PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — One day at Citizens Bank Park, in the parking garage used by players, front office staff and broadcasters, an executive from the business side of the Phillies stopped radio announcer Scott Franzke and asked him about a popular Twitter account bearing his name and the nickname of his broadcast partner, Larry Andersen.
"There's this account. It says ‘FranzkeLA,’ and I just wondered if that's really you," the exec said to Franzke, he remembers.
"And I said, 'What are you talking about?'"
Franzke and Andersen are not social media people. As the Twitter handle @FranzkeLA asks in its bio: "How would that event work?"
The foundation of @FranzkeLA’s popularity was its transcriptions of silly things Franzke and Andersen have said during broadcasts through the years — but if they were talking about a baseball game from the radio booth, how in the world could they have transcribed anything in real time, then tweeted it?
It's impossible.
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The executive posed a second question to Franzke: "Was it stuff you really say?" he asked.
So, Franzke said, he looked at @FranzkeLA’s feed. “And I was like: 'Yeah, this is stuff we really say.'"
The account has been run by 44-year-old Mike Robertson of Philadelphia since April 2011. It is unofficial and unaffiliated. Nevertheless, it uses a photo of Franzke’s and Andersen's bobbleheads as its profile picture and an overhead snap of them in the radio booth as the background.
"I keep thinking maybe I should have my own personal account,” said Robertson, who works in health care administration. “But who's gonna look at that?"
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'That "I knew it!" moment'
Over a decade in, @FranzkeLA has over 25,000 followers, having grown in popularity during what is now a 10-year postseason drought for the Phillies.
For years, the majority of the tweets were those entertaining moments from the radio booth. As time went on, there were fewer and fewer of those tweets, and more posts of old Phillies videos, newspaper headlines, and "other assorted nonsense."
Robertson says he's been a "4 for 4" fan since birth. His dad took him to The Vet to see embarrassing Phillies teams of the mid-’80s. About a quarter-century later, in 2011 when he started the Twitter account, the Phillies were arguably the best team in baseball. The world was different. Social media and smartphones were prominent. What had not changed was Robertson's love for radio — dating back to his youth, listening to West Coast games at bed time.
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On Opening Day 2011, Robertson was hanging out with his friend Jim Proulx, a fellow Philadelphia sports fan. Robertson had seen a Twitter account in those days that transcribed things legendary Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully said on the air. Proulx says he remembers talking to Robertson that day about it, saying someone should set up a similar account for Franzke and Andersen.
"I completely forgot about it," Proulx said of the conversation. "About a month or so later, I saw his [@FranzkeLA] Twitter account pop up. Immediately I either emailed or texted him, asking him, 'Hey, this is you or else somebody stole that idea.' And he said, 'No, it's not me.'"
But it was Robertson. He was keeping it a secret. Originally, he had intended only to follow others’ accounts. Then he started tweeting quotes from the booth for his own amusement, never expecting anyone to notice.
But the account took off.
"It is crazy to me that anyone is interested in this," says Robertson.
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Proulx was suspicious.
"I think there may have been times when we were hanging out, watching a game, where I looked over, saw him on his phone and, in the back of my mind, wondered: ‘I know this is the guy behind this account,’" says Proulx. But he never caught Robertson "red-handed," he said.
Robertson had to eventually come clean to Proulx and other friends. In 2016, the Athletic's Matt Gelb, formerly of The Inquirer, wrote an article about the Phillies radio booth that included the story of Robertson's Twitter account.
"I was a little bit annoyed that he hadn't told me that it was him," Proulx said, "but I also kind of had that 'I knew it!' moment, where I had always suspected it was him."
'The best kind of marketing we can hope for'
There's no mistaking the popularity Franzke and Andersen have built over the past 15 years or more, with their memorable calls, their chemistry and their sense of humor. But do they feel it's worth it for a listener to hang on their every word?
"Yes, we're that good," Franzke said sarcastically, both he and Andersen laughing.
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”It's flattering that somebody finds it entertaining enough to sort of repeat the goofy stuff we said," he added.
Franzke said he appreciates the work Robertson puts into @FranzkeLA — "because it promotes us, promotes our broadcasts and promotes Phillies baseball. And …honestly, it's the best kind of marketing we can hope for."
And Franzke and Andersen both said they are thankful Robertson is so — as he puts it — “psychotically careful to make sure the quotes are accurate.”
After all, Robertson said, “it's not my name on the account, so it'd be unfair to quote, inaccurately."
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Robertson has still not met Franzke or Andersen — and he says he doesn’t intend to, despite how much he listens to and transcribes them.
"I think we're good the way we are," he said.
"I hope they know that it's a tribute," Robertson said, "and that it just shows how many people really love what they do. And that's good enough for me."