Van Horne’s work with Marlins reduced dramatically this season

Former Montreal Expos broadcaster and Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Dave Van Horne will call fewer games for the Miami Marlins this season. Photo: Miami Marlins/Twitter

April 7, 2021

By Danny Gallagher

Canadian Baseball Network

It's been an amazing lifetime of work for Dave Van Horne.

Here he is in his 52nd season of doing play-by-play of Major League Baseball League games.

In a run that lasted 32 seasons, the award-winning broadcaster called Montreal Expos games from 1969 through 2000 on radio and television.

Then he switched to the Marlins in 2001.

He's 81 but looks maybe 70 and loves what he's doing. Yet, he would like to be doing more on air-time work.

Back in February, the Marlins advised Van Horne that his 2021 gig would be scaled back. Instead of doing a full slate of 162 games like he has done most of his career, he's calling less than one third of the games.

"I'm doing just 47 regular-season games. Not my choice,'' Van Horne said in an email exchange. "I wanted to do two more seasons then retire. They didn’t want that.''

Not only are the number of Van Horne's games reduced, the amount of work he does in each game has decreased. He works only the first, third and seventh innings.

Under a new format this year, the Marlins broadcasts are divvied up among a group of people. Van Horne's long time colour commentator Glenn Gaffner does most of the play-by-play on iHeart Media station WINZ and other broadcasters are in the mix.

As for his future beyond 2021, Van Horne said, “I have not thought about next year.’’

Van Horne won the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame's Jack Graney media award in 1996 and then was inducted into the same hall in 2014. He also won the National Baseball Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick award in 2011 for excellence in broadcasting.