COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – Twenty years later, the call still leaves you with chills.
“El Presidente … El Perfecto!”
That’s how Dave Van Horne encapsulated the moment when Chris Gwynn’s drive to centre field settled into Marquis Grissom’s glove for the final out of Dennis Martinez’s perfect game on July 28, 1991.
It was simple, poignant, and brilliant – a Hall of Fame call by someone now honoured in the Hall of Fame.
“After 8½ innings had gone by I sat there during the commercial break and I had not given it any thought up to that point, I thought if he pulls this off, what am I going to do, what am I going to say,” he recalled Saturday before being presented with the Ford C. Frick Award for excellence in baseball broadcasting. “His nickname was ringing in my ears and just the thought El Perfecto came to mind.
“I remember the moment when the ball was caught in centre field and I said El Presidente, El Perfecto, Ken Singleton and I both did the same thing, we took our headset mics off, put them down, and we just sat back and let the director and pictures do the rest.”
It was with such understated elegance that Van Horne’s soothing voice provided the soundtrack for English-speaking Montreal Expos fans for 32 years, from the club’s debut on April 8, 1969 until his departure following the 2000 season, when the writing was on the wall for the franchise.
He’s been the lead radio voice for the Florida Marlins ever since, winning over an entirely new set of fans in the Sunshine State.
The Martinez call, on a sunny day at Dodgers Stadium, has become Van Horne’s signature, at least for baseball fans in Canada. But how he came to it was unusual for him, since he never liked to pre-plan what he would say on air.
“I’ve known some broadcasters to write down calls on post-it notes and stick them up in the booth in case they got an opportunity to use them,” said Van Horne. “For it was unusual to think what I might say a half-inning later because I’ve always believed that one of the great things about baseball on the radio or on television is its spontaneity, there’s no script.
“So you rely on your experience, your background and what’s happening in the game at the moment to dictate to you exactly what you’re going to say. But that was so special … I did give it some thought.”
Some thought also went into his trademark “Up, Up and Away” call for home runs, but not in a premeditated sort of way. Driving home one night in 1970 and listening to recap show of that night’s game, Van Horne noticed that he and partner Russ Taylor had virtually identical home run calls.
“I thought I should probably come up with something that’s a little different,” explained Van Horne. “(Later that night) I had a music station on and the Fifth Dimension song “Up, Up and Away” was on and I listened to that and thought ‘I’m going to give that up, up and away a try.’ And I tried it for about a week and nobody said one word to me about it … and I thought, ‘This is a very bad idea.’ So I just stopped and for the next little while I didn’t do that.
“Then John McHale, the president of the club, came up to me and said, ‘What happened to up, up and away?’ I said, ‘I stopped, nobody said anything.’ He said, ‘Well they’ve said plenty to me, they like it, they want you to continue. Go back to it.’
“And I did, and I’ve stayed with it.”
A native of Easton, Pa., Van Horne began his broadcasting career with the Richmond Braves of the International League before joining the expansion Expos, who opened with 10 straight losing seasons.
The franchise’s second decade was much better than its first and included its lone trip to the post-season in 1981 – a heartbreaking 3-2 series loss to the Dodgers on Rick Monday’s ninth-inning home run in Game 5 – while its third was dogged by constant questions about the future.
In 2000, with the Expos unable to secure broadcasting deals, Van Horne called the entire season on the Internet. Fed up, he left the next season for Florida.
The period was the most difficult of his career.
“My escape daily was the 2½, three hours that I was behind the mic to do the ball game, the rest of my time was spent wondering what I was going to do the rest of my life,” said Van Horne. “Fortunately before that season ended, I had a conversation with David Dombrowski and the Marlins were interested, they were going to make a change in their radio broadcast booth.
“So I didn’t miss a beat, but I didn’t realize that until the very end of that 2000 season. A good part of that season was spent agonizing over what next for me, my family and my livelihood as a baseball broadcaster. The openings at the major-league level don’t come up very often.”
Van Horne is the second Frick Award winner to have predominantly worked in Canada, joining 2009 winner Tony Kubek.
Tom Cheek, the late radio voice of the Toronto Blue Jays who called 4,306 consecutive games, and Jacques Doucet, the longtime radio voice of the Expos in French, were both among the 10 finalists on the Frick ballot and may someday join them.
Their place in Cooperstown is a reminder of how fortunate Canadian baseball fans have been over the years, with voices such as Jerry Howarth, Dan Shulman, Don Chevrier, Ken Singleton, Buck Martinez and Alan Ashby, to name a few, working various broadcasts.
Van Horne’s partners in the booth have included Cheek, Singleton, Martinez, Don Drysdale, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider and Tommy Hutton.
Requirements for the Frick Award include a minimum of 10 years of continuous broadcast service with a big-league club, network or combination of the two. The 20-member electorate is asked to base their selections on longevity, continuity with a club, honours, including World Series and all-star assignments, and popularity with fans.
