99.5 signed on in 2019 on a frequency that played classic rock for thirty years and has spent every day
since trying to get people to stop using the old letters. Denny Molinaro has been on Cleveland radio since
2003, the last four here. Ron Sledzik, whom nobody has called Ron on the air in a decade, came over from
afternoons in 2024. Sean Kovac, twenty-six, whom everyone here calls Birdy, reads the updates; Gary Hammond
has 10 to 2. Cut for length from the video simulcast. Nine callers made air.
6:38 a.m. · Open
MOLINARO: One thing at the top and then the phones, and the phones are gone already, every line lit at 6:15 in the morning in August. But one thing. I have sat in this chair, or one like it, at three stations in this town, for the introduction of nine Browns head coaches. Nine. I did Chris Palmer. There are people driving to work who were not born. And every one said the same six things in the same order, and I wrote it down every time.
SLEDGE: You wrote that in the car.
MOLINARO: I did not write that in the car.
SLEDGE: That’s got a shape to it. That’s got a middle.
MOLINARO: I thought about it in the car. Thinking is not writing. And here’s where I land, and it’s my position for the rest of August. This is the best August this team has had since 1994, including the ones where they were good. Five new linemen. An owner who did the one thing this city asked and then went quiet. I am at peace.
[DROP: MOLINARO, MARCH — “I! AM! AT PEACE!”]
MOLINARO: Birdy, you’re playing that all morning, aren’t you.
BIRDY: Not all morning.
SLEDGE: Two hundred and two days since January twenty-ninth. He counted them in the car.
MOLINARO: I counted because I have talked about January twenty-ninth every working day since January twenty-ninth and I am done. The man is gone, the money is gone, the world got its movie about Cleveland for a week. Fine. Great. Now can somebody tell me whether we block a defensive tackle, because nobody has, and we play a game in twenty-five days.
SLEDGE: Nobody’s going to talk about that. Nobody wants to. Phones.
7:05 a.m. · The phones
MOLINARO: Tommy in Brunswick, you’re on 99.5.
TOMMY, BRUNSWICK: Denny, longtime, first time. My father bought our seats in 1981. Section 137. I got them in ’08 when he passed, and my son gets them whether he wants them or not.
MOLINARO: That’s the whole show right there.
TOMMY: And before anything, God bless the kid for what he said about Watson. I’m not saying the word on the radio at seven in the morning, but he said it and I about drove off the road. That’s not why I’m calling.
TOMMY: We can’t run the ball. We have not run the ball since I don’t know when. So give it to Judkins twenty-five times. Every game. And the fella on the podcast says they’re doing a whole different thing up front, some kind of wide—
MOLINARO: Tommy. I don’t know what they’re doing up front and neither does the fella on the podcast. In 2019 I sat in a ballroom in Indianapolis and listened to a Browns head coach explain his philosophy for forty minutes, and by Halloween he was being asked about a t-shirt. Twenty-five carries I understand.
TOMMY: Thirty.
SLEDGE: He said twenty-five ten seconds ago.
TOMMY: I’m negotiating with myself.
MOLINARO: [laughing] Thank you, buddy. Good call.
MOLINARO: Vince in Parma Heights. Go.
VINCE, PARMA HEIGHTS: Yeah, hey. Season tickets since ’99. My wife’s name is on them but they’re mine.
VINCE: Start Shedeur. And if he’s not gonna start Shedeur then tell us why, because right now they got Shedeur and they got the other one—
VINCE: The little one. The Oregon kid.
MOLINARO: Dillon Gabriel.
VINCE: Right, him. And the rookie. Pick one. You know what. Start the rookie. The big one who runs. My nephew showed me a video. He’s faster than the corners, Denny.
SLEDGE: Taylen Green. One of the fastest quarterbacks anybody’s put a watch on.
VINCE: So start him.
SLEDGE: He’s a sixth-round rookie.
VINCE: So was Brady.
MOLINARO: All right, Vince, I love you, everybody’s Brady in August.
SLEDGE: Somebody was saying it before eight. It was Vince from Parma Heights.
7:26 a.m. · Rosalie, and then Lenny
MOLINARO: Rosalie in Garfield Heights, good morning.
ROSALIE, GARFIELD HEIGHTS: Good morning, hon. Now I don’t call, my husband called. He passed in ’19.
MOLINARO: Sorry to hear that.
ROSALIE: Thank you. Did you see the parents? At the thing in January, when they brought the young man out. They sat off to the side with no idea what they were doing there. They had that look people get at somebody else’s wedding.
SLEDGE: [laughing] They absolutely did.
ROSALIE: And I thought, well, those are nice people. I don’t know a thing about the football. My grandson explains it and I nod.
MOLINARO: That puts you ahead of half this audience and both men talking to you.
ROSALIE: Oh, and they should keep the tight end. Number 44. He seems like a lovely boy.
SLEDGE: Harold Fannin. He’s good, too, that’s not just a—
ROSALIE: He’s a lovely boy.
SLEDGE: He is. Keep him.
MOLINARO: Rosalie, call more. Line six, Lenny in Old Brooklyn.
LENNY, OLD BROOKLYN: Hey. So this whole town is falling over itself about this guy because of ninety seconds of television. He walks in off the internet and says what he said about a player who was never convicted of anything, and now he’s a hero. And nobody’s asking who he even is. Where’s he from? With a name like that I’d want to know who—
MOLINARO: Nope.
LENNY: I’m just asking where—
MOLINARO: He’s from Flint, Michigan. That’s it. That’s the whole answer, and you don’t want the answer, so we’re not doing that here. Not this show, not this station, not ever. Line four.
SLEDGE: Line four.
7:44 a.m. · The thing Sledge does every morning
SLEDGE: Denny’s got a number. Two hundred and two. Here’s mine. Zero.
MOLINARO: Here we go.
SLEDGE: Zero football teams. Not a high school, not a rec league, not a seven-on-seven in a parking lot.
BIRDY: That’s not a secret. He’s the one who says it first in every room he walks into.
SLEDGE: Sure. It’s free to say when everybody’s clapping.
BIRDY: Come on.
SLEDGE: No, here’s what I want explained. Day two. Not year two, not after a season. Day two, and he makes the biggest moment this franchise has had since 1999 about a thing he said.
MOLINARO: You wanted it done quietly.
SLEDGE: I wanted it done. Two sentences and a piece of paper, like every transaction any team ever did. Instead he did ninety seconds that ran on the morning shows, and he bought himself a season where nobody here can ask a hard question, because if you ask one there’s a guy online ready to tell you what you must think about women.
BIRDY: Nobody’s said that to you.
SLEDGE: Give it a week.
MOLINARO: Can I say the boring thing. I don’t care why he said it. You have no way of knowing and neither do I. He is not on my football team, which is what I wanted, and now I’d like to discuss the football team.
SLEDGE: That’s a dodge.
MOLINARO: That’s four hours a day for twenty-three years, is what that is. Charlie in Berea, you’ve been holding.
CHARLIE, BEREA: Yeah, hi. I’m with your partner. My son coaches CYO and he’s got more experience than this guy. And nobody says the other part out loud. They never charged the man with anything. Not one charge. And this kid stands up on television and hands down a verdict.
SLEDGE: You’re not the only one, Charlie. The phones say that every day.
MOLINARO: Thank you, Charlie. Birdy, do the update, I need a minute.
BIRDY: Browns and Buffalo again in Berea today, second day of the joint work, gates open to season ticket holders at nine. Guardians lost four to one, they go again tonight at seven-ten. Cavs open camp a week from Tuesday. And the Shoreway’s already stacked at Dead Man’s Curve, so if you’re coming in from the west side give yourself the extra twenty. That’s your update, I’m Birdy Kovac.
SLEDGE: Birdy’s with the coach. Say it into the microphone.
BIRDY: I’m with the coach.
SLEDGE: He’s twenty-six years old, everybody.
8:09 a.m. · Brook Park
MOLINARO: Mark in Middleburg Heights.
MARK, MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS: I don’t want to talk about the coach or the quarterbacks. Nobody in this city has said one word about Brook Park since February and I think that’s insane.
MOLINARO: Go ahead.
MARK: They had it done. There was a rendering, a hotel, they had the parking figured out before the seats. My brother-in-law works by the airport and guys told him they’d break ground in the spring. Then these people buy the team in December and by February it’s gone. Nobody’s mad, nobody’s happy. It went away.
MOLINARO: Four sentences, Mark. That was the statement, and I read it nine times because I kept thinking there had to be a second page. The team stays on the lakefront. They are not pursuing the Brook Park site. They thanked the county for its time. The fourth is about looking forward to the season. Nobody took a question.
MARK: And what do you think about that?
MOLINARO: I think that’s what happened. I’ve got the audio, I’ll play it. And here’s the one thing in it that’s a fact and not a feeling: people here were going to pay five figures for the license to sit in a seat they’d had thirty years. That is not happening.
MARK: That’s not an answer.
MOLINARO: It’s the one I’ve got.
SLEDGE: [pause] Sorry, I was reading something. What are we on?
MOLINARO: Brook Park.
SLEDGE: Oh. I got nothing on that. I really don’t. Mark, thank you though.
8:31 a.m. · Anthony builds a spreadsheet for fun
MOLINARO: Anthony in Medina’s held forty minutes, and my producer says you do this for fun, which is a sentence I need explained.
ANTHONY, MEDINA: I build the cap sheet out on a spreadsheet every March. It’s not a job. I sell medical equipment.
SLEDGE: Explain the money to me like I’m Vince from Parma Heights.
ANTHONY: People think the charge is a punishment for cutting him. It isn’t. That money was spent in 2022. The restructures pushed the accounting forward so it never had to be a real number on anybody’s desk. In January he stopped pushing. Everybody expected March, because March gets you another year to spread it over. One-seventeen-six, in one year.
SLEDGE: Worst anybody’s ever done.
ANTHONY: For one player, yes. Nobody has eaten that much on one man. But people here say it’s the worst dead money any team ever carried, and that’s wrong. Miami’s is worse this year, and nobody there is called brave about it. They’re called badly run.
MOLINARO: Hold on. So we’re not even the worst at this.
ANTHONY: You’re second.
MOLINARO: Second. Anthony, that’s the most Cleveland sentence anybody has said to me on this station. We set the money on fire, six weeks early, on purpose, and a team in Florida did it worse by accident.
SLEDGE: Does it hurt this year or is it already done?
ANTHONY: Oh, it hurts. It’s why free agency was two guards and a linebacker instead of—
ANTHONY: A defensive lineman. The thing they needed and still need.
SLEDGE: There it is. Anthony, you’re on this show every week now. No money involved.
8:52 a.m. · Dale has counted the punters
MOLINARO: Dale in Amherst, you’re on 99.5.
DALE, AMHERST: Why are there three punters.
SLEDGE: [pause] Sorry?
DALE: I pulled the roster up on my phone at work and there’s three punters on it. Three. You only need the one. Am I crazy?
MOLINARO: That’s a camp roster, Dale. Ninety men. They cut to fifty-three at the end of the month, and you carry two extra legs through August because they kick a hundred and something balls a day out there.
DALE: So two of them are just here.
MOLINARO: Two of them are just here.
DALE: Do they know?
SLEDGE: Yes, Dale. Since the day they signed. It’s the worst part of the job.
DALE: Well, that’s depressing. Cut one and sign a d-lineman.
SLEDGE: Kind of. Kind of, yeah.
SLEDGE: And that’s my whole position, by the way. It’s never been the coach for me. It’s the roster.
BIRDY: You did an hour on the coach.
SLEDGE: I did not do an hour on the coach.
BIRDY: Seven forty-four. I’ve got it on the log because I have to write down when you start one, it’s literally part of my job. Coming up at the bottom of the hour we’ve got Anthony from the Fan joining us for ten minutes on the offensive line, then the Guardians manager at nine-fifteen, and the phones stay open the whole time at 216-578-0995. Nine-nine-five. Denny will yell at you personally.
SLEDGE: [laughing] Nobody has the log. Nobody at this radio station has ever had a log. Break.
MOLINARO: He believes it while he’s saying it. That’s the trick, kid.
SLEDGE: I believe it till ten o’clock.
9:14 a.m. · Diane
MOLINARO: Diane in Willoughby. Good morning, you’re on the radio.
DIANE, WILLOUGHBY: Hi. Hi. I’ve never done this. I don’t listen to this station, my son-in-law has it on in the truck.
MOLINARO: That’s all right. What’ve you got?
DIANE: I don’t have a question. I don’t know if you have to have a question.
MOLINARO: You don’t.
DIANE: Okay. So in 2022 my husband and I had four seats, and I told him I wasn’t going anymore and he could do what he wanted. He kept them. I didn’t go for four years, and when people asked why I said something about parking.
DIANE: And in January I was in the driveway with the groceries still in the back and it came on the radio and I sat and listened to all of it. And he called him a rapist. Out loud, when he didn’t have to. Nobody in charge of anything has ever done that in front of me. Not in my life.
DIANE: And I don’t care about the football. I couldn’t tell you one player on that team. But I’m going in September with my daughter and I bought a shirt, which I feel silly about.
SLEDGE: Diane, no. Thank you for calling. Thank you. Because what you’re telling us, and I want everybody driving to hear this, is you needed somebody to say it out loud before you could come back. That’s a beautiful thing and a lot of people are afraid to say it. Thank you, sweetheart.
DIANE: Well, that’s not quite it. I wasn’t waiting for anybody.
BIRDY: Renewals came back at ninety-four percent, which is the highest since 2020, and the club put out that they’ve got a waiting list on the lower bowl for the first time in nine years. That’s in the release. I read the release.
DIANE: Oh. That’s nice.
MOLINARO: Diane, hang on. Can I ask you something, and you don’t have to answer. Do you like him? The coach. Not the thing he said — him.
DIANE: I have no idea. I’ve never seen him do anything else.
MOLINARO: That’s the right answer. That’s better than anything I’ve got.
DIANE: I didn’t know where else you say a thing like that. I’m sorry, I don’t know how this works.
MOLINARO: No. You did it right, Diane. Thank you for calling.
SLEDGE: What section, Diane?
DIANE: Oh, I don’t know. Up.
SLEDGE: Up. Enjoy it.
MOLINARO: We’ve gotta— hang on. Hang on a second. Bolan Heating and— no. We’ll be right back.
— 3:40 of commercial —
MOLINARO: Four years on this show and I don’t think we’ve had one of those.
SLEDGE: That was great radio and I handled it well.
MOLINARO: You called her sweetheart.
SLEDGE: She’s seventy.
MOLINARO: You don’t know how old she is. And I asked her what section, so I’m no better.
SLEDGE: I asked her what section.
MOLINARO: Same thing.
9:38 a.m. · Hammond comes in early
MOLINARO: Gary Hammond’s in the room and he’s got a face on. Ten to two, right after us. Gary.
HAMMOND: I heard Charlie from Berea in the parking lot and I want twenty seconds, because he said the only real thing all week and you ran past him.
HAMMOND: Twenty-two women filed suit. Twenty settled. Texas looked at it twice and nobody was ever charged. No trial, no jury, nobody stood in a room and read out a finding, and everybody arguing knows that’s the record. So here’s my question and it isn’t a trick. Who decides? I don’t think it’s a football coach. Nobody gave him that job, and if he does it in January the next one does it about a man I think is innocent.
SLEDGE: That’s what I’ve been saying since seven o’clock—
HAMMOND: You have not. Don’t put me in with you. You’re saying he’s a phony who wanted his name in the paper, which you can’t prove and can’t be made to take back, and costs you nothing to say again tomorrow. Mine has a price on it. I don’t like what he did, I know how it sounds, and I say it anyway.
SLEDGE: [pause] All right.
BIRDY: Gary, you keep saying who decides. Somebody was always deciding. For four years it was Jimmy Haslam, and he decided we’d all live with it. My whole adult life this team told me a man’s conduct was somebody else’s department. This is the first time anybody in there answered.
HAMMOND: Fair hit, and I’ll take it. Best one anybody’s made to me. It’s still not an answer, because “the last one was worse” is how every bad thing in this town gets done. Berry was better than Dorsey, Haslam was better than Lerner. Everybody better than the last one, all the way down.
HAMMOND: And here’s the part I sit with at night, and then I’m getting a coffee. He might be right. He might be completely right about the man, and I might be defending a process that let it happen four years. I don’t have anywhere clean to stand and neither does anybody on that board.
MOLINARO: And here’s what I’ve got, Gary, and hear how small it is. He’s gone. That’s the whole thing I feel. He isn’t on my football team, I don’t have to explain him to my daughter, and I don’t need one more syllable about it. Twenty-five days to Jacksonville and I don’t know who’s at quarterback and neither does he.
HAMMOND: That’s not an answer to what I asked.
MOLINARO: It’s not meant to be. I’m not in your argument, Gary. I’ve been in this one since 1999 and it’s about a football team.
SLEDGE: Best segment we’ve done in a month and we did it by accident at nine-forty.
MOLINARO: Buffalo’s out there again today, the board’s still full, Zac Jackson’s in tomorrow at eight because I want somebody in here who knows something about an offensive line.
HAMMOND: I’m not finished with him.
MOLINARO: Gary Hammond, ten to two, stay put, Bolan Heating and Cooling, 216-581-BOL—
