Dave Van Horne and the Ford C. Frick Award

Dave Van Horne is once again one of the ten finalist for the Ford C. Frick Award.

The 10 finalists for the 2009 Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually for excellence in baseball broadcasting by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, were announced today. The final ballot includes three fan selections produced during a record-total 145,138 votes recorded throughout September exclusively at baseballhall.org.

For the second consecutive year, Joe Nuxhall paced all broadcasters in the fan-voting, totaling 19,547 votes. Jacques Doucet (10,282) and Tom Cheek (8,992) also earned spots on the final ballot, joining seven broadcasters selected by a Hall of Fame research committee: Billy Berroa, Ken Coleman, Dizzy Dean, Lanny Frattare, Tony Kubek, Graham McNamee and Dave Van Horne.

While I have a warm spot in my heart for Dave, if I had a vote it would probably go to Jacques Doucet.  When Doucet started broadcasting the Expos games on the French language broadcast, baseball terminology didn't exactly translate well into French.  Meaning that they had to make up words for the plays and the positions of the players on the field.

Here is an interesting interview of Jacques Doucet by SABR. 

Of course life in Montreal wasn't without it challenges for Dave Van Horne who was anchoring the English broadcast of the Expos games.  In the final years in Montreal, Jefferey Loria forgot, yeah right, to renew the radio contract for the English speaking station and Dave had to broadcast on the internet.

Eventually, Loria and crew moved to South Florida and they brought Dave with them.  Which was a good move in my book.

The Ford C. Frick Award will be voted on by the 15 living previous recipients and 5 broadcast historians/columnists.

The voters are:

The winner of the 2009 Frick Award will be announced on December 9 at Baseball’s Winter Meetings. Voting will be conducted by a 20-member electorate, comprised of the 15 living Frick Award recipients and five broadcast historians/columnists, including past Frick honorees Marty Brennaman, Jerry Coleman, Gene Elston, Joe Garagiola, Ernie Harwell, Jaime Jarrin, Milo Hamilton, Harry Kalas, Denny Matthews, 2008 Frick Award winner Dave Niehaus, Felo Ramirez, Vin Scully, Lon Simmons, Bob Uecker and Bob Wolff, and historians/columnists Bob Costas (NBC), Barry Horn (Dallas Morning News), Stan Isaacs (formerly of NY Newsday), Ted Patterson (historian) and Curt Smith (historian).

Good Luck Dave!