Joe Davis, 29, reflects on the ride that led him to the Dodger broadcast booth. (Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers)

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.