The latest broadcasting honoree of the Baseball Hall of Fame in
Cooperstown, New York, is Dave Van Horne, the voice of my hometown
Florida Marlins. Van Horne has been announcing baseball on radio
for two score and three years, the last decade for the Marlins,
earning him the Ford Frick Award for excellence in broadcasting. He
got to join this year’s player inductees, Bert Blyleven and Roberto
Alomar, in the ceremony last Saturday at the Hall. In Florida
pretty much every parade gets rained on, so I might as well not
hold back from commenting truthfully.
The old joke about the anti-Semite at the bar would seem
to apply. The anti-Semite sees one Jew in the corner of a crowded
bar, so he orders a drink for everyone in the whole crowded room
but the Jew. He sees the Jew accepting the insult with a smile so,
rankled, he does it again and again but the guy never gets ruffled.
Finally, the anti-Semite asks the bartender if he knows who that
guy is that he has been snubbing all night.
“Sure I know him,” the bartender replies. “That’s my boss.
He owns the place.”
Sometimes life works like that. People snub the annoying
guy by concentrating on everyone else in the room, but by being
ignored that guy manages to linger there until he is accepted as a
member in good standing. Baseball has a host of good announcers,
many of whom I have had the pleasure and privilege of hearing over
the years. The worst I have ever heard is Dave Van
Horne.
This is not my personal opinion. It is shared by every
intelligent fan I have ever conversed with in town. My friends have
called the team and pleaded with them to find somebody else. But
his role as a vintage old-hand old-pro multigenerational veteran
grizzled revered classic performer has made him impossible to
judge. Now whatever small hope we held out for relief is gone. No
one is going to fire the Hall of Fame guy. We are consigned to
misery for all eternity.
Basically, this guy has very little idea of where the ball
is going when it is hit and often he does not know where it has
gone. People around here compete with horror tales of ludicrously
missed calls. There was the time the Marlins needed a hit with the
bases loaded and one out in the ninth inning, down by one run. The
batter swung and Van Horne said it was a hit to left. The crowd
noise did not seem to fit with the call and we soon learned why:
the batter had lined to third and the fielder had stepped on the
base for a game-ending double play.
Balls hit “off the end of the bat” turn out to be monster
home runs. Balls hit well turn out to be popped up to the
shortstop. In Thursday’s game at Washington, a runner tried to
steal on a 3-1 pitch with two out. The catcher threw him out and
Van Horne gleefully proclaimed a strike-him-out-throw-him-out
double play. I was paying attention so I knew he was wrong. Sure
enough, he came back after the commercial to correct the fact that
the batter had not struck out and he would lead off the next
inning.
What we do as listeners to compensate is to ignore him and
follow the crowd noise. Since it takes him time to reconnoiter, the
crowd generally calls the play before he does. We know if the
player is safe or out from hearing if the crowd is happy or
deflated by the result. Eventually Van Horne will catch up. The
great announcers are able to describe the events in real time and
include the listener in the excitement.
I grew up in New York City listening to Phil Rizzuto
calling the Yankee games and Bob Murphy calling the Met Games. Both
were delightful. Murphy had an ingenious way — literary, really —
of building up drama and suspense by describing tangential details.
He was a sort of Damon Runyon of the broadcast booth. “The pitcher
leans over… looks for the sign… now he straightens… steps off…
walks around the mound… picks up the rosin bag… now he’s ready… the
windup… the pitch…” It was mesmerizing.
When I lived in Chicago in the '80s I had the joy of
following the late Harry Caray’s calls, first for the White Sox
while Bill Veeck was the owner and then over to the Cubs. Caray
became inebriated by about the seventh inning, so the end of the
game was particularly entertaining, the slurred words somehow even
more charming. If the game went into extra innings, poor Harry
almost went into a coma. But it was so much fun; I hated to miss a
minute.
In the '90s I lived in Cincinnati, where I followed the
Reds on the radio with the great Marty Brennaman and his late
sidekick, the “old left-hander” Joe Nuxhall. Every game was a
titanic struggle, in Brennaman’s felicitous phrase, and you always
knew exactly what was going on. Jack Buck for the Cardinals, Vin
Scully for the Dodgers, Jon Miller for the San Francisco Giants and
ESPN; there have been so many great ones. Yet incompetent longevity
can still get you into the Hall.
Giving Van Horne this award in the Hall of Fame is like
giving Director Ed Wood, the famously horrible director who managed
to hang on for years, a Lifetime Achievement Award. It is like
rewarding Joseph Biden, the famously horrible Senator who managed
to hang on for years, the Vice Presidency of the United States. No
one would be dumb enough to do one of those things, now would
they?
Okay, one last joke apropos to this event. Sam goes
shopping with his wife and suffers through an interminable series
of trying on one dress after another to solicit his opinion.
Finally, on one trip out of the dressing room, his wife is actually
wearing something he can tolerate. “You should get this one, my
dear.”
“You idiot! This is the one I came in with.”
