{"id":216043,"date":"2026-06-11T01:06:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T01:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/216043\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T01:06:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T01:06:31","slug":"john-sanders-former-kdka-tv-sports-reporter-and-pirates-announcer-has-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/216043\/","title":{"rendered":"John Sanders, former KDKA-TV sports reporter and Pirates announcer, has died"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>John Sanders, a former KDKA-TV sports reporter and announcer for the Pittsburgh Pirates, has died. Sanders died Wednesday, just a week after his 83rd birthday.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>      <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/9ecb5fd9a55951ef532fc9d66560a7ec.jpg#.jpeg\" alt=\"9ecb5fd9a55951ef532fc9d66560a7ec.jpg \" height=\"349\" width=\"620\" class=\" lazyload\"  loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                (Photo Credit: KDKA)<\/p>\n<p>He was born in Kansas and worked in television in Topeka and Kansas City, Missouri, before moving to Pittsburgh. He came to KDKA-TV in 1978 as the weekend sports anchor and eventually became the station&#8217;s sports director.<\/p>\n<p>In 1980, he was paired with Lanny Frattare to call the Pirates games during the 1981 season, and he continued to be a part of the Pirates&#8217; broadcast team for nine seasons.<\/p>\n<p>Sanders left Pittsburgh in 1991, but he continued to do play-by-play work for other teams for many more years.<\/p>\n<p>Sanders leaves behind a legacy of decades of excellence in sports broadcasting that will never be forgotten.<\/p>\n<p>\n          More from CBS News\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Sanders, a former KDKA-TV sports reporter and announcer for the Pittsburgh Pirates, has died. Sanders died Wednesday,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[40932,73,75,74,10997],"class_list":["post-216043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-kdka","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-pirates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}