Throughout the last decade, Joe Davis has established himself as one of the preeminent play-by-play voices in Major League Baseball through his work with FOX Sports and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Davis was hired by the Dodgers ahead of the 2016 season to call road games on Spectrum SportsNet LA and became the full-time play-by-play announcer the next year following the retirement of Vin Scully. Yet Davis had learned of the potential job opening two years before he called his first game for the team when his agent asked if he had any tape of him calling baseball games. Once he asked what the purpose of providing such material would be, he learned that the Dodgers were considering him to fill the play-by-play job following the retirement of Scully.
At this point, Davis had only called a couple of Major League Baseball games and recently moved to FOX Sports after working at ESPN. Within his broadcast career, he had called hundreds of minor-league games and was surprised to be in consideration. A few months later, Davis was in the Los Angeles area for FOX meetings, and he decided to go to the Dodgers offices to introduce himself amid the process and went in assuming that the organization did not genuinely know who he was.
“Well I go and I sit down and I meet with them and they tell me that I’m one of four people that they’re considering, so now it’s like, ‘Wow,’” Davis recalled during a recent appearance on the Rich Eisen Show. “It’s still, ‘No chance. I’m sure it’s a who’s who of broadcasters, and I’ve done two games at this point.’ I called my wife and I told her, ‘Hey yeah, I’m one of four people they’re considering,’ and she said, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re moving to Los Angeles.’”
Davis’ agent received a voicemail while they were playing golf together to call Lon Rosen, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Rosen then informed him that the team wanted to hire Davis, but after a few months of negotiations, he decided to turn the job down. The rationale behind his decision was that the Dodgers were not going to allow him to continue calling national games, which is what he had always wanted to do. The team ended up calling his agent back and asked what Davis wanted, looking to materialize a deal to hire him as a play-by-play announcer.
“I go, ‘Well, we’ve been for a few months kind of discussing what I want, but okay. I want the ability to do this and this,’” Davis recalled. “Lon Rosen with the Dodgers said, ‘Okay, put it in an email.’ We’re like, ‘Okay, we will,’ and by the end of the night, we had agreed we were doing it.’”
On the day before Davis was officially announced as a play-by-play announcer with the team, he saw an unknown phone number call and sent it to voicemail. Upon playing the voicemail, he recognized that it was Vin Scully and figured he was off to a great start in the new role. They spoke the next day, and although they did not have a deep relationship, Davis cherished the time he spent with him and still implements the advice he received to this day. Eisen asked Davis what kind of advice he received from the team’s broadcaster of 67 years, one of which involved how to handle climactic moments.
“‘If your house is burning down and you’re trying to get everybody out safe, you can’t be freaking out,’” Scully said, utilizing an analogy. “‘Your heart rate can’t be spiking. If you’re going to save the cat from the top floor, you’ve got to be cool,’ and he said, ‘Think of the big moments kind of the same way as that. You got to be the coolest guy in the burning house,’ so an amazing part of doing Dodger games is they’ve been so good since I’ve been here, there’s been a lot of chances to practice that.”
In addition to his role with the Dodgers, Davis is the lead play-by-play announcer for the MLB on FOX and calls marquee matchups and events throughout the season, including the MLB All-Star Game and World Series. Davis also calls NFL on FOX games during the football season, most recently working with analyst Daryl Johnston and reporter Pam Oliver. Davis has fond memories of Scully, who passed away in August 2022 at the age of 94, and played the recording over the air upon finding the voicemail message on his phone.
“Joe, it’s Vin Scully in Los Angeles,” Scully said on the recording. “I tried to get you earlier in the day, so I start off the year 0-for-2, but I was calling just to welcome you to the family, to wish you great success, and I know you will love the ballclub and the way they treat people. I look forward to seeing you somewhere along the line, although I doubt if it’ll be on the road. Anyway, good luck. I’ll see you, I’m sure, soon, and I’ll be thrilled to wish you all the best wishes possible. I know what it was like to be 27, 28 and starting out with a big club, and I know it’ll be a great marriage, so congratulations and look forward to seeing you.”
“It is cool,” Davis reflected, “and that’s the first time I’ve listened to it in a while, and it feels good to share because it’s almost like bringing him back a little bit for people; something that people have never heard that they hopefully get to hear and enjoy today.”
