The windows were as open as the conversation this dank December afternoon inside the radio booth with the corner-pub atmosphere. Smoke and history and hmm-hahs and guffaws filled the thick air. Football carried this final broadcast from Three Rivers Stadium, but to hear it you needed to sift through the normal quirks and curiosities that get mentioned during a Steelers radio game day.
The Wash Redfaces. The Tundra Towel story. A fruitbasket. A cheesy old man. Troy ... bah, bah, bah. The Goofy Test. Missing hot dogs. Derrieres. Dairy whats? And, finally, Myron Cope himself pronouncing this crew the best broadcast in the National Hockey League.
The puckish color commentator turned crimson with irritation and became flustered Saturday when, late in the WDVE-FM flagship broadcast of this Redskins-Steelers football finale at the old bowl, one of Redskins owner Dan Snyder's emissaries sauntered into the booth and made a historic request. For the first time in Cope's 31 seasons, he received a complaint from a front-office executive. The dark-suited Washington flak asked producer Greg Weston if the color commentator would please cease and desist from constantly referring to their club on the radio as "the Wash Redfaces."
Cope's reaction: Wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-what?
"That is preposterous," he warbled. "You kidding me, Greg? Is he listening to the broadcast or watching the game? I've been broadcasting for 31 years. Dan Rooney and the Steelers executives never once questioned anything I said. I've called Cincinnati 'the Bungles' for years, and [owner] Mike Brown never said a word.
"If that boy billionaire [Snyder] thinks he can shut me up, he should stick his head in a can of paint."
Red preferably.
Indeed, Saturday was a stinko performance by the worst team $100 million could buy. No points the last three quarters. Little passion. No victories in four games. No legitimate reason to ask an impish icon to hold his sarcastic tongue, which spat out that nickname from the pregame show to long after a suit's intervention early in the fourth quarter.
When Cope steered the broadcast into the next commercial break, he playfully announced the score: "The Steelers 24, the Wash Red ... skins 3." Henh henh.
It should be noted that the color commentator wasn't muzzled (as The Associated Press reported), and Bill Hillgrove and Tunch Ilkin regularly mentioned the Redfaces business the remainder of the broadcast. They did in part to jag Cope, whose own face turned crimson each time. That was what caused him to break into that malaprop about NFL honcho Joe Browne, one of a dozen and a half visitors into the corner-pub radio room this historic Saturday: "He comes in our booth because he knows it's the best broadcast in the National Hockey League."
Yoi, eh?
Let's start in the beginning. This Steelers Saturday creeped closer to kickoff with Cope in the back of the booth, sorting through his pertinent papers. He asked Hillgrove about their postgame ceremony scripts -- who was introducing the players of the '80s. He pulled out his "Don't Mess With Texas" ashtray, the one Jack Lambert asked to borrow earlier the day -- much the same way he used to bum cigarettes off the color commentator.
Twenty minutes before game time, in a brief visit reminiscent of Nellie King being invited back to the Pirates' booth for their Three Rivers finale two months before, Cope and Hillgrove welcomed back 35-year play-by-play announcer Jack Fleming. The on-air discussion centered on that 1979 AFC championship-game moment when a frozen-tundra Terrible Towel got stuck in ice in front of Fleming's press-box view. "All I have to say is ... Cope lies," Fleming said. "No, you're a sweetheart."
"You got stuck with me in 1970," Cope told Fleming. "You were a professional broadcaster, and I didn't know nothing about this here business."
Saturday in this football bon voyage, Cope was the cruise director. As it should have been for the man who has been a communication constant in the 31 Steelers seasons at Three Rivers.
There was his pregame hypothesis about those "overpaid stiffs standing over there ... they should be called the Washington Redfaces," and he proceeded to call them just that. There was a fruit basket awaiting him at Gate A, but no one could retrieve it for him, least of all the busy broadcaster. There was "cheesy old man" kicker Eddie Murray, 44, of the Wash Redfaces, though Hillgrove more politely labeled him "the ageless wonder." There was "Slash [Kordell Stewart] running out of the arms of Big Daddy" Dan Wilkinson of Washington. There was the time Cope started to say something about Troy Edwards, but it came across as simply "bah, bah, bah."
Double yoi. Triple bah.
"Here are the scores from around the NFL," Cope said once. "There are none. It'sSaturday."
"I just spent the whole half writing down questions for the postgame locker room show, and I just realized there's no locker room show because of the celebration," Cope said later. "All the brain power that went into that."
"I know," Ilkin replied. "I could smell wood burning."
Matching malaprops with Cope, Ilkin accidentally referred to Redfaces quarterback Jeff George as Eddie George. He also ribbed the color commentator about being so angry that the press box halftime hot dogs were behind schedule, joked about the officiating, and explained how knocked-silly punter Josh Miller was on the sidelines taking the Goofy Test.
"He landed on his derriere and SPLASH," Cope said even later.
"Dairy what?" teased Ilkin.
"Derriere," Cope replied. "It has nothing to do with milk."
Oh, the boys in the booth milked that Redfaces business for all it was worth in a tedious fourth quarter. They chose to reel in the years with teases instead of tears, with levity instead of solemnity. As it should have been.
The three announcers, seconds after the end, hustled from the booth, following the lead block of Ilkin, the one-time Pro Bowler, so they could get to the field for the post-game celebration of a Steelers era.
Seconds later, the booth door swung open. It was Cope wearing a trenchcoat, Steelers stocking cap and worried look. Oops, he forgot his clipboard and script.
Hmm hah, and it was history.
You can reach Chuck Finder at cfinder@post-gazette.com
The Big Picture: Snyder can't censor Cope and Co. 
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