Clad in purple and black, the Ravens look, aesthetically, the same in 2006. Personnel shifts change the face of a team year in and year out, and with Steve McNair under center, the offense should have a nice facelift. One of the most noticeable differences this season, though, doesn?t come on the field, but in the booth.
For the first time in the Ravens? 11-year history, Scott Garceau will not be doing the play-by-play. When WBAL and 98 Rock acquired the team?s radio broadcast rights in December, they brought in Gerry Sandusky and Stan White to take over for Garceau and longtime partner Tom Matte.
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“Our challenge is to do the best job we can,” White said. “Some people are going to like us, but those guys did it for 10 years and they have a following.”
Matt Andrews, a 65-year-old Harford County resident known as “The Fan Man,” said that the change was going to be tough.
“Scott is the voice of the Ravens,” Andrews said. “If you talk Ravens or you hear Ravens, you hear his voice. He is Baltimore; he is the Ravens. We have already gone over to his radio site during the preseason tailgating to say hi and tell him we miss him. It is like when the Colts left ? not as bad, of course.”
Andrews said, though, that he believes Sandusky will fill Garceau?s shoes and everyone will eventually adjust.
“It just won?t be old school,” Andrews said.
According to Garceau, “You show up and you do a job and you wonder what kind of impact you are having. It takes something like that to realize [it].”
Garceau, who is the sports director at ABC affiliate WMAR Channel 2, said that he was disappointed to get the news that he wouldn?t be back for 2006.
“We knew last year was the final year of the contract and that possibility existed” that he and Matte would not return, Garceau said.
WBAL bought the rights with a full month left on the schedule, so Garceau and Matte broadcast the final games of the season knowing that was it.
“The Ravens went out of their way to say it was not their call and that if they had the choice, they would have had us back,” Garceau said. “Art Modell told Tom and I that he considered us part of the family.”
Matte and Garceau go all the way back to the Colts, when they worked the TV broadcast together for 1981-83. The pair also broadcast the Baltimore Stars in 1985, the Stallions in 1994-95 and were the logical choice to be with the Ravens.
Garceau said he was going to focus more on his”day job” at Channel 2 and spend some time with his wife.
“We are still together this year, but we are just doing the pre- and postgame stuff,” Garceau said. “Would I like to still be doing the games? Yes, but I will enjoy having some time off. We got a place in Ocean City, and I can play golf and maybe go to a Penn State game or maybe go to Green Bay and see a Packers game.”
When the decision was made to make the change, Garceau got a call from Sandusky.
“I told him there was nothing personal against him ? if somebody had to get it, I am glad it was him instead of some guy traipsing in out of town,” Garceau said.
“I knew how he felt and I knew the disappointment,” Sandusky said. “I have been on that side of the fence, and it is the part of the business we didn?t control.”
Sandusky knows Ravens? fans had a loyalty to Garceau for broadcasting the team for en entire decade. He said that, with time, they will accept him as the voice of the team.
“I don?t try to live up to anybody,” Sandusky said. “I just try to be me. I think your only shot at success is to be who you are.
“For me it is the dream job. It is the job I got into broadcasting to do. It is the job I dreamed of doing when I was a little kid.”
His father, John, was a coach with the Philadelphia Eagles, Miami Dolphins and the Colts. As a child, Gerry grew up talking Xs and Os at the dinner table and was everything from a ballboy to a “locker room rat.”
Gerry was with his father when he passed away in early March.
“I was able to whisper into his ear that I had made it to the NFL, too,” Sandusky said. “That is what I feel when I go into the broadcast booth for game. I feel him with me. I would just love for him to listen to me on the radio, but I am pretty sure you get radio reception in heaven.”
Broadcasting for the Ravens takes Sandusky back to his own childhood.
“Somebody asked me before the first game, how did I feel? I feel that same sense that I had as a kid watching his games, that this moment and this place, all?s right with the world,” he said. “I can?t conceive of more fun than I have in the middle of the game. There is no place on the planet I would rather be.”
Much like Sandusky was involved in his father’s NFL career, he is involving his family in his Ravens? broadcasts. His son, Zack, and daughter, Katy, help him research for games and his wife, Lee Ann, helps him make flip charts.
“It becomes more than making a living,” Sandusky said. “It becomes making a life and sharing that life.”
