Watching the Toronto Blue Jays in their current playoff game, Vince Horsman says the team reminds him of the style of baseball of yesteryear.
Horsman, a left-handed pitcher born and raised in Dartmouth, North Carolina, played 141 games in five major league seasons, 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 on strength, the Jays are taking a different approach.
“They still have their tampers, but they're not afraid to go the other way and use the whole field,” he said. “And to me, it feels more like an approach from a bygone era.”
Horsman spoke to CBC News on Saturday before Game 2 of the World Series between the Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers tied the game at 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 has coached in the United States, Mexico, Italy and Taiwan, where he is currently the nutrition coach for 7-Eleven Unilions in Tainan City.
Horsman spent fourteen years of his career as a pitching coach for the Jays' farm teams, so he knows many of the coaches on the team today.
“I'm happy for them and I'm happy for the people in Canada because I know how much they support Toronto,” Horsman said by phone from his home in Palm Harbor, Florida. “And I hope they do well, I hope they win.”
How Horsman was discovered
Horsman's path to professional baseball has been an incredible one, with roots going back to the 1984 National Midget Tournament in Moncton. 17-year-old N. B. Horsman performed well in the two games he played in, which caught the attention of scout Jace.
This led to the team sending its chief Canadian scout, Bob Prentice, to Nova Scotia to watch Horsman. But Prentice suffered food poisoning, was hospitalized and missed the game, Horsman said.
“I struck out 16 of the 18 batters I faced that day, all 16 in a row,” Horsman said. “And he heard about it, said he would contact us, and about two weeks later he offered me a contract.”
In those days, Canadian players were not drafted. They were classified as international free agents.
But Horsman's baseball career didn't start right away. He had yet to graduate from high school. Horsman attended Prince Andrew High School in Dartmouth.
Minor league career
Horsman then began working on Toronto's farming system, starting in Medicine Hat, Alta. Other stops included Florence, South Carolina, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Dunedin, Florida, and Knoxville, Tennessee.
Horsman went straight from Triple-A baseball to the Jays in 1991 after skipping Triple-A ball.
Horsman said the jump was surreal in part because he was now playing against players who played 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 your nerves when pitching in front of a lot of people, it's going to be exactly the same. You know, 60 feet six inches. Good pitches get hitters out.”
Horsman is the only Nova Scotian to play for the Jays and one of the few Nova Scotians to play in the majors.
Playing for the Jays
Playing in front of a crowd of 50,000 people in Toronto was also quite remarkable for someone who grew up in Dartmouth, which at the time had a small population.
The Jays had a strong team in 1991 and made the playoffs.
“It was crazy, electric and exciting, you were anxious, your heart was pounding in your neck and all those emotions that come with something of that magnitude, but it was incredible,” Horsman said.
He then spent the next three years playing for the Oakland Athletics. The A's lost to the Jays in the 1992 playoffs, resulting in their first back-to-back World Series win.
Horsman's final year in the majors was with the Minnesota Twins in 1995.
After that, he switched to coaching, thanks to which he traveled all over the world.
“I was really lucky,” Horsman said. “God has been good to me because I’m a Nova Scotia kid with a high school education.”
Other career plans
Horsman said that if he had not become a baseball player, he would have become a school teacher and taught history.
He said that in every place he lived, he immersed himself in local history, which allowed him to explore his passion.
“You get a sense of the culture, so I'm lucky that I'm not just here as a tourist, I'm usually here as part of the fabric of this community,” Horsman said.
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