Joe Davis has a great job serving as the TV voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers. But getting that job meant he had to do something extremely difficult: be the person to replace Vin Scully as the voice of the team.
Davis began broadcasting Dodgers games in the 2016 since and has been the lead play-by-play voice for the team since 2017. Viewers have grown accustomed to Davis, who is now in line to call the World Series for FOX.
Davis had the difficult task of breaking the news to viewers on Tuesday night that Scully had died at the age of 94. The Dodgers announcer spent much of the rest of the game paying tribute to his predecessor. In fact, Davis shared the humorous story of how he began his relationship with Scully 0-for-2.
Dodgers’ broadcaster Joe Davis tells the story of how he accidentally ignored a phone call from Vin Scully shortly after he got the job as the Dodgers’ new play-by-play announcer in 2015. pic.twitter.com/d249OzgNID
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“So 2015, when I get the Dodger job, the day that it’s announced, I get a call on my phone from a number that I don’t recognize and I let it go to voicemail. Whatever. No message left. The number calls again — who knows who this is. Finally voicemail pops up. ‘OK, who is this?’ I didn’t know if this was a writer trying to break the story or something. I wasn’t supposed to answer. So I listen. ‘Who is this?’
“‘Hi Joe, it’s Vin Scully.’ I just ignored Vin Scully’s call twice, sent it to voicemail twice. He said, ‘I tried you earlier in the day. I guess I began our relationship oh-for-two,'” Davis says Scully told him.
“Eventually we hopped on the phone and we talked and I met him a few weeks after that.
“The first interaction I had with him was ignoring his call accidentally twice before I finally hooked up with him.”
Davis went on to share some of the advice he received from Scully. Davis says Scully shared with him the same advice Red Barber once gave Scully: be yourself. Scully also advised Davis that to be at his best during the biggest moments, he had to be like a player and stay calm.
