Dodgers' TV broadcaster Joe Davis will call the World Series

Dodgers’ TV broadcaster Joe Davis will call the World Series for Fox

Dodgers broadcasters Joe Davis and Orel Hersheiser pose on the field together before a game.

Staff Writer

April 8, 2022 5 AM PT

Over the years, Joe Buck would joke with Joe Davis about switching jobs. Buck would call Dodgers games. Davis would call the World Series. Davis laughed it off.

“I always thought, ‘Of course, Joe Buck’s going to be at Fox forever,’” Davis said. ‘“Joe Buck’s always going to be calling the World Series.’”

But Buck didn’t stay at Fox forever and he won’t call any more World Series. That job, officially as of Friday, belongs to Davis, the Dodgers’ TV play-by-play man. Davis was named to Fox’s lead play-by-play position upon Buck’s departure last month to ESPN. Hall of Famer John Smoltz will be his color analyst.

“It’s always been a dream of mine,” Davis said in a phone interview Thursday. “Had you asked me when I was 10 years old, ‘What do you want do when you grow up?’ I would’ve told you [I] wanted to be the voice of the World Series. So that’s taking it all the way back to the beginning.”

Buck has called 23 World Series for Fox since 1996, voicing some of baseball’s biggest moments for a quarter-century. Davis believes Buck is the greatest broadcaster of his generation. Expectations are high. There’s pressure. But nothing, not even replacing Buck, compares to taking over for Vin Scully five years ago.

“The best advice that Vin gave me when I first started here in L.A. was the same advice that Red Barber gave him, he said, when he started in 1950,” Davis, 34, said. “And that is to be yourself.”

National assignments aren’t foreign to Davis. He joined Fox Sports in 2014 to work MLB, college football, and college basketball games. In recent years, he’s been on 10 to 12 Fox national baseball broadcasts in addition to his Dodgers work on SportsNet LA.

Those have included Dodgers playoffs games — most notably Game 7 of the National League Championship Series between the Dodgers and Braves in 2020. Buck had a football assignment, leaving Davis to call the game at Globe Life Field with Smoltz. So, as he noted, he’s had some practice in avoiding perceived bias.

“What people will hopefully come out of those broadcasts saying is: ‘I didn’t know Joe was the Dodger guy, I wouldn’t know watching this broadcast,’” Davis said. “And I take a lot of pride in that, in being able to flip that switch.”

Davis’ road to Dodgers guy began when he was hired to call road games in 2016. He became the full-time play-by-play man, following Scully, in 2017. He was 29 years old. He’s worked with Orel Hershiser to create a booth with its own identity. Over time, they’ve become fan favorites, part of the franchise’s fabric with their friendship at center stage.

“I always say there are two things that are the biggest factors for it going OK,” Davis said. “No. 1, the team has been really good. So, I’ve been good news. I think that if they were losing 100 games a year since I got here, they might have run me out of town because people don’t like to watch and listen to a loser — talking about the team.

“But I’ve been delivering good news and so people like good news. I think they like good news more than they like me and I just happen to be delivering a lot of it. And then the other thing is my relationship with my Orel.”

The Dodgers are expected to win a lot again in 2022 and Davis will be in the booth for most of it. He’ll add the World Series, the All-Star game, and a few other dates, including the Field of Dreams game in August, but his schedule won’t change much. And he doesn’t see it changing much for years to come.

“I love being the voice of the Dodgers,” Davis said. “I still cannot picture a career without that in it. Now, what that looks like in terms of how many games I’m doing, sure, that could change eventually. But I really want to be in L.A. and really want to be with the Dodgers for as long as they’ll have me.

“Looking at my future, I don’t see a scenario where I’m not with the Dodgers in a serious capacity.”