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So the World Series is about to start, and the national TV play-by-play broadcaster assigned to the event happens to have a day job as the play-by-play guy for one of the teams involved.
No big deal. It’s only Yankees-Dodgers, the most storied World Series matchup in the annals of Major League Baseball. It’s the clash of the payroll titans, Ohtani vs. Judge, Gerrit Cole vs. everybody, New York celeb vs. L.A. celeb, et cetera.
Does it really matter if Joe Davis, who’ll handle the games on FOX, is also the voice of the Dodgers?
Well — yes. A little bit, yes. It depends upon whom you ask. Plenty of Yankees fans have already made their displeasure with the setup clear via social media, and by the way, if you’re using social media as your gauge for anything right now, you’re probably already lost. Still, there it is.
It doesn’t really matter to a Yankees fan that this would’ve been the arrangement no matter what. Davis is FOX’s No. 1 guy on baseball, after all. He and John Smoltz (and Tom Verducci, and Ken Rosenthal) would be handling these World Series games if they involved the Tigers and Brewers, or any other teams that happened to survive MLB’s post-season survival contest.
But sniping aside, we should take this occasion to focus on Joe Davis for a minute. Because he’s more like his Dodgers predecessor, the legendary Vin Scully, than one might think.
No, they’re not the same. There is no “same” when you mention Scully. But in their career paths, in the choices each man made and the range of each man’s professional interests — well, they’ve got a bit in common.
Dodgers fans very naturally think of Scully as their own. Scully spent 67 years as the club’s play-by-play man, first in Brooklyn and then on the West Coast. And certainly, if you came to the scene later in his career, you’d be forgiven for associating him only with the one franchise and the one sport.
But that’s not remotely a full picture of Scully, whose voice talents actually belonged to the sports world at large. Like some of the greats of his era, Scully was a multifaceted announcer adept at any number of sports — and wanted to do all of them, and he mostly did.
Scully called the Dodgers, sure, but he was also NBC’s lead baseball announcer for most of the 1980s. He called NFL games on CBS from 1975 to 1982, including the 49ers-Cowboys NFC championship that produced “The Catch” of a Joe Montana pass by San Francisco’s Dwight Clark.
Scully called golf for CBS, including being part of the network’s coverage of the Masters from 1975 to 1982. He called tennis. His work for CBS at one point became so voluminous that the Dodgers hired Ross Porter to call the increasing number of baseball games that Scully couldn’t cover.
Vin handled the World Series, no matter who was in it, for CBS Radio from 1979 to 1982 and again from 1990 to 1997. His television work for NBC featured some unforgettable non-Dodger MLB moments, including Game 6 of the 1986 Mets-Red Sox series (we know it as the Bill Buckner game), and some pure Dodger moments (Kirk Gibson, 1988, enough said).
In short, Scully was everywhere.
Joe Davis, too. While calling Davis the Dodgers’ lead voice is accurate, it’s far from complete. In fact, Davis’s work is so varied, and his talent so in demand, that he only logged about 90 games for the Dodgers this season.
Like Scully, Davis was a prodigy who ascended quickly. He became Scully’s full-time replacement in 2017 at age 29. And for Davis, like Scully, the Dodgers gig is amazing — but not everything.
FOX, in fact, uses Davis at almost every opportunity. In addition to being the network’s No. 1 baseball play-by-play announcer, a role he assumed in 2022 after Joe Buck gave it up, Davis has called college football, college basketball and NFL games both on FOX and FS1. He’s part of the network’s No. 2 NFL booth, paired with Greg Olsen.
If he can figure out NASCAR or soccer, FOX probably has a spot for him there, too.
It’s all very Scully-like.
While deeply conversant with Dodgers lore, Scully always conveyed a broad sense of the larger world of sports (and the larger world, period) during his calls. It was one thing, among many things, that made him so memorable.
As good as he is, Davis isn’t fully there yet. Of course, he’s only 36. He’s got decades. It’s true that the Dodgers’ play-by-play guy happens to be broadcasting this Dodgers-Yankees series to the world — but in this case, I wouldn’t say that like it’s a bad thing.
Mark Kreidler is a national award-winning writer whose work has appeared at ESPN, the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and dozens of other publications. He’s also a sports-talk veteran with stops in San Francisco and Sacramento, and the author of three books, including the bestselling “Four Days to Glory.” More of his writing can be found at https://markkreidler.substack.com. He is also reachable on Twitter @MarkKreidler.
