Van Horne was ready for the home run call

by craig on Jul 30, 2007 7:33 AM EDT in News and Rumors

In case you were wondering what the radio call would be from the Marlins if Bonds had hit a home run yesterday, Dave Van Horne had prepared it advance.

Dave Van Horne never plans out in advance what he's going to say on the radio. He prefers to keep things spontaneous, believes the players are the story, not him.

But after considerable thought and angst, the Marlins' radio voice arrived in San Francisco on Friday with a ready-made line.

Had Bonds pulled even with Hank Aaron on the home run list, Van Horne was going to say this: "And Barry Bonds has hit 755 home runs, the same number as baseball's all-time home run king, Henry Aaron."

Subtle, huh?

The radio call is normally the one used by the HOF to record the event in the history books. Now, that could fall to Vin Scully who made the historic call when Hank Aaron hit is his 715th home run and making the historic call for a Bonds home run doesn't thrill him in the least.

Firstly, poor Vin Scully. The gentlemanly Dodgers announcer, whose call of Hank Aaron's 715th home run is one of his seminal moments, is on record as having wished not to call Bonds' 715th, and now he he has to face the prospect of calling 756 without disdain interrupting his usual eloquence? Scully found such perfect perspective for Aaron's historic shot -- a black man setting the record in the Deep South -- that surely he would have to put Bonds' record-breaker in the context of steroids. How would that sound at the Smithsonian?

I doubt that Mr. Scully will put it "in the context of steroids". But I have no doubt that it will pain him to add his famous voice to the event. If he doesn't know how to make the call, he could always steal Dave's line.

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