Watching highlights of the Toronto Blue Jays on their current playoff run, Vince Horsman says the team reminds him of a style of baseball from years gone past.
Horsman, a left-handed pitcher who was born and raised in Dartmouth, N.S., played in 141 games over five seasons in the major leagues, including one season with the Jays in 1991.
Horsman said that in an era where teams rely on analytics to make decisions and the focus is more about power, the Jays take a different approach.
“They still have their thumpers, but they’re not afraid to go the other way and use the whole field,” he said. “And it’s kind of, like, to me, it looks more like an approach of a time gone by.”
Horsman spoke to CBC News on Saturday ahead of Game 2 of the World Series between the Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers evened the series to 1-1 with a 5-1 win.
Horsman has spent the last four decades in professional baseball, first as a player and then as a coach. He’s coached in the United States, Mexico, Italy and Taiwan, where he’s currently a pitching coach with the 7-Eleven Unilions in Tainan City.
Fourteen years of Horsman’s career were spent as a pitching coach with the Jays’ farm teams, so he knows many of the coaches involved with the team today.
“I’m happy for them and I’m happy for the people back in Canada because I know how much they support Toronto,” said Horsman by phone from his home in Palm Harbor, Fla. “And I hope they do well, I hope they win it.”
Horsman’s path to professional baseball was an unlikely one rooted in a 1984 national tournament for midget players in Moncton, N.B. Horsman, 17, pitched well in the two games he appeared in, catching the attention of a Jays scout.
That led to the team to send their head Canadian scout, Bob Prentice, to Nova Scotia to watch Horsman. But Prentice got food poisoning, had to be hospitalized and missed the game, said Horsman.
“That particular day I struck out 16 of the 18 batters that I faced and all 16 in a row,” said Horsman. “And he heard about it and said he would be in touch and about two weeks later offered me a contract.”
In those days, Canadian players did not get drafted. They were classified as international free agents.
But Horsman’s baseball career didn’t start right away. He still had to finish high school. Horsman was a student at what then known as Prince Andrew High School in Dartmouth.
Horsman then started working his way through Toronto’s farm system, beginning in Medicine Hat, Alta. Other stops included Florence, S.C., Myrtle Beach, S.C., Dunedin, Fla., and Knoxville, Tenn.
Horsman made the jump from AA baseball directly to the Jays in 1991, skipping AAA ball.
Horsman said the jump was surreal, in part, because he was now playing against players that were in video games.
“But at the end of the day, it was just baseball,” he said. “And if you … have the ability to kind of control the nerves of pitching in front of a lot of people, everything is just the same. You know, 60 feet, six inches. Good pitches get hitters out.”
Horsman is the only Nova Scotian to have played for the Jays and one of only a handful of Nova Scotians to play in the majors.
Playing in front of crowds of around 50,000 people in Toronto was also pretty remarkable for someone who grew up in Dartmouth, which had a population not all that much larger at the time.
The Jays had a strong team in 1991 and made the playoffs.
“It was crazy and electric and exciting and you were anxious and your heart was beating through your neck and all those emotions that are involved in something of that magnitude, but it was incredible,” said Horsman.
He then spent the next three years pitching for the Oakland Athletics. In the 1992 playoffs, the A’s lost to the Jays, leading to their first of back-to-back World Series victories.
Horsman’s final year in the majors was with the Minnesota Twins in 1995.
After that, he moved into coaching, which has taken him around the world.
“I’ve been blessed, I really have,” said Horsman. “God has been good to me because I am a kid from Nova Scotia with a high school education.”
Horsman said if he hadn’t become a baseball player, he would have become a school teacher, teaching history.
He said that in every place he’s lived, he’s immersed himself in the local history, which has allowed him to explore that passion of his.
“You get an appreciation of the cultures, so I’ve been lucky that I’m not just there as a tourist, I’m usually there as part of the fabric of that community,” said Horsman.
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