Dodgers Interview: Davis opens up on the challenges of calling the Dodgers in the postseason
LOS ANGELES — If you spent October hanging on every pitch of the World Series, Joe Davis was probably in your living room as much as some of your closest friends. The Dodgers’ TV voice, and now the national voice of Major League Baseball on Fox, just finished calling a classic seven–game series that ended with Los Angeles on top again. On the Awful Announcing podcast, Davis pulled back the curtain on what it felt like to sit in that booth, ride out the drama, and try to find the right words as the Dodgers clawed their way to another title. For Dodger fans, it was a reminder that the guy describing these moments is just as awed by them as the rest of us.
Host Brandon Contes started by asking Davis about the idea that the 2025 World Series might be the greatest ever. Davis laughed at the label. “Even to hear you say that makes me chuckle and shake my head,” he admitted. “When you’re in it, it’s like, man, this is great and it’s what you live for. But to have that true perspective to take in all of time, all the World Series ever played, I definitely don’t have it yet.” He figures it will take some distance before he can really grasp where this one sits in history.
What he does know is that he managed to enjoy this series in a way he had not always allowed himself to in the past. “I think I’m getting better at doing that,” he said when asked if he could enjoy it as a fan. “I’m wired to kind of grip the wheel a little too tight and try to be perfect and not allow myself to enjoy it. But I definitely enjoyed this one more than I’ve allowed myself to enjoy ones in the past.” Game 7 was different. “You’re just so locked in on making sure you don’t miss anything that I didn’t have quite as much fun game seven as I did every game leading up to it,” he said. “But big picture, as fulfilling and, to your question, fun as anything I’ve ever done.”
The first day he really had to breathe, he went right back to thinking about that last game. “I spent some time just kind of sitting there and thinking about game seven and how it went and what I would like to do differently if I do get another one,” Davis said. He called it “a deep dive autopsy on the game,” but interestingly he did it without watching the tape. “I went in with my computer with me, planning on going back into the nitty–gritty and critiquing myself deeply, but I wound up not even turning it on,” he said. “I was able to take what I needed just by reflecting on it.” The big lesson for next time, he said, is “not making it different than any other game,” at least in his own head.
When the conversation turned to the moments that will last, Davis went straight to a name Dodger fans will never forget: Miguel Rojas. He compared the 2024 World Series, where “the Freddie Freeman grand slam” will always be the signature, to this year’s run. “I think that probably the Miguel Rojas home run in the ninth inning,” Davis said when asked what will stand the test of time. “When you combine what was at stake, they looked like they were dead, with the fact that it was a guy who had hit a handful of home runs all year, hadn’t been in the lineup until the day before. All those things lead to that being the moment.”
He also loves another play that saved the whole season. “I go back to the double play to finish off game six where the Dodgers had to win that game just to stay alive,” Davis said. “Blue Jays had second and third, nobody out, and in the blink of an eye the game’s over. For the people that will remember watching it, they will remember that moment.”
There was one more Rojas play he could not get out of his mind, the throw home and the bang–bang call at the plate that could easily have ended the series in a much different way. Davis lit up at the chance to talk about plate umpire Jordan Baker getting that one right. “Usually that’s how it is with umpires, right? We only talk about them when they get something wrong,” Davis said. “For him to get that call right, and especially because on a call that close a lot of times it’s just the call is going to stand, that was so important.” Sitting in the booth during the review, Davis admitted he was nervous. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh no, this is not how you want this amazing World Series to end.’ Can you imagine any team losing a World Series like that?”
If the call had gone the other way and been overturned, he said he would not have tried to script some clever line beforehand. “In that moment it’s more just you trust yourself to be authentic and genuine because whatever reaction I’m going to have, it’s going to be real,” he explained. “I don’t think you’d want to be anticipating too much. That was a moment where I was just ready to react with whatever I heard.”
Ask him to pick one favorite call, and Davis actually points to an entire game. The 18–inning marathon earlier in the series became a playground for his love of the sport. “I’m proud of the 18 inning game,” he said. “People will say it’s awesome that you maintained your energy and everything. My thing is I would pay you to be able to do a 17, 18 inning World Series game. Are you kidding me? One of the all–time great World Series games.” He said he does not deserve “any kind of medal” for keeping his voice up. “I was just loving it and so thankful to have a chance to do it.”
The toll was real, though. “There’s a toll on my voice for sure,” Davis said. “It was starting to hurt just talking seven hours straight. I popped some painkillers because it was starting to hurt.” Mentally, he could feel his focus wobble. “I did find myself early on in extra innings having to be like, come on, lock in, just because my brain naturally was wanting to drift,” he said. “It can’t drift right now. The next moment could be the one. So I definitely had to pull myself back in a few times.” At least there was a late–night snack. “We actually did get a fruit plate,” Davis laughed. “That’s more pineapple than I’ve had in years. I just started crushing it there at midnight.”
All of that sits on top of a huge amount of prep. Davis talked about his routine of listening back on travel days and the constant battle of not trying to force every note he prepares into the broadcast. “You do the homework, but the game then unfolds,” he said. “All the homework’s done before what matters actually happens. You just do your best to fill up that tank with context and then continue to take it in as the game goes on, and hopefully be ready to come up with the right thing at the right time.” In an NFL game, he guesses “probably 30 percent” of what he preps ever makes the air. “You never want to, in TV terms, kick over the bucket just because you prepped it,” he said. “You never want to jam stuff in.”
From a Dodger point of view, one of the most interesting parts of the interview was how strongly Davis praised Dave Roberts. “I think it’s an understated, underrated part of the whole thing, the timing of those moves,” he said. He pointed to getting Rojas into the lineup when Andy Pages “hadn’t hit in a month,” Rojas making “several key defensive plays” in Game 6, and then delivering “the big swing in game seven.” He also brought up the moment Roberts sent in Pages as a defensive replacement before Ernie Clement’s deep fly ball. “I don’t think Tommy Edman gets to that ball,” Davis said. “I think the World Series might end right there if Dave Roberts doesn’t make that move then. And that’s not even to speak of the pitching changes and the way that he managed a staff where the bullpen was not good and they had to find a way to paper over that.”
Davis does not see Roberts going anywhere soon. “He’s in great health, fifty–three years old, loves what he’s doing,” he said. “It’s really remarkable, the continuity they have from the top with Mark Walter to Andrew Friedman through Dave Roberts and much of his staff. You never see a decade where everybody stays together. I don’t think that’s lost on him, how special a situation he’s got.”
Of course, being the national voice while also being “the Dodger guy” means Davis hears the accusations of bias, even if he tries not to dwell on them. Before his first World Series, he handed his Twitter password to his agent and deleted the app from his phone. “I don’t hunt for it because I get it,” he said. “These are exciting, highly emotional times as fans. It’s what makes sports great that we all get a little bit irrational at points. Dodger fans are going to be upset that I’m getting excited for the other team. The other team’s going to be upset that I’m the Dodger guy. If that’s my scoreboard, trying to please people on that, I’m going to drive myself crazy.”
He took the same calm approach when Chris “Mad Dog” Russo blasted him for joining the Dodger championship parade right after calling the series for Fox. “I did it last year too,” Davis said, amused. “It’s one of those things where I’m not going to not do it just because Mad Dog thinks that I shouldn’t. I have two jobs. It’s a unique situation.” He joked that he was going to treat the rant “like a badge of honor.”
When the topic moved to Shohei Ohtani, Davis suddenly sounded less like a broadcaster and more like a fan thumbing through an old baseball book. Sitting near his bookshelf, he said he sees “big old thick bios on Babe Ruth where it just says Ruth on the spine or Williams, Ted Williams, Koufax.” Then he pointed to Ohtani. “That’s what we’re watching being written day to day here,” he said. “He’s the kind of guy that our kids and our grandkids and their grandkids are going to know about. To be able to watch him every day, it’s amazing.” Looking back at the massive contract, Davis said, “At the time it was like, oh my gosh, and I’m thinking that’s probably paid for itself times a few just based on the off–the–field stuff, not even to mention how spectacular he’s been on the field.”
What has surprised him most seeing Ohtani up close is how often he nails the big stage. “His ability to meet the moment, whether it’s something fun like a bobblehead night, he seems like he homers every time, or the 50–50 game last year where he reaches 50–50 with one of the greatest games ever played,” Davis said. “Anytime there’s a chance for it to be even more special than it could be by just checking a box, he finds a way to do more than just check the box. His ability to read the room, read the moment, and almost give a wink to the moment, like ‘I got you and then some,’ it’s almost every time there’s a moment to seize, he does that.”
Davis is honest about the places he wants to grow. He mentioned specific calls from this World Series he would like another shot at. “Game seven, the Miguel Rojas home run, I needed to have something after ‘No way, Miguel Rojas’ that said ‘Game seven is tied’,” he admitted. “The Will Smith home run needed something right after the ball went out to reference the fact that it was the first time the Dodgers had led in that game.” Even the final call, he said, might have fit better “if it was a pop fly for the last out and I could have set it up while the ball was in the air.”
That kind of self–critique runs all the way back to the moment Fox first told him, “We want you to be the voice of baseball.” He called that “a heavy thing for somebody who grew up dreaming of doing exactly that.” Following Vin Scully in Los Angeles and Joe Buck on the World Series stage only added to the pressure. “Human nature in those spots is to try to be perfect and try to be a little bit like the person you’re following,” he said. “Vin, the greatest ever to do it. Joe, the guy that I grew up wanting to be like. So I leaned so far in the direction of, okay, I’ve got to be perfect here. I better not mess up even a hair.”
Time, he said, has helped him loosen that grip. “As time goes on more and more, I loosen my grip a little bit, let myself come through,” he said. Ten seasons in with the Dodgers and now a World Series that will be replayed for decades, he sounds less like a guy trying to live up to legends and more like someone who has quietly become part of the soundtrack of this era.
For Dodger fans, that might be the nicest takeaway from the interview. The voice calling Rojas, Will Smith, Ohtani and the rest into history is still picking apart every syllable, still trying to be better the next time the season hangs on one more pitch.
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