Joe Davis awoke Saturday morning, still fretting.
He is a perfectionist. He had provided a pretty perfect call of a pretty perfect moment the night before. In six words, he had delivered a magical homage to the best broadcaster in baseball history and the most dramatic moment in Dodgers history.
Were they just the right words? At just the right time?
He second-guessed himself long enough for his wife to tell him to knock it off.
“People really liked it, right?” his wife, Libby, said. “Would you stop?”
Davis drew local and national acclaim for his call of Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in Game 1 of the World Series on Friday: “She is gone! Gibby, meet Freddie!”
“She is gone” was Vin Scully’s trademark home run call. Scully used it, of course, in calling Kirk Gibson’s walk-off home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. Gibson was hobbled by knee and hamstring injuries; Freeman was hampered by an ankle injury.
Scully told you what happened and let you soak it all in, through the pictures and the crowd noise. He said “She is gone!” and then waited 68 seconds before coming back with one of the greatest lines of his incomparable career: “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened!”
Perhaps, Davis said, he ought to have let some time pass between “She is gone!” and “Gibby, meet Freddie!”
Said Davis: “I felt like maybe I was talking over the crowd a little too much, even though it was only another two seconds or so.”
He had thought about a moment like that in advance. How could you not, with the parallels of Game 1 and a hobbled star?
As Scully had said in 1988: “And look who’s coming up?”
But the exact words, waiting to be uttered at the exact moment?
“I’m not smart enough to have the perfect caption come to my mind as the moment happens,” Davis said. “I think that’s my job: to caption and capture these moments for history.
“But I also never want to script anything, because I don’t think it’s possible to have a call scripted and have it not sound scripted.”
And then, well, the ball soared toward right field, and Gibson’s ball had a similar arc and …
“The flight of that ball, we’ve all seen a million times,” Davis said. “We’ve seen that same exact home run a million times and heard Vin’s call of it. I think it kind of sparked that in my head when I had that context sitting there.”
When the Dodgers hired Davis to replace Scully, the two men had several conversations. Scully shared the advice that Red Barber had given him: Don’t try to be me, or anyone else. Be yourself.
Davis has done just that, which made the “She is gone!” line so beautiful in the moment. Baseball binds generations like no other sport, and now Davis is as tied to Scully as Freeman is to Gibson.
On Saturday, Davis thought about another bit of advice Scully had shared. Davis had about finding the right words and managing your emotions in the biggest of moments.
“You have to think of it like your house is burning down,” Scully told Davis, “and you’ve got to get everybody out safely. If you’re freaking out, you’re probably not going to get the kids and the dog out safely. If you’re calm and cool, you’re probably going to escape that fire just fine.
“I had a chuckle when he said it then, but I’ve thought about it many times since.”
Generations of Southern Californians have associated Scully with the most dramatic home run in the history of an iconic franchise. Generations of Southern Californians, now and forever, will associate Davis with this thrill of October.
“That’s really special,” Davis said. “That’s not why you get into the business. But, once you’re in it, and if you’re lucky enough to have those moments happen in front of you, it’s a really gratifying thing when you hope you did it justice. That’s your job: to do it justice.
“The moment happens, and if you’re lucky enough to be the person in that chair, that’s your responsibility. It’s not just to say, ‘Home run, Dodgers win,’ but to caption that moment and capture it for history.”
Davis shook hands and said he had to get back to work. In another few hours, it would again be time for Dodger baseball.
