Change of hearth

Sporting News, The, Sept 9, 1996 by Paul Attner

When he was a boy, he made annual summer treks with his family to the training camp of the Browns. Under the soothing hot sun, he watched with envy as the Browns he loved the most--Jim Brown and Gary Collins, Milt Plum and Jim Ninowski--rounded into shape. He lived in Kent, Ohio, about 30 miles south of Cleveland; his dream of dreams was to play one day in the NFL wearing a Browns uniform.

He had reason to fantasize. He was an incredible athlete, one of the best to come out of Ohio. In high school, he was the first in state history to play in all star football, basketball and baseball games the same school year. He attended Ohio State, made all-Big Ten twice and played on a Rose Bowl team. He bled Ohio; he bled Browns.

Now, three decades later, Stan White is back watching the Browns again. Only they no longer are the Browns. They are the Ravens. And he no longer lives in Kent. He resides in Baltimore. He never stopped rooting for the Browns, even when he played linebacker in the NFL, first with the Colts in Baltimore for eight years, then with the Lions for three, before finishing his career in the USFL for two years. Like everyone else who attended the Ravens' inaugural game Sunday in Memorial Stadium, he never envisioned his boyhood team would wind up somewhere else. But unlike most Browns fans, he has come to terms with the transition.

White has season tickets. For now, he sits 12 rows behind the Ravens' bench; in the new stadium under construction in Camden Yards, he has the option to buy four club seats by this fall. They will cost him $75 each a game once he pays the personal seat license of $3,000 per seat. But he is so delighted to have professional football back in his adopted home that money is not an issue.

His family and friends in Ohio wonder how he can be so supportive of the Ravens and their owner, Art Modell. White had to go back to Cleveland a week before the opener to visit his sick father and braced himself for the avalanche of criticism. They think he has betrayed his Browns roots by switching allegiance to the Ravens. He counters he is convinced Modell had no alternative but to leave. Why else would he abandon a city he loves?

"I make my points, but I don't think you can ever win over an emotion," White says. "It is like a divorce. You can talk logically, but there is so much emotion that logic plays no part. I understand their feelings. We feel the same way about Indianapolis. We despise the city because it has our name, Colts. It belongs to us and this team should be the Colts."

Instead it is the Ravens. But that is good enough for White. "Maybe if this had happened early on, I would be on my high horse and say, `I don't like it. We shouldn't be taking a team from another city,'" he says. "We were desperate for a team here. We felt we had been through so much with the Colts' leaving and not getting an expansion team; we had been kicked in the face long enough.

"This city deserved a team. It has a storied football history, but to be ignored like we were, it was like kicking a dog while it was down. So we had almost given up hope. And when you are in a corner like that, you are ready to accept and go after whatever shot you have. We just said we are going to play by the same rules as everyone else. If a team wants to leave and we turn them down, it would be cutting off your nose to spite your face."

Even if that team is the Browns? "I understand what the Browns mean to Cleveland, probably more than almost anyone else in Baltimore," he says quietly. "They deserve a team, too, and they are going to get one. That is proper. But it was proper Baltimore has a team. This is a great football city."

White had a fine career in Baltimore. A 17th-round pick in 1972, he was among the team's leading tacklers during the '70s when the club slowly suffered under the ownership of Robert Irsay, who took over the year White entered the league. White even played for Ted Marchibroda, who coached the Colts for five years before being fired; Marchibroda is now the Ravens' first coach. White set an NFL record for linebackers in 1975 by intercepting eight passes. He liked the city so much that even when he was traded after the 1979 season to Detroit, he kept his offseason home in Baltimore. A lawyer, he has practiced there--he once was the agent for ex-Brown Frank Minnifield, who held out at the beginning of one season, much to Modell's chagrin--and currently owns two health clubs and does sports work for a local radio station.

"I was in the USFL when Irsay pulled out the team, but it still really got to me," he says. "I think Baltimore helped lose the Colts by not coming to some terms with him, but to take the team from the city, it was hard to fathom. I couldn't believe there would be no more football in Memorial Stadium."

On Sunday, he stood on that Memorial Stadium field with other former Colts who returned to their old park to honor the past and acknowledge the beginning of the Ravens. It was a time of nostalgia, for his boyhood in Kent and his playing career in Baltimore. And it was a time for celebration, even if Jim Brown and Milt Plum now are Leroy Hoard and Vinny Testaverde. And even if the brown and orange uniforms have been replaced by purple and black.