Scott Garceau felt an instant connection.
“It was crazy,” the afternoon drive-time host on 105.7 The Fan said. “I was out somewhere and people were coming up to me all of the time, ‘Hey, I heard what you did. You said this or somebody said that. What do you think of this?’ I was getting all of this personal reaction from people that I hadn’t received in TV for quite a few years.”
For more than three decades, Garceau delivered highlights and scores to Baltimore sports fans every weeknight as the evening and late-night sportscaster on Channel 2 (WMAR-TV).
But his relationship with his audience changed when he slid behind the microphone Nov. 3, 2008, 105.7’s first day as an all-sports radio station. The light came on and The Fan was now on the air.
“I think people feel more connected,” Garceau said. “They would tell me, ‘Say, I didn’t realize you had a sense of humor.’ Well, when you have two-and-a-half or three minutes on TV and you have three sound bites and four highlight packages, there’s not a whole lot of time to be you.”
As 105.7 The Fan prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary, Garceau, 67, still holds court on the sports topics of the day with co-host Jeremy Conn on “The Scott Garceau Show” weekdays from 2-6 p.m.
Among the topics that keep the phone bank lit these days: What will the Ravens do in next month’s NFL draft? And how is the Orioles’ rebuild shaping up as Opening Day approaches under a new regime?
The Fan is once again the Orioles’ flagship radio station. It lost the team’s broadcasting rights in 2011 before renewing them in 2015. It’s also the radio home for University of Maryland football and men’s basketball.
“We are not Chicago or Detroit or New York or some place that has every major sport,” Garceau said. “Baltimore is still a great sports town. I definitely think there was a market for sports talk. [The station] is serving the public. I think the appetite is there from the fans. They want to be able to hear about their local teams all day.”
Before being hired by 105.7 in June 2012, Bob Haynie worked for Baltimore’s first all-sports radio station, WNST 1570 AM. Haynie left WNST in the summer of 2010 and began his first assignment for 105.7 roughly a month later covering Ravens training camp at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md.
He now hosts a weekday talk show on The Fan from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. with former Washington Redskins general manager Vinny Cerrato called “Vinny and Haynie Show.”
“It’s interesting listening to the fans vent,” Haynie, 54, said. “People absolutely love the Ravens. But when the season turns sour, people get pretty brutal with their assessments of the team, which I kind of get a kick out of.
“Look, I used to go [crazy] over the local teams, too. If they screwed something up or weren’t playing well, I would be yelling and screaming myself. But I would get over it eventually. People today stew in it for 24 hours. That’s what gets me. It’s almost like when the Ravens lose, that’s better for Monday’s show because it makes for more entertaining radio.”
Garceau and Haynie will be on hand from 4-8 p.m. March 23 for The Fanniversary, commemorating 10 years on the air for 105.7 The Fan. The 21-and-over event at The Winslow in Baltimore will feature appearances by Baltimore sports legends as well as past and present on-air personalities from the station.
“I met a guy at lunch the other day. He said he listened to our show all of the time,” Garceau said. “He goes, ‘You’ve got the greatest job in the world. You get to go to work every day and talk about sports.’ I go, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ Sometimes you have to remind yourself of that. It’s a pretty good gig.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Chuck Sapienza
Issue 252: March 2019