Roughly one year from now the Los Angeles Dodgers will have closed the curtain on a golden era in the franchise’s history.
What may not have been known in 1950 has long since been so very clear. There will never be another Vin Scully.
So talented, so revered, so humble. “When it all boils down, I am the most ordinary man you’ve ever met,” Scully said in August. “I was given an extraordinary opportunity.”
What the Dodgers face with the 2016 season likely being Scully’s last in the booth is impossible. There’s no replacing the Hall of Fame broadcaster.
But, the show must go on, as Scully has said. That’s where Joe Davis enters. The Dodgers announced last week Davis will call 50 road games for SportsNet LA next season.
Davis, like Scully in 1950, joins the Dodgers organization in his 20s. Scully was a tad younger, becoming part of the Brooklyn radio and television broadcasts at 22 years old, while Davis is 27.
Despite the similarity, that’s not to suggest Davis is setting out to replace or be Scully. He learned that’s attempting to accomplish the impossible.
“When I first began doing games, and I think this is the case for a lot of people since he’s the greatest that’s ever done it, I just tried to be Vin,” Davis told DodgerBlue.com in an exclusive interview.
“And anybody that tries that obviously falls flat on their faces.” However, there isn’t reason to believe Davis is incapable of becoming the next voice of Dodgers baseball. A Michigan native and graduate of Benoit College, Davis’ career rise has been nothing short of impressive.
And that’s without attending a major university with a renowned broadcast program. “I played football in college, but the recruiting pitch from the head coach was that I could announce the basketball games as soon as I got there,” Davis said.
“I could’ve gone to a place like Syracuse or a broadcasting school like that and maybe walked onto the football team. But play-by-play reps at those places, because they are such fantastic schools, there’s so much competition a lot of times you have to wait until you’re a junior to do the significant sports.”
Instead, Davis was able to quickly focus on the laying the foundation for his career. “At Beloit, it wasn’t a broadcasting school, but because of that, I had no competition for the repetitions as soon as I got there,” he said.
“That helped get me ahead of the curve a little bit and I lucked out to get the Montgomery job right out of college.” Prior to his current role with FOX Sports, Davis honed his craft with Double-A Montgomery, the Tampa Bay Rays’ affiliate, and ESPN, among other stops.
“It was awesome. I was 22 years old when I took the job, so I was the youngest Double-A guy in the country,” Davis recalled of his experience with the Rays. “I didn’t really have any idea what I was doing as far as being with the team on a day-to-day basis.
“I was just kind of learning as I went and it was nice that it was a relatively small market where I was able to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes that you can’t make any more at this point.”
CONTINUE READING: More From Joe Davis On Joining The Dodgers
