rick Ankeel talking about a book that had come, whatever it was, and I got into it and I actually was thinking that's a heck of a thing to think about one of my best friends. But I was thinking, man, I should be recording this, because it was just, we're in the car and we went through it all and it was fascinating. But the Steve blast disease Steve and I are equipment man. Roger Wilson at the time and Bob walk and I were at a steakhouse in San Francisco one night. We got in early at off night and we're in a steakhouse and we're in one of those rooms had like six tables, so it's gets kind of quiet. But the conversations are going on and I happened to get up and walk to go to the restaurant. As I'm coming back I hear the table kind of adjacent to us. They're talking about the.
Speaker 1:There is some show on a series that was on a long running show for about three years, that someone actually mentioned Steve Blast disease in this, this, this series. That was on TV and the one guy said to the other what is Steve Blast disease in this series that was on TV. And the one guy said to the other what is Steve Blast disease? And the guy said a guy that used to pitch for the Pirates. They had no idea he was sitting there. Oh my goodness, so I go back, I sit down and 20 minutes later I said to Steve whisper to him. I said do me a favor, will you go up to that table over there? And I said, just ask them if anybody's looking for Steve Blass. I said you heard somebody calling my name, so he goes over there and watches. Hey, did somebody call for me? And then I don't know. What do you mean? What did he call for you? He goes, somebody asked for Steve Blass. The place went crazy. It was unbelievable, but he's never been shy about it.
Speaker 2:We talk about great people. You talk about a reason to be bitter, you or?
Speaker 1:World Series.
Speaker 2:Zero. You win 19 games a year after, and then the supposed prime of your career may be headed to the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1:All of a sudden, you can't do it, not for a physical reason, I would use him as an example of why there's no excuse for any professional athlete not to talk to a reporter. Because he had time for everyone yeah, at the top of his game and he was at the rock bottom. He never, ever, stopped talking to people. Absolutely that surprised me at all.
Speaker 3:That's amazing and I use tyler matzik's, one of my great friends, and he had the steve blast disease, if you want to call it that, and overcame it. I've been a part of that, that process and watching it. Yeah, like, if you don't talk about it, it's kind of it's a disease, you know like you got to walk through it. So I'd love to hear that story at some point, because I've gotten to work through that with with guys, and every player goes through a version of that. It's just how bad it gets. You know who you have around you and different things. So I think it's remarkable what he's been able to do watching him throw out the first pitch and different things, where all those feelings come back right, because that's just one time. He didn't have another shot.
Speaker 1:We would do old-timers games and stuff and I would set up the roster and this is before I knew anything. I'd have Steve Blass pitching and we'd have those Frank Thomas and Maz and the whole outlift and they said no, no, no, you don't put Steve Blass on the mound, he plays in the outfield. Because he would never take the mound ever until he had that moment many years ago, bullpen session, early morning, spin Williams, former Pirates pitching coach. He had been, steve had been working with a psychologist. No one knew about it, but he would talk to this guy on the phone and in person down in Bradenton One morning. Before anybody got there he said, spin, would you mind going to the bullpen with me? And he had figured it out. And so now you see it. I don't know if he does it now at fantasy camp, but up until a couple of years ago he was what walkie told me. This guy was good and you could. You know he found it again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'd love for him to jump out there. He doesn't do it. I've only been be a part of yipsfreecom, which is my buddy, jason coon, it's navy seal, who had the yips and he literally went. Yips set the record of most consecutive people walk or balls thrown in ncaa. History still has it. I was like congratulations, that's a good record. And then he literally saw the towers fall down and went and enlisted and became a Navy SEAL. So, like you think about it, a lot of times these guys get tabbed as they're weak, they're soft, they can't figure it out. Dude literally passed buds within the next year. So he decided this is my life calling and he's really turned into it. We've, you know, I got him and Tyler mixed together and now he's into golf. It's everywhere he is killing it and it's so many people that just don't have anybody to talk to. And when they overcome it, you see the life come back into them. It's incredible.
Speaker 1:This business of whether you're in baseball, playing it or you're around sports and the friendship that you develop. Yeah, that's what makes it all so special, and your relationship with Stan. I was amazed. I shouldn't be surprised, but how? Not that you wouldn't have been loyal to your good friend, but the respect that you showed, that you were in, that you went and saw him toward the end almost every single day, guy.
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny, my daughter was just in a production of Grease over the weekend. She's a theater geek and very talented, can sing. She was Cinderella in Erie Playhouse Theater and Stan would sit and talk as we have been about baseball and sports, about Broadway. He loved it. Oh, so-and-so switched from Wicked, she's now in you know Chorus Line or whatever. And then my daughter would get to and it's funny.
Speaker 2:I said to my wife because we went to see my Fair Lady over at the Benidorm and we also went to see my daughter's Grease and I said I miss Stan all the time but I don't think about him nearly as much at sporting events. I missed him Christmas morning because he always came to our house on Christmas and I said go into the theater, because we always went to see Wicked together. We went to see Les Mis Goodbye, miss Saigon, phantom of the Opera. We would do stuff like that all the time. It's the part of Stan that, as much as he was loved as a sportscaster, that people didn't know he was such a good, generous, nice human being and sometimes on the air he was tough.
Speaker 2:You said something stupid on his show. I remember the time the guy called Sportsbeat and said the Penguins didn't do their due diligence. They should have known Lemieux was going to get cancer and not sign him to another contract. Stan went ballistic People like you shouldn't have telephones and he was so times like that, you know and we were supposed to make this trip to Italy this year and when I saw where things were going I knew he wasn't going to make it. I just I went over to his my wife's, the only person knows this. I went over to his grave around Halloween and I put I had a hard time finding one. I found the Cleveland Indians garden flag not a guardians, you know and I took the stand over with the Indians garden flag and I put it on his grave in the fall. I don't know if it's still over there. I want to go back over and see if it survived the winter.
Speaker 1:But he grew up, of course, a great Cleaver. He was an Indians ball boy when he was a kid, yeah, but you did that guy religiously to go in there and see him and there was one point where he actually asked you, didn't he to do his?
Speaker 2:He asked his sisters.
Speaker 2:He told his sisters he wanted me to do the ology. I went in, the Pirates gave out I think they were the military pirate cap on a Sunday afternoon back in the spring and it was like an hour and 59 minute game or something. So I did the PA and I wasn't planning on going that day, but the game was oh, I think I swear it was three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. The game was over. I'm like I'm going to go over and see. And he was in bad shape. It was only a couple of weeks before he died and I took him one of the hats over and that's when we talked and whatever.
Speaker 2:When I know that he goes, I can't do this anymore. He says I can't. He says this is no way to live. And I said, well, I didn't know what to say. But I said, well, you're not going to live like Stan. You're at the bottom right now. You're going to get this foot operation. You're going to get better. We're going to Italy next year. So don't look. I know you're not going to live like this, but unfortunately, you know, just trying to encourage him, he was like a brother to me, he was.
Speaker 1:Incredible. So we're talking about people that you've met over the years that became great friends. You talk about guys that were good interviews. You talk about the athletes. Is there anything in your career that you haven't done in sports in this town? Right, you haven not done it all. Well, I've heard him.
Speaker 2:I said the Tribune Review came to Channel 11 when we were doing Sportsbeat out of Channel 11, and they wanted Stan and I to do a TV commercial for them. And the plot of the commercial was people were calling in with stuff and Stan wouldn't know the answer and I would. And by the end of the commercial Stan says to me how do you know all this stuff? And I said I read it in the trip. Well, stan was writing for the Post Gazette at the time and when they found out about it it couldn't go on the air. We reshoot it with Sam Nover, with me instead. Oh my.
Speaker 2:So we finished the commercial and the PR woman from the Tribune Review says Do you get a subscription to the Trib? I said I do not. And she said why not? Or what would it take for you to get one? I said give me a column. The next day Dave Ailes calls me. You really want to do a column in a Trib? And I said yeah, okay, you got a Monday column starting next week, 17 years. I wrote a column. It paid $75 a column. For the first one it paid $75 for the last one.
Speaker 2:You did that long. 15 years into it I called them. I said can I get $100 a column? No, I'm sorry, $75. But the reason I did it is because so many newspaper guys think radio and TV guys can't write, that's amazing. You showed that right, I did it.
Speaker 2:And that's what I think you said. Is there anything you haven't done? I've done radio talk. I've done dj work. I've done uh anchoring news, live reporting. My regret is I wish I would have done what you did more of, because I loved play by play early and mike rice offered me the youngstown state basketball job when I was doing tv. Up there, basketball and football and at the and I wasn't married at the time, I was living with my parents but I was making good money at B94, benefits retirement plan. They wouldn't give me the time off to travel. I said I'll work my vacation around it, you know. And they said no, we can't have your schedule interrupted to be traveling with that basketball team. And I often wonder if I would have taken that.
Speaker 1:You always wonder what would happen.
Speaker 2:Because the great thing about it, first of all, play-by-play is the most fun of it. You, you are still reporting out nothing. You do. You do the 11 o'clock news. Now everybody has seen the highlights on their phone. If they didn't watch the game, they get the script. I don't. I felt near the end of my career I wasn't telling anybody, anybody, anything. They didn't know. In fact I redid how I would do a. I would try dig, put information in the highlights, like that lowers his ERA since the all-star game, the stuff that you may, because I just don't want to say, and the pirates one, seven to five. But but I play by. Play was so much fun and I never gave myself to get good enough at it to do it at a level that you did and I kind of wish I would have maybe given that Youngstown state thing a shot. Baseball your favorite sport?
Speaker 2:Yes, and I think the hardest to broadcast because I've done baseball, football, basketball, hockey, high school and college and I filled in and did some Toronto Maple Leaf color actually on Toronto Maple.
Speaker 3:Leaf radio.
Speaker 2:No kidding Baseball I think I know the most about it and I like it the best. And it's just, I think it's the hardest to do. Well, basketball is my least favorite sport and I love doing basketball play. You're sitting on the floor. You're not going to memorize numbers, you're looking at the guy's faces right in front of you.
Speaker 1:What is the toughest thing about being a public address announcer? That maybe surprised you when you took over the gig.
Speaker 3:I'm telling you right now you want to give me a nightmare situation. Put me up there and try to announce those names. The pronunciation you guys and how you guys do it is remarkable. That's why I do a bunch of nicknames, because it's a fear of mine. That's what it is. I'm going to use a few more.
Speaker 2:Michael McHenry names. I could use that.
Speaker 3:You know what?
Speaker 2:It's the same thing we've been talking about. It's all prep. I get there two and a half hours before the game, I believe 20 minutes for us to have our pregame cigar. Let me tell you, you've got to get those pronunciations ahead of time. You can't. And the hardest thing, it's not just the players, it's the national anthem singer, it's the fan of. You know what Pittsburgh names are like? Everybody's, you know. Oh, my goodness, georgian Dabinowitz is our fan of the game. Joe Kowalczyk yeah, so it's the pronunciations, and I flubbed a few.
Speaker 3:What's the hardest name off the top of your head you can think of that you've had so far? It?
Speaker 2:could be one that just looks funny. The Red Sox had a Japanese pitcher. I think it was two years ago. They were in. I remember looking at it the first night. I'm praying he does not, Because it was. I said it 20 times Please, I hope he doesn't get in. I hope he doesn't get in. How'd it go for you?
Speaker 1:I spit it out If it was wrong.
Speaker 2:I don't think most people other than him knew that it was wrong.
Speaker 1:Have you had anybody come up to you yet and say you did mispronounce the name?
Speaker 2:yet. Yeah, a couple PR PR guys have from the other, and that's what I've learned to do with the visiting team, because MLB sends me a list of pronunciations of everybody at the beginning of the year but by August guys have changed teams or guys have come up from the minors. In fact, the way I discovered you guys have your cigar break. I was coming to you, I was looking you talk about walking. There was an umpire that called up from the minors and I didn't know how to say his name and he wasn't in any of the stuff. So I came, I walked out in the hallway and I saw walkie. I said bob, do you know how to say this umpire's name? He goes, I don't know that stuff, he goes.
Speaker 2:Go ask brownie you know, he always does that so I said to the poll, the press box, usher. I said have you seen greg brown? He goes, yeah, he's out having a cigar. I said, well, I didn't know they had cigars, what they?
Speaker 1:do every day? I'm not really supposed to we really don't.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah, that's a mirage. Yeah, you think you had a tradition. We really haven't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're just here now who the guy was. That dice came at suzaka, that's, that's no, that's years ago uh, I gotta figure that out who that was maybe I'm wrong with it being the red socks. Oh, it was definitely a japanese name.
Speaker 2:That was not because I've actually gotten comfortable with some of their pronunciations, because there's enough of them now, you know yeah, I'm glad I took spanish in high school too, because there's so many spanish names now not uh yoshinobu yamatoto that might be. Oh, say that again I remember the first name was hard too, at least sometimes the first names. But the hardest thing was toto. The first year, yamamoto yamamoto toto.
Speaker 3:That was the first year I did the PA.
Speaker 2:I had to play the walk-up music too on this old computer.
Speaker 1:I didn't have to do that last year. You had to be the DJ too.
Speaker 2:You did that at.
Speaker 3:PNC yeah, come on Two years ago.
Speaker 2:So have Yoshi Setsugo ground out on the first pitch and you had to type the player's name in for his song to come up.
Speaker 3:Try typing that name in, if the guy hit the first pitch, the batter before, and then get on and announce him. I'm tired at the end of the games I am, that's. That's just. That's a sense of torture for me, like thinking about that, like I'm starting to sweat a little.
Speaker 2:That's no good, wow but do you love it? I love it, yeah, yeah, awesome. You're outside, you're. You know. Like I said, the main reason I retire was just schedule and demand on time. After you work six or seven days, I'm off six or seven days. It's permanent. I have my winter to myself and plus I love baseball and I'm outdoors and, yeah, I couldn't think of anything that would be a better retirement job and it's.
Speaker 1:It's more fun when they win and they're starting to get there too yeah absolutely you really cool because we do have a little session, uh, before games.
Speaker 3:Really, it's just a collaboration on how can we change the world Going over notes.
Speaker 2:We're going over notes, that's right. That's all we do. It's not all baseball talk.
Speaker 1:And you really do think that they are on the right track. Well, right, I mean, you've got to have hope.
Speaker 2:I think they unfairly were not given as much credit as they deserve for improving by 14 games last year, and the reason why is you start 20 and eight. You set everybody up for disappointment. I mean, may was a lousy month, july was a lousy month and they finished strong. If you would have spread that 76 win season out more evenly over six months, I think people would have been ecstatic at the improvement they made. I probably was looking for a little more of a splash this offseason, but they've added three left-handed pitchers Not over.
Speaker 1:It's not over.
Speaker 2:For much of the history of PNC Park. I don't think they've taken enough advantage of left-handed hitters and left-handed pitchers, and I think Ben Sherrington and his crew noticed that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because we would always ask that question. It would be dismissed. It doesn't matter which side they're on, it doesn't. Yeah, it does matter. And you're starting to see that with these guys.
Speaker 2:Well, I argue about how many home runs, Willie Stardewill, People say, well, Forbes Field wasn't that deep. I said how do you hit an opposite field home run when it's 464 feet to left center field? You know what I said. That's where the and you know, if you're a right-handed batter and you're hitting the ball 400 feet to the north side notch and you're a left-handed batter, you can hit it 350 and it's in the seats.
Speaker 1:So the question is how many is Cruz going to hit if he's healthy, if he plays 150 games, Good question. If Tellez is healthy, plays 130, 40 games, left side left-hand hitters, and how many strikeouts is Aroldis Chapman?
Speaker 2:going to have. I think the key with him is how many walks does he have? I think he'll pile the strikeouts up. Yeah, he will.
Speaker 3:He can walk three, strike out three and I'll be pretty happy. How about?
Speaker 1:what is that $10.5 million for him?
Speaker 3:It's a big dollar, setting up a $4.5 billion million for him. It's a big big dollar. Four and a half billion dollar guy. Yeah, that's wild. What an asset. Though.
Speaker 3:Like if I think when you get the strength in the bullpen that we have, you know right out of the gate because that's the last place I thought they were gonna have to do anything they get him. He's the best reliever on the market. Now you have an asset. So if they did need a starter in may, I don't think they're scared to say let's flip it. And $10.5 million by a good starter, you know just about anywhere, maybe someone's closer goes down, he can step in, he's pitching well. I think they're thinking very similar to how we've seen Seattle. They traded from their strength last year and actually bolstered their team out of their bullpen. Tampa Bay's done it time and time again. I think this regime's thinking completely different. I think it's going to surprise the city when something crazy like that happens and you know, june, it's like what's happening, but we need an arm. You know it's cool to see what they're doing. You start to see the difference.
Speaker 2:Even I think fans are starting to see it. I wish, obviously I love watching and talking to a former catcher here, endy throwing guys out out the percentage last year him getting hurt and Oviado some of the numbers that he put up when he was on last year, I think 15 games with one run or less losing those two guys. And when was Brubaker going to be back? Maybe June, sometimes late summer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he had such a good spring last year. I mean, we were talking before a team Pirates. You can't have injuries. You can't go out and buy somebody to replace a guy who was going to really contribute for you. You can't do that.
Speaker 1:You take a big hit from an injury, like Brubaker and Cruz A starting pitcher, and you're relying on a guy with homers and ribbies.
Speaker 2:I was so depressed it was Easter Sunday, if I'm not mistaken, when Cruz got hurt, I think. So I'm driving home and I'm like I don't believe this happened. Eight games in, yeah, they were 20-8.
Speaker 3:That was the end of.
Speaker 2:April. I'm like holy cow, but I think that you know. It's like you ask a girl out and she says yes, you go out with her three times, you're starting to fall in love with her and then she blows you off after that. That's what they did last year. I'm all excited for their tees. That's all. You win eight games in May.
Speaker 1:But that's the great thing about baseball. Just spoke recently to a group in Youngstown about that. That's, the separator is 162. Yeah, you know, that's what makes it such a great sport.
Speaker 3:You have to come together. You can't win for two months.
Speaker 1:Exactly right, and it's almost like everybody. Almost they were bracing themselves realizing this is a long year. This is a nice story and enjoy it. Enjoy every win. But, understand, it's a long year.
Speaker 2:Well, I was told, and I don't know who brought it down, but I started when I would say when they would come out on the field, I'd say, and here are your first plays Pittsburgh by the end of April.
Speaker 1:And I was told knock off the first play stuff, yeah, by the end of April. Stop saying that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I knew who said that. Do you yeah?
Speaker 2:Well, and that's fine. You don't want to be jinxed, or whatever you don't want to get comfortable.
Speaker 3:I know somebody that it meant something to them down in the clubhouse. You know former Pirate that's been here. We were in first place at 11 and whether it puts pressure on you or you, get comfortable, I saw it in both sides and you know, as a player you just want to show up every day and win the day.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I think that's the focus. I think there were some, you know, younger guys getting comfortable because, hey, why would you dig yourself? You're in the big leagues, you're getting opportunity. A lot of guys especially with Cruz, you know filtering through to play shortstop, playing well and to kind of fill in themselves and that's the last thing you want. I don't think it necessarily is the reason why they struggled in may and in july, but I think every time something bad happens and you're both a perfect picture of this you can use it to your advantage. And you know, in 11, a lot of guys got opportunities that wouldn't have gotten when I was here and we saw that last year, and I think this year we're gonna have more predictability of guys being out on the field, getting a chance to play, that know they're going to be on the field, not fighting to be on the field, and that's what's really cool because it's cutthroat, just like this industry. So I'm excited.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I agree with that saying. To stop saying first place Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2:The crowd responded to it.
Speaker 1:I mean, why not, why not soak it all in?
Speaker 2:Enjoy every moment while they're in first place.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't do it if they're four and one, but it was April. Were there a first place? You can't hide it, drew May.
Speaker 3:Like you guys said, you can't hide it. I just think that, like it goes back to the relationship between, and the communication across the board. If everybody's on the same page and you're prepared to win, who cares? Yeah, let's, let's embrace this moment, but we expect it to be there. I think so often we've fallen to a trap that, like we've had a lot of losing seasons, we haven't played the way we should. So, instead of bracing the readiness to be there, we focus on here and now, waiting for it to fail. That's never the case. You should have, or never, the thought you should have when you're playing a game or doing anything in life you should expect to win.
Speaker 1:Okay, In September this year, September 10th, when the Pirates bolt themselves into first place, I don't want anybody going up to Guy Junker. Hey, start saying welcome to first place because you watch, yeah, you watch, yeah. You tell them, no, guy, no, just keep doing it. I hope I have that opportunity. Thanks a million. Hold my cutter, guy Junker. I won't hold you guys to sign this. That's a deal Done. Join us next time on, hold my Cutter, no-transcript.