Barry Horn

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Scott Franzke, the radio voice of the Philadelphia Phillies, took an unconventional route to the World Series radio booth.

Born and raised in Dallas, Franzke, a W.T. White grad, got into broadcasting during his days at SMU. He says he got to call all the Mustangs football and basketball games he wanted for the campus radio station in the early 1990s because, well, nobody else was interested in the job.

He might have liked to call baseball, too, but they don't play that game at SMU. He did, however, get to broadcast plenty of high school football games for tiny radio stations around the area.

After graduating from SMU in 1994, Franzke went to work for Prime Sports Radio, which hoped to grow into what ESPN Radio has become. He was laid off in the spring of 1997.

Fortunately, he already had signed on to do part-time weekend sports talk shows at KRLD-AM (1080) around the station's Rangers coverage. That's how he got to know Rangers radio broadcasters Eric Nadel and Vince Cotroneo.

Nadel and Cotroneo took a liking to the hard-working kid with the smooth voice. They convinced him that if he really wanted to get into baseball broadcasting, he had to get out of town.

And so, Franzke littered minor league teams with his resume, his football tapes and the one baseball tape he could muster ­ a Highland Park state playoff game. That landed him a job with the Class A Kane County (Ill.) Cougars, a team in the Florida Marlins organization. That lasted three seasons. It might have lasted longer had Nadel not pestered Franzke to send him tapes. Franzke didn't want to. He didn't want to bother Nadel. He had no idea Nadel wanted the tapes to get him back to KRLD.

Franzke returned to his hometown in 2002 and worked three seasons of pregame and postgame shows. He filled in during 25 game broadcasts and thought maybe, just maybe, he would someday land his "dream job" in the Rangers booth.

When Cotroneo's contract was not renewed after the 2003 season, Franzke applied for the privilege of working alongside Nadel, whom he considers his mentor. He says he "didn't get anywhere with it." Instead, the Rangers hired Victor Rojas away from the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Resigned to eventually returning to the minor leagues, Franzke sent out his resumes again. In 2006, he already had been offered a Triple-A job in Albuquerque and was about to interview with Triple-A Pawtucket when the Phillies offered him pregame and postgame work and a precious two innings of radio play-by-play.

How did that work out? In 2007, Franzke was bumped to six innings. In 2008, when the Phillies won the World Series, beating the Tampa Bay Rays, he was up to eight innings. It was Franzke's honor to hand over the other inning to Hall of Fame Phillies voice Harry Kalas coming over from television.

As you probably know, Kalas, who had become "a grandfather figure," died in the broadcast booth just before a Phillies game at the Washington Nationals in April. Philadelphia mourned the death of an icon. Franzke worked every inning of every game for the Phillies this season. After all, who could replace Kalas?

Soon after the Phillies beat the Dodgers on Wednesday night to earn another trip to the World Series, Franzke and his wife, Lori, whom he met at SMU, watched the celebration from the radio booth.

"Do you realize how lucky you are?" Lori asked her husband.

He just nodded his head.

"You know it's pretty ridiculous how this has all worked out," Franzke, 37, said over the phone Thursday. "When the team is good, it makes the announcers sound good. ...

I've got a good organization, a fun team and terrific people I work with. I'm not sure there is any more I could have asked for."

It's rare that a college game would be the highest rated TV program of the week in Dallas-Fort Worth during football season. Especially for a game that kicked off at 11 a.m. But the Cowboys were off last weekend, and we are talking Longhorns-Sooners here.

Saturday's Texas-OU game on ABC scored a 17.7 rating, which translates into a few homes short of 450,000. That's a healthy number. For the mind-numbing early kick, it's smashing. The game topped out in its last half hour at 21.8 (554,000 homes).

Here's how NFL games and MLB broke down in D-FW on Sunday: Giants-Saints (Fox), 10.7; Ravens-Vikings (CBS) 5.4; Titans-Pats/Bills-Jets (CBS), 12.1; Bears-Falcons (NBC), 11.4; Dodgers-Phillies (TBS), 0.8 (not a misprint!)

And here are some other markets for Texas-OU: Houston (10.8), Austin (27.3), Tulsa (28.3), Oklahoma City (35.6).

It is official: Dallas-Fort Worth finished dead last among Nielsen's 56 major markets for Phillies-Dodgers NLCS ratings. That means every town with a major league team showed more interest, as did non-MLB burgs such as Greenville, S.C.; Albuquerque, N.M., and Grand Rapids, Mich.

Fox has signed Ozzie Guillen, manager of the Chicago White Sox, to work in its pregame and postgame World Series studio. Good hire, even if the network might have to install a 10-second delay to guard against Guillen's colorful use of the language.

Those World Series games, which are scheduled to begin Wednesday, will start earlier than in recent years. They should get underway at 6:57 p.m. Dallas time,with the exception of Game 4 on Sunday, Nov. 1, which starts at 7:20 p.m. Nov. 1? Hey, if it goes seven games, the Series ends Nov. 5.

The season tips off Tuesday when the Mavericks host the Washington Wizards on Fox Sports Southwest. The big news is that all games should come into area living rooms in glorious high definition. FSSW has 48 games scheduled, TXA 21 has 30 and HDNet has five. Also, TNT has four games, NBA TV has seven, and ESPN has nine.

Also Mark Cuban didn't tinker with his broadcasters in the off-season. Mark Followill and Bob Ortegel are back on TV games with Chuck Cooperstein and Brad Davis on the ESPN-FM 103.3 radio calls.

■ Kudos to Fox Sports Net sideline reporter Jim Knox, who was almost trampled by delirious Colorado fans after the Buffaloes upset of No. 17 Kansas last week. Knox picked himself up and rushed to find Colorado quarterback Tyler Hanson in the crowd. The broadcaster, with blood streaming down his face, then calmly proceeded to interview the star of the game. ...

■ ESPN College GameDay will be in Provo, Utah for the TCU-BYU showdown, which belongs to Versus. GameDay's Kirk Herbstreit will jet from Provo to Columbia, Mo. to work the Texas-Missouri booth alongside Brent Musburger at 7 p.m. for ABC. ...

■ HBO's Real Sports on Tuesday at 9 p.m. offers an updated profile of legendary Detroit broadcaster Ernie Harwell, 91, who recently disclosed he has inoperable cancer. ...

■ NBA TV, a rumor in many area homes for years, is now available in my Verizon Fios home, and has new carriage agreements with Time Warner and Dish Network. The network is skyrocketing from 15 million to 45 million homes. ...

■ Texas A&M-Texas Tech didn't warrant TV coverage today, and Texas A&M-Iowa State next Saturday will also be ignored by TV. That will make five of the Aggies' first eight games getting the blackout treatment.