Joe Davis’ rapid rise to the Dodger broadcast booth
by Rowan Kavner
He wasn’t supposed to be a Biscuit.
At least, that wasn’t the plan.
The summer before his senior year at Beloit College in Wisconsin, Joe Davis called games for the Schaumburg Flyers, an independent Northern League team based in Schaumburg, Ill., roughly 30 miles outside Chicago. Graduating early would allow him to then work for the Lake County Fielders, another Northern League team under the same ownership group as Schaumburg.
But before making that jump, Davis figured he’d take a shot in the dark. The Montgomery Biscuits, the Tampa Bay Rays’ Double-A affiliate, were in search of a play-by-play voice. If Davis got it, he’d be the youngest Double-A broadcaster in the country.
“Just applied for it, kind of on a whim,” Davis said. “I figured I had nothing to lose.”
No kid fresh out of college called Minor League games. It didn’t seem possible. Joe downplayed the possibility.
His girlfriend and now wife, Libby Davis, did not. The second Libby found out Joe spoke to the Biscuits, she prepared herself mentally for the move from the Midwest down South.
“I just knew,” Libby said. “I knew he would get it.”
Her intuition came to fruition.
A permanent stadium for Lake County never got built. The broadcaster who got the Fielders’ job quit on-air. By 2012, in the midst of financial issues, the team folded. Joe could’ve gone down with that ship.
Instead, the promising play-by-play announcer was on his way to becoming the Southern League Broadcaster of the Year for the Biscuits.
“That team went under, and there I was getting kind of a head start on my career at a really high level,” Joe said. “I was lucky that the ownership group in Montgomery was willing to take a chance on a young guy.”
To this day, Joe considers the move to Montgomery, and the Biscuits taking a flier on a 22-year-old, the single-most important move to getting him where he is today, on a meteoric ascension that’s taken him just seven years later to his current job broadcasting games full-time for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“I’d like to think I still would’ve had success and would’ve found a way to make things happen,” Joe said. “But that definitely was a springboard for everything that’s happened since.”
And there’s been plenty.
In fifth grade, Joe’s mother, Laurie, filled out a questionnaire for the guidance counselor at Joe’s school, when the question appeared.
What career do you think your child would be good at?
She wrote down “sportscaster.” That was easy.
The Davis family, based outside of Lansing, Mich., kept a Little Tikes basketball hoop in the basement. From the age of 3 or 4, Joe was already broadcasting his moves.
“Literally, from the time he could talk and walk, there was never a question in our minds what he was going to do,” Laurie said.
The Davis family offered encouragement as Joe chased his passion, but neither of his parents could remember a time their son seriously considered anything else.
“It was probably his first year in college, I talked to him briefly about his future and asked him about Plan B, because of course it’s a really selective field,” said Joe’s father, Paul. “He quite emphatically told me, ‘I don’t have a Plan B.’ It was at that point I really thought that this was kind of make it or break it.”
The thought of pre-law once entered Joe’s mind, but it came and went faster than the Lake County Fielders. Laurie knew what Joe wanted to do, and her belief that it could happen was cemented when she fielded a phone call from her son in 2010.
She was on pins and needles after Joe finished multiple interviews with the Biscuits. She might’ve been more nervous than Joe was.
“I had driven to the mall and had just parked and my phone rang and I saw it was him and I’m going, ‘Oh, God, please let it work out,’” Laurie recalled. “I answered the phone, and he said, ‘Mom, they offered me the job.’”
There was no going back.
Joe, a sophomore football player at Beloit, first met Libby, a sophomore at Grand Valley in Michigan, in college.
They’d make the four-hour trek through Chicago and around the outskirts of Lake Michigan to see each other every other week. It was around that time Joe switched from quarterback to receiver at Beloit following a shoulder injury that, as frustrating as it was, worked out for his career.
Game-planning as a quarterback takes more time than game-planning as a receiver, and Joe’s work ethic, whether on a football field, in a classroom, or with a microphone in his hands, rarely wavers. The extra time had to go somewhere, and it went toward sportscasting and preparing for his career.
For three years, Joe spent his football offseasons broadcasting Beloit baseball and basketball games, before it was on to Montgomery. Joe and Libby understood the treacherous and often unforgiving path of a sportscaster. But Libby was all in. They conquered long distance, and they could conquer whatever came next.
“Right away, from the very start to now, she’s been a bigger fan and supporter of my career than even I have,” Joe said. “When she followed me to Montgomery after we graduated college, that’s when I knew I probably had a keeper.”
For three years, Libby largely supported the two financially, working at a pharmaceutical company in marketing and sales in Alabama, while most of Joe’s days were spent at the ballpark.
As much of a grind as the Major League season is, it compares little to the amount of work for Minor League play-by-play announcers. A night game meant arriving at the stadium around 8 a.m. to put together game notes for the day, among a litany of other duties beyond broadcasting the games.
To minimize the time away from each other, Libby often brought dinner and sat in the booth with Joe.
“I thought this was going to be our life,” Libby said. “And Joe thought that, too.”
They were fully prepared for that, but Joe, always meticulous and studious, made it a habit to write goals on the fridge, including one he remembers in particular:
National television contract by 24 or 25.
And another Libby recalls:
Out of Minor League Baseball by 30.
Check. And check. They both happened by the time Joe was 24, when Joe signed with ESPN.
“Even though we were very realistic about how difficult it was, I had those goals in front of me every day as a constant reminder for where I ultimately wanted to go,” Joe said. “But again, I never thought the path would lead me to what it has.”
The ESPN job allowed Joe and Libby to move back to Michigan. Libby appreciated being closer to friends and family, and it was a breath of fresh air to be able to wake up and eat breakfast with Joe, who did much of his work at home before flying out for national weekend games — a vast change from the Minor League life.
By 2014, it was then on to Fox Sports, calling MLB, college football and college basketball games.
“My primary goal was always to be the top guy at a network — call the biggest games on the biggest channels,” Joe said. “Once that got going quickly in my career, for me to be with the team, it had to be the perfect situation.”
He found it.
When the Dodgers opportunity became a possibility in 2016, again, Joe was skeptical. And again, Libby wasn’t.
Much to Joe’s delight, Libby’s instincts were 2-for-2.
“It was beyond anything I had ever thought about in my head when I tried to think about what that perfect situation may look like,” Joe said.
As Opening Day 2017 began, and the angst continued to crescendo, the nerves reached a peak when Vin Scully, after 67 years gracing the Dodger broadcast booth, appeared on the video board before the first pitch. He introduced the new Dodgers play-by-play broadcaster, inviting Joe to say hello to a sold-out crowd at Dodger Stadium.
How will they react? What if they boo?
The nightmare scenarios creeping through Joe’s head were unfounded. He soaked in a scene he will never forget.
“To not only not have a negative reaction, but have them welcome me the way they did with cheering, and coming on the heels of Vin’s introduction and Vin’s toss with how they planned that, that’s as special a moment as I’ve had professionally and personally,” Joe said.
Looking side to side around the stadium, he shook his head. The memories at home in Michigan, the experiences at Beloit, the early mornings and late nights in Montgomery and the entire ride from Michigan, to Alabama, back to Michigan and to California played like a video in his brain.
In some ways, it’s the end of a journey already more prolific than any sportscaster will realize. In others, it’s the start of another.
When the festivities of the opening series died down, and the Dodgers returned from their first road trip, Joe’s not quite 1-year-old daughter, Charlotte, spent her first Easter with her dad at Dodger Stadium.
This is now home for Joe. And it’s a new time for Dodger baseball.
