Friends come and go, but I will never forget about the MacZCliner(TM), only at Gallery Furniture.
That’s because Houston’s resident furniture crank and occasional election denier, Mattress Mack, advertises the MacZCliner probably a dozen times during any given Houston Astros radio broadcast.
Forget about Mack’s politics and his possibly-culturally-insensitive advertisements. I will hand Mr. McIngvale this: the guy is a grade-A, no-bones-about-it hustler. When Hurricane Beryl swept through last year, Mack found a way to work it into his radio ads. When mind-boggling floods swept away children and killed over 100 people in Central Texas this year, Mack was there to sell. The guy will do fucking anything for a sale.
I realized this because of 162 Astros games, I probably listened to 130 of them at one point or another this year on the radio. I could recite Mack ads in my sleep. Sometimes I wander around my home and just go up to my girlfriend and yell: “COME ON DOWN TO GALLERY FURNITURE GALLERY FURNITURE DELIVERS FREE FREE FREE TONIGHT.”
My dad was a big sports on the radio guy. As a kid, he’d throw Rangers games on in the car. He drove me absolutely nuts when he’d turn on Kansas City Chiefs games and spend the entire first quarter trying to sync the TV up with the Chiefs radio broadcast. He couldn’t stand the TV guys, he explained. He wanted to hear the guys back in KC.
When I started watching baseball to fill my time after moving to Houston in 2022, I quickly realized that I could not afford to shell out $70 a month to stream games on my barely-$40k a year salary. I was not buying cable. But I learned that the radio was free.
There’s really nothing like listening to baseball (or really any sport) on the radio as your primary way of consuming it. Seeing baseball in person is a treat. Watching it on TV is a luxury. But listening to a game on the radio, I’ve learned, is warm, firm, like a hug from your dad.
If you’ve read my love letter to my iPod, you know I love an uncomfortable, anachronistic-to-a-twenty-five-year-old experience. But it took me a little while to get there. I cycled through the MLB and iHeartRadio apps before getting an actual, physical radio. (My great grandmother died this summer and I was in Memphis to clean out the house. I was told I could take whatever I wanted, but all I took was the radio). And I never looked back after that.
Watching an NFL game on network television reminds you that thousands, if not millions of people tune in every week to shows called Tracker and Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent. Listening to baseball on the radio transports you somewhere stranger. All the ads on the radio broadcast are for Dasani and Wendy’s hamburgers and life insurance and local foundation companies and for other radio shows called Sports Thoughts With Chuck and Creepy Gil. In a day and age where your advertisements are curated by algorithms whose inner workings are a mystery to their own creators, listening to an commercial for bottled water feels like almost like performance art. Not to mention, much to my girlfriend’s chagrin, that they same the play dozen ads over and over. You learn to crave bottled water after a while.
Mattress Mack’s incoherent ads and bottled water is worth it for the Astros radio broadcast. I know everyone hates the Astros for a million reasons, many justified and some not. But I’d argue that you’d be hard-pressed to find a finer broadcasting duo than Robert Ford on play-by-play and Steve Sparks on commentary.
Ford has made a life in radio broadcasting, calling minor league games for the Binghamton Mets, Kalamazoo Kings and Yakima Bears before working for the Kansas City Royals. Sparks is a former knuckleballer who pitched for the Brewers, Angels, Tigers, and A’s during his career (The Astros signed him to a minor league deal in 2005, but he retired after being cut). The broadcast booth duo of a veteran radio man and a retired player isn’t rare, but Ford and Sparks have better chemistry than most.
What keeps me coming back to Astros radio is that both just ooze love for the game. Ford has an encyclopedic knowledge of the game; Sparks can fill any dead inning with a fascinating tale from his pitching days. His knowledge of pitching mechanics is fascinating, and I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the kick-change pitch mechanic this season.
But besides being stat and mechanics-savvy, both love the game’s history. During a game in May, Sparks regaled listeners with the story of a Pony League baseball manager who was also a bank robber. Last summer, during a blowout loss against the Tigers, both recalled the story of Ty Cobb beating up a heckler who questioned Cobb’s racial ancestry. They probably knew those stories by heart. The Tigers beat Houston 13-5, but I listened to every out just to hear the banter. Every time surprise Astros pitcher Jason Alexander started, they’d crack Seinfeld jokes. When reliever Bryan King faced Jake Burger, they similarly got witty with it. No matter the quality of play on the field, the radio broadcast put a smile on my face.
Ford brings almost a literary quality to his play-by-play. When describing a player with two home runs, Ford said “He of the two homers.” There are better examples, but I always loved that phrasing. But make no mistake, when the ‘Stros are cooking, the two know how to pump you up. Ford’s “AT THE WALL, LOOKING UP, SEE YA LATER!” has soundtracked iconic Astros homers, whether they were regular season games in June or playoff must-wins. Even when Adolis Garcia or Aaron Judge or some other Astros foe had a big dinger, his “If it stays fair it’s gone… and it is gone” put a great bow on what surely must have been a bomb. A great baseball call stays with you for days, weeks, even months after the game. Sparks’ “SÍ SEÑOR” or Ford’s “Keep booing” at Dodger Stadium will always stay with me.
I needed this, the routine of dinner after work and baseball on the radio after dinner. For various reasons, whether it’s career stuff or the overwhelming dread of being transgender in America right now, it’s been a weird year for me. Sparky and Ford were my constants through much of it. The broadcast schedule of two night games and an afternoon game became the rhythm of my summer, as did the incredible bumper music played between innings on the radio. There are not a lot of things that feel stable for me these days, if nothing else because of my anxiety. For most of the year, Steve Sparks, Robert Ford, and Houston Astros baseball is one of the few things that feels like it will never end, until it does.
It’s expensive to watch baseball, not to mention blackouts and streaming exclusive games. The radio, then, feels like a hidden gem. Baseball on the radio is out of time. It’s like going to library or finding a coffee shop that still lets you use the bathroom without paying for anything. Listening to baseball feels like one of the few things left in our society that doesn’t want to take advantage of you while you do it. The commercials are obnoxious, but they are part of the quirk. The crackle of the radio and finding the random spots in my apartment where I don’t get reception are novelties. I can find anything I want within seconds now, thanks to my phone. To be denied something for a few seconds because of radiowaves and the things that interfere with them almost feels like a blessing.
Obviously, I’m bummed my Astros aren’t in the playoffs. But my summer of radio was worth the heartbreak. I went to a game alone earlier this year and took my radio. I listened to the broadcast while I watched and scored the game. It was an exercise in being by myself, but I wasn’t really alone. I felt more in tune with the game as I watched and listened. It felt like baseball distilled to what it was supposed to be, and everything else melted away.
To watch something without sight is to learn how to see again entirely. I can’t see every pitch, every out, every dinger, every error. I can only hear them thanks to the broadcast, and it’s up to my mind to fill in the rest. For me, the image that comes through is something warmer and sharper, something realer than real. I can see Jose Altuve up with the bases loaded and two outs.
Even when he strikes out looking, I feel richer for the way I saw it.