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Ron
Cook’s career in sports started in his Beaver Falls backyard in the
late 1960s, pretending to be Roberto Clemente. Ron played high
school baseball and football just poorly enough to realize that, for
him, a career in sports would involve journalism.
Ron got his first job in high school from Hall of Famer
Joe Tronzo,
covering high school basketball for the Beaver Falls News-Tribune.
Ron graduated from Blackhawk High School in 1974 and from
Northwestern University four years later. Ron remembers that one of
his great challenges was putting a positive spin on Northwestern's
69-0 loss at Michigan.
Two days after graduating college, Ron began work at the Beaver
County Times, under the mentorship of Sam Bechtel and fellow
inductee Ed Rose. Ron did everything at the Times, from covering the
Steelers and the Pirates to posting high school basketball roundups
-- and he loved every minute of it.
In October 1983, Ron took a job with the Pittsburgh Press, where he
briefly covered West Virginia football and the Pittsburgh Maulers
before moving on to the Steelers in 1984 and 1985. He was promoted
in 1986 to special assignments writer and, among other things,
covered the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. While at the Press, Ron
provided most of the obituary work for a special section on Steelers
owner Art Rooney Sr., and published an award-winning series on
alcohol in sports. Ron also toured the country in an SUV at ten
miles an hour, following a Greensburg woman in the Bicycle Race
Across America.
Ron moved to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in January 1989 and started
writing a sports column a year later that continues to this day. Ron
covered the 1992 Winter Olympics in France, the 1992 Summer Olympics
in Barcelona, and the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, but his
career highlights are the Penguins Stanley Cup years in 1991, 1992,
and 2009, and the Steelers Super Bowl appearances in 1995, 2005,
2008, and 2010. During the run-up to the Steelers Super Bowl XL win
in Detroit, Ron was given complete access to cover Jerome Bettis in
his hometown.
On the radio, Ron hosted a Saturday afternoon sports talk show on
KDKA-AM from 1993 to 2002, and currently appears on KDKA sister
station 93.7 The Fan weekdays from 10am to 2pm as co-host of the
"Vinnie and Cook" show, which had its second anniversary in February
2012.
Despite claiming to have a face for radio, Ron has frequently
appeared on television, first as a recurring guest on Fox Sports
Pittsburgh's SportsBeat show, and currently twice a week with Hall
of Famer Bob Pompeani on the Nightly Sports Call on KDKA's sister
station Pittsburgh's CW. Ron also often participates in the KDKA
Sports Showdown Sunday nights at 11:35pm, and is a frequent guest on
ESPN's "Outside The Lines" and the NFL Network. |
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