Column: It’s your first World Series, Joe Davis. Be ready for the haters on social media
Ten years ago, Joe Davis was the voice of the Montgomery Biscuits. Can he recall the team colors?
“Of course,” he said. “Butter and blue.”
Life was good. He was 24, and he was getting paid to call baseball games.
“I was doing games for a team with a mascot that was a biscuit with eyes,” he said, “and a slab of butter for a tongue.”
The voice of the Biscuits is now the voice of the Dodgers and, starting Friday, the voice of the World Series. For the first time in 25 years of Fox broadcasts, the World Series will be called by Joe Davis, not Joe Buck.
After a record-setting 111-win season, the Dodgers’ World Series aspirations imploded in spectacular fashion. Why did the Dodgers fail in 2022?
“The fact that it’s Joe makes me so happy,” Buck said. “He’s already taken on so much, by stepping into the role that Vin [Scully] had. I’m thrilled it’s somebody like Joe that cares and works as hard as he does, that gets the picture and understands how special doing a World Series is.”
Davis will get to experience time-honored World Series traditions: color and pageantry, baseball legends throwing out ceremonial first pitches and fan bases complaining that the national TV guy is biased against their team.
This does not happen in the NFL, when all the broadcasts are national. Baseball has evolved into a regional sport, rather than a national one. The voice of your team calls six months of excitement, week in and week out. And now, in the most important week of the season, a different and purportedly nonpartisan voice narrates the World Series.
The Dodgers were supposed to be there. Could you imagine the angst in Houston if the voice of the Dodgers would have been the national voice in a Dodgers-Astros World Series?
“It would have been amazing to be home, to be able to sleep in my bed and be in my booth and have all the comforts with the familiarity of calling the Dodgers,” Davis said, “but it would certainly be an added layer of nuance to what is already a first-time thing for me.
“I’ve done enough Dodger games nationally, and Dodger playoff games, where it’s not a difficult thing for me to flip that switch from being the Dodger guy to the neutral national guy. But there is something to be said for a clean matchup where I don’t have to think about that added layer.”
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The charge of bias almost certainly will be leveled against Davis, no matter what he actually says on the air. After the New York Yankees eliminated the Cleveland Guardians in the American League Division Series, Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Costas went on a Cleveland radio station to defend himself against allegations he favored the Yankees.
“I don’t want to be harsh — I understand where it comes from — but to be concise, it’s idiocy,” Costas told WKRK. “There are people in New York who think we’re somehow being unfair to the Yankees.”
The perception of announcer bias is not a new phenomenon, but the megaphone of social media is.
“It’s death by a thousand cuts,” Buck said.
“You can’t go to social media to find out if you’re doing a good job.”
— Joe Buck, on calling major sporting events like the World Series
Buck said that Davis “joins me as the only guys to call the World Series on national television in the social media era.” He said his father Jack — a Hall of Fame broadcaster — also received criticism, but only after a few days had passed.
“He used to get handwritten letters from fans that were horrendously nasty,” Buck said. “He and Vin talked about it. Vin got the same stuff. Now, it’s just 140 characters away. Everybody has got access to you, if you want to jump down into that mess.
“You can’t go to social media to find out if you’re doing a good job. You have to know you are doing well, you have to know the work you are putting in, and you have to find the three or four people you really trust to give you an honest opinion.”
Buck suggested Davis avoid social media in the postseason. Davis has done that one better. He no longer posts on Twitter and says he no longer pays attention to it. For every nine nice mentions, he said, why let the one mean mention sting?
Dave Roberts and Andrew Friedman are in Dodgers fans’ crosshairs after another early October exit. Why aren’t the players being held responsible?
“I just think it’s healthy to be off there and not to be too caught up in that,” Davis said.
“You don’t get into this because you want to be liked, I don’t think. I know that people have strong opinions, and these games are emotional games for fan bases to watch. I get that, a lot of times, the announcers become the target.”
These might be emotional games for Dodgers fans to watch, if they watch at all. Perhaps the sound of Davis might calm them, or perhaps it might anger them all over again, a reminder of a season with 111 victories and zero parades.
Either way, as Davis calls the World Series without the Dodgers, we leave you with the soothing words Scully used to conclude his final broadcast: “There will be a new day, and eventually a new year. And when the upcoming winter gives way to spring, rest assured, once again, it will be time for Dodger baseball.”
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