{"id":324699,"date":"2026-05-20T15:26:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T15:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/324699\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T15:26:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T15:26:16","slug":"from-the-big-apple-sour-grapes-toward-joe-davis-voice-of-the-dodgers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/324699\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Big Apple, sour grapes toward Joe Davis, voice of the Dodgers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SAN DIEGO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The good people of New York like to consider themselves tough. If you can make it there, as Frank Sinatra crooned, you\u2019ll make it anywhere.<\/p>\n

Do not confuse hot takes with sounding tough. Two New York sports talk hosts this week took daft shots at Joe Davis<\/a> and came off \u2014 in the last adjective with which any true New Yorker would want to be described \u2014 as soft.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s rewind: Davis is the lead voice of the Dodgers<\/a> on SportsNet LA. He is also the lead voice of the national baseball broadcasts on Fox<\/a>. In the latter role, he called last Saturday\u2019s game between the New York Yankees and the New York Mets.<\/p>\n

At one point, Mets outfielder Carson Benge dropped an easy fly ball. Without missing a beat, Davis said: \u201cOh, no! Oh, no, the Mets!\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n

It was the perfect call. The foibles of the Mets are so many and so weird that Mets fans themselves have embraced a term for them: LOLMets. You can learn all about it in a 23-minute YouTube video<\/a> narrated by a former Mets pitcher.<\/p>\n

\"Stephen <\/p>\n

Commentator Stephen Nelson, Dodger Shohei Ohtani, interpreter Will Ireton, Dodger Roki Sasaki and broadcaster Joe Davis address fans during Dodger Fest at Dodger Stadium on Jan. 31.<\/p>\n

(Jae C. Hong \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Firing one manager (Willie Randolph) at midnight in Anaheim? Dumping another manager (Carlos Beltran) before he could manage a game because he was the only player cited in the commissioner\u2019s report on the Houston Astros\u2019 cheating scandal? Opening this season with baseball\u2019s highest payroll and spending some time with baseball\u2019s worst record?<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year, and in recent years, there have been so many moments where it looks like the Mets are right there, ready to make a run or win the division or win a championship, and then something just tends to go wrong,\u201d Davis said in San Diego Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were in a stretch right there where every single day, they were getting a stud hurt. They put together a winning streak against the Tigers, then Clay Holmes has the comebacker break his ankle.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, Benge totally clanked it, and Davis totally nailed it \u2014 in the moment, not with some scripted phrase waiting in his pocket.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou hope that your reactions in those moments \u2014 in any moment in this job \u2014 are authentic,\u201d Davis said. \u201cYou don\u2019t have much time for it to be anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Monday, Evan Roberts \u2014 a host on WFAN, New York\u2019s top-rated sports station \u2014 unloaded on Davis for \u201cmocking\u201d the Mets.<\/p>\n

\u201cJoe Davis has become a clown for the Los Angeles Dodgers and we all hear it,\u201d Roberts said, in remarks posted<\/a> by the Awful Announcing website.<\/p>\n

Got anything else?<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s a Dodger fanboy,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cI think he wants to just make love to Shohei Ohtani<\/a> every time he talks about him \u2026 He\u2019s a great broadcaster, and I\u2019ll admit it. But, for now, I think Joe Davis is a Dodgers shill and it\u2019s obnoxious.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I\u2019d give him this advice, not that he cares, he doesn\u2019t care: Don\u2019t go to the Dodger parade<\/a> and be the emcee. It\u2019s a bad look. It just is. You\u2019re sitting there as the national voice and now you\u2019re pom-pom waving at the Dodger parade. Come on, man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davis works for the Dodgers. When the boss wants you to emcee the World Series championship rally, you do. Would the Mets\u2019 broadcasters do the same? When the Mets win their first World Series championship since 1986, we\u2019ll find out.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hear from Sal Licata, formerly at WFAN and now working independently: \u201cWhat\u2019s up with Joe Davis, by the way? You Dodger homer. \u2018Oh no, the Mets,\u2019 that\u2019s a national unbiased broadcast? You biased Dodger blue fool.\u201d<\/p>\n

There always will be people who claim Davis is biased toward the Dodgers, just as people claimed his predecessor, Joe Buck, was biased toward the St. Louis Cardinals. Buck worked for Fox on weekends and called Cardinals games during the week.<\/p>\n

And, for the people who see only what they want to see, Davis is the voice of baseball\u2019s evil empire. Maybe that aggravates New Yorkers, but consider how aggravated we are that we have to fight through hellish traffic to get to Dodger Stadium or a television set by 5 p.m. so we can see our team play in the World Series because the East Coast needs to see the game in prime time.<\/p>\n

Or how annoyed we are that we get televised Yankees-Red Sox games shoved down our throats when Red Sox management has opted for irrelevance and the best rivalry in baseball is here, between the Dodgers and Padres.<\/p>\n

Better yet, how about we all chill? It\u2019s just a game. We could break bread with New York\u2019s famous bagels, except the New York Times told us we have the better bagels<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The good people of New York like to consider themselves tough. If you can make it there,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2135,426,135122,11592,423,135121,89154,48,52,51,47,50,49,2747,11421,44639,135124,4694,315,10605,135123],"class_list":["post-324699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-baseball","tag-dodgers","tag-evan-roberts","tag-fox","tag-game","tag-good-people","tag-joe-davis","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-manager","tag-many-moment","tag-mets","tag-national-baseball-broadcast","tag-new-york","tag-time","tag-voice","tag-world-series-championship-rally"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}