LOS ANGELES — If Joe Davis thought he could just enjoy a nice victory parade on Monday, and enjoy the rest of his week after a month of broadcasting postseason baseball, he was quickly disabused of that notion in the wake of the Dodgers sometimes raucous celebration at Chavez Ravine.
Critics took to social media and call him out for going to the event, even going so far as to suggest it was unseemly for him to join in the party. Chief among the critics was Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo, who never lacked for an opinion on anything. He went on a rant (when does he not?) about Davis on his radio show, and gave Davis and the Dodgers both barrels.
“When you’re a national broadcaster and you’re the voice of the sport,” he said, “and you’re on the big stage when you did a million playoff games… and then one the the [most] crippling losses that a franchise is going to have in the history of the sport… and I got Joe–the body’s not even cold yet–and I got Joe at Dodger Stadium doing the freaking Dodger parade… Oh my God, that’s bad… that would piss me off if I’m a Blue Jay fan.”
Russo continued on in that vein for a while. Shortly before he was out of breath, he finished his rant like this:”The Dodgers should have done him a favor. Joe, you know what? You’re the voice of the team. We just won a classic. Why don’t you lay low here? We’ll get somebody else to do this. Why don’t you lay low? We’ll get David.Vassegh. Why don’t you lay low? This is not the time for you. You’re the voice of baseball. You can’t be doing our parade waxing poetic about us at the Blue Jays’ expense.”
Russo was not alone in his criticism. Here’s a sample of some of the vitriol aimed at the Dodgers’ play-by-play man:
And on and on it went. But Davis is really in a no-win situation when he has to call Dodgers games in the postseason. No matter how fair he bends over backward to be, fans of the opposing team are going to level the “biased” criticism at him. Indeed, Davis was pretty much shielded from it in the early rounds as Fox had the American League games. In fact, I would imagine that the Blue Jays fans were quite satisfied with the announcing at this moment:
It’s tough for announcers for a team that is playing to do a national broadcast. I think Brian Anderson did a great job in calling Brewers/Dodgers even though he’s employed by Milwaukee. And as an LA fan, I appreciated the insights he had on the Brewers lineup that some rando broadcaster might not have.
This has happened plenty of times before. The great one, Vin Scully, called Dodger series way back to 1955, the first year the Dodgers won. He didn’t call a lot of TV series. With one memorable exception. Could you imagine anyone else on the call when Gibson hobbled up to the plate? But by then, Vin Scully had thirty years of experience on the national stage. He had earned the benefit of a doubt. But if there’d been Twitter/X back then, you can bet, some crank in Oakland would be posting about how biased towards the Dodgers Scully was.
To quote the noted sports enthusiast Taylor Swift, “Haters gonna hate, hate, hate.”
Shake it off, Joe.
Have you subscribed to the Bleed Los Podcast YouTube channel? Be sure to ring the notification bell to watch player interviews, participate in shows & promotions, and stay up to date on all Dodgers news and rumors!
