If you’ve never lived in Pittsburgh this probably won’t mean anything to you. If you have spent time in the ‘burgh, however - it’s just a very sad thing.

Myron  Cope died of respiratory failure this morning at age 79.

Cope had several claims to fame over the course of his long career in sports, and in fact I didn’t even realize until recently that he’d been a crack sportswriter, at Sports Illustrated and elsewhere, long before he became the voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and a sort of Pittsburgh trademark. That’s how pervasive that voice was, maybe the most easily identifiable voice in sports. But if you weren’t from Pittsburgh - and even for some who were - it could be a very grating voice. “Yoi and double yoi!” - and all the inflections of Western Pennsylvania, the “yinz” (think “youse guys” - “yinz guys”), dahntahn, all the hallmarks of Pittsburghese, Cope was a high practitioner.

But the man knew his Steeler football. And if you too were into Steeler football - Myron was the man. Hilarious to listen to; if you were watching at home, you’d turn down the sound on the TV and turn up the radio so you could hear Cope and his partners, Bill Hillgrove and Tunch Ilkin, call the game instead.

And so in that respect - because Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania itself is so defined by football, by Steeler football - Cope came to sort of embody the region, at least for me. When Myron was on the radio and getting excited you knew the Steelers were doing well, and if the Steelers were doing well then the whole town was in an upbeat mood, and it was good to be in Pittsburgh. Stop down Primanti’s and pump an Iron, and all was right with the world.

So maybe we don’t fly the flag at half-mast. But if you’ve got a Terrible Towel, maybe wave it one last time for the guy who invented it, a true Pittsburgh original.