Guy Junker's broadcasting career coming to close after 44 years

Now that he has announced plans to retire after a 44-year career as a sports broadcaster on radio and TV, Guy Junker sat down Monday and contemplated all of his jobs.

At age 13, he was a newspaper delivery boy and a pin setter before bowling alleys were modernized.

He was inside Three Rivers Stadium for the Immaculate Reception in 1972, a vendor peddling hot dogs.

“Some guy’s hugging me,” Junker remembered, “and I kept saying, ‘That’s not going to count. The ball hit Frenchy Fuqua.’ ”

Never was he more grateful for being wrong.

A year later, while making $100 a week for Beaver Falls radio station WMBA, he went to Baltimore in 1979 to cover the Pittsburgh Pirates’ most recent World Series title.

“I thought I had the greatest job in the world,” he said.

That job morphed into several others on radio and TV — even as a Tribune-Review columnist for 17 years. He has been a sports anchor on WTAE-TV Channel 4 since 2006 after an earlier stint there from 1984-90. Along the way, he gained a lifetime friend, Stan Savran, with whom he shared a microphone on radio and TV for 13 years.

Junker has covered four Super Bowls, all five of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Stanley Cup runs, Pitt in the Elite 8 and the 1987 Fiesta Bowl when Penn State beat Miami and won the national championship.

Yet, he can’t recall any event affecting him like his audience with Pope Paul VI in the Vatican in 1978. It came about while he was interning for the BBC in London during his final semester at Penn State. Junker’s friend knew a pastor from back home who was working in the Vatican and invited them inside.

“When the Swiss guards carried him into the room, I got a little choked up,” Junker said of Pope Paul, who died later that summer. “He talked to people in French, Italian, English and Spanish, extensively, not just hello.”

It’s interesting how Junker’s sports-related memories don’t necessarily involve games.

“Bill Mazeroski was my idol growing up,” he said. “I got to be in a commercial with Elroy Face for Thermal Twin Windows. To be on a first-name basis with him and sit and have a couple of beers as a buddy or colleague, it was pretty cool.”

All of it together, including eight regional Emmys, make for an impressive career. He’s also worked for TribLive Radio and Penn State football on Saturdays and Steelers radio on Sundays in the fall.

But he said Monday, it’s time.

“I have some friends from high school who have retired in the past year or so,” said Junker, a 1974 Baldwin graduate. “One, two weeks after he retired, he had a stroke. Another one got colon cancer. I’ve had a couple of friends passed. I’m just starting to realize, ‘I’ve worked enough nights, weekends and holidays and missed so many family functions over the years, I just don’t want to do it anymore.’

“Pretty much since I’ve been 13, I’ve worked seven days a week,” said Junker, 66.

“I enjoyed every minute of it. I just reached the point in my life — while I’m still healthy — I’m going to play a little golf and just enjoy some time off.”

Junker is eagerly awaiting retirement, but he insists, “I’m not going to sit on the couch.”

He is working for Awesome Films, a Pittsburgh video agency that produces shows for Penn State hockey and other schools. He’ll write and host those shows and do some podcasts. Plus, he’ll be a regular Thursday visitor to Savran’s ESPN Radio show.

Before retirement, he’ll cover the Pirates’ home opener April 12. His final assignment will be the NFL Draft from April 28-30.

“I thought about trying to hang on through a Stanley Cup run.” he said, “but if (the Penguins) would make the Final by some chance, it would go to the Fourth of July and I don’t want to give up another summer.”

Through it all, Junker is thankful for the opportunity to build a career in his hometown.

“To survive in one city that long and it be your own city — some of my friends moved to other places to work — luckily, the farthest I had to go was Beaver County,” he said.

“I’m grateful for that.”