![]() The Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers is a storied sports franchise, and the Los Angeles TV market is huge. It is hard to overstate what a big deal-and what a daunting challenge-the Dodger opportunity was. He excelled and assumed the mantle of Scully’s successor in 2017 while continuing to do baseball, college football and basketball, and the NFL for Fox. In 2016, in anticipation of the retirement of the legendary Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully, Davis was hired to call 50 games for the Dodgers. GerberDavis has come a long way since then. After graduating in 2010, in lightning succession, he went from doing play-by-play for the AA minor league Montgomery Biscuits to some combination of college baseball, football, and basketball for Comcast Southeast, ESPN, and Fox Sports, where he also called major league and NFL games.ĭavis greets a young fan at Dodger Stadium in July. ![]() The beginning of Davis’s meteoric rise as a television sportscaster has been chronicled in this magazine (summer 2015). The exchange was one of many ways Davis gives viewers a gentle insight into the character of his partner while keeping a less than consequential broadcast lively. “With all that information, I don’t know how I would’ve been able to sleep,” Hershiser concluded. Taking advantage of the relaxed nature of a spring training game, Davis encouraged Hershiser, a celebrated and cerebral former Dodger pitcher, to explore the differences between spring training then and now, including the scientific advances made in measuring the pitching motion and spin rate of the pitched ball, which Hershiser expanded on with relish. Two days later, Davis was working a preseason Dodgers baseball game in Phoenix with his analyst partner, Orel Hershiser. It gave the beleaguered fans permission to smile while putting into perspective the misfortune that visits all teams and their fans, sooner or later. Rather, he actually discussed at some length the merits of the four or five coaches who had been rumored as his possible successor.ĭavis’s vignette was not just the product of diligent preparation, it was deft. As memorable as the question was, your response was even more memorable.” This elicited from Lavin that, no, he didn’t coldcock the student reporter. “During your nine-game losing streak at UCLA, a student reporter in a press conference asked you who a good replacement would be. “True story,” said Davis to Lavin about midway through the first half, when the teams were struggling to hit the rims. ![]() The still relatively new Los Angeles Dodgers announcer knew that his broadcast partner, former UCLA coach Steve Lavin, had once suffered through his own losing streak-and one with a bizarre twist. During a desultory college basketball matchup February 21 between Arizona and California, both Pacific-12 Conference teams mired in losing streaks, Joe Davis’10 had done his homework.
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