Joe Davis recalls pointing to TV as a kid and saying he wanted to be like Joe Buck, now his Hall of Fame predecessor

Joe Buck enters Hall of Fame with Ford C. Frick Award

Joe Buck, the longtime voice of MLB on Fox, received the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s 2026 Ford C. Frick Award on Saturday, July 26, in Cooperstown, New York. Buck called 135 World Series games from 1996 through 2021 before moving to ESPN’s Monday Night Football in 2022. The award honors broadcasters for major contributions to baseball.

Davis shares childhood moment during Fox broadcast

Later Saturday night, during an MLB on Fox broadcast of the Los Angeles Dodgers-New York Mets game at Citi Field, Fox’s current lead MLB play-by-play announcer Joe Davis offered a personal tribute to Buck. Speaking with broadcast partner John Smoltz, who worked alongside Buck from 2016 to 2021, Davis recalled a moment from his childhood.

“I was a 12 or 13-year-old kid,” Davis said. “I remember sitting there watching the World Series. And my mom asked me; she happened to ask, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’ And I knew sort of what I wanted to do, but I remember pointing to the TV and saying, ‘That.’ I want to be just like him. I want to be like Joe Buck, who was calling, I think, his fourth World Series at that point. It was Yankees-Diamondbacks in 2001. And I knew exactly what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be like.”

Davis added, “So, to Joe, congratulations, and thank you for all those years of showing me the way the job should be done.”

Buck’s response and the passing of the torch

During his Hall of Fame speech earlier Saturday, Buck had already acknowledged his successor. “Oh, and the job is in great hands at Fox with my friend Joe Davis,” Buck told the Cooperstown crowd. Buck has previously praised Davis’s work on Fox broadcasts, reflecting the mutual respect between the two announcers.

Davis replaced Buck as Fox’s top MLB play-by-play announcer and the voice of the World Series starting in 2022. The moment on Saturday underscored the direct line between Buck’s legacy and Davis’s current role.

Key facts

Why this matters for NationalSportsWeb readers

This story connects a major Hall of Fame milestone with a behind-the-scenes broadcasting moment that resonates with MLB fans and those interested in the sport’s media landscape. It shows how the role of lead MLB announcer has passed from one generation to the next, with a personal link that goes back to Davis’s childhood. For readers who follow the Dodgers, Mets, or the broader baseball calendar, the tribute adds context to the current Fox broadcast team.

Source: Yahoo Sports (original reporting via Awful Announcing) – https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/joe-davis-tells-story-wanting-133024516.html