Joe Davis Mets Credit: imagn images, Fox
By Matt Yoder on

Joe Davis has one of the best resumes in all of sports. Not only is he the voice of the World Series on Fox Sports, but he also gets to call one of the biggest brands and best teams in all of sports day in and day out with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

It’s a tough balancing act to walk for any broadcaster when you work both locally and nationally. But it wasn’t calling a Dodgers game on Fox Sports that drew the ire of WFAN’s Evan Roberts. It was calling a Mets game.

Over the weekend, Joe Davis and John Smoltz were calling the Subway Series between the New York Mets and New York Yankees. And Davis had a viral call of “Oh no, the Mets!” when Carson Benge dropped an easy fly ball in the outfield.

It was a great call in the moment because it not only encapsulated the shock of the error, but how it symbolized the disastrous Mets season so far as they sit in the NL East cellar in spite of their massive payroll.

But it didn’t sit well with past and present New York radio hosts.

On WFAN, Evan Roberts first tried to compliment Joe Davis as a good announcer and “probably a really good guy.” But that’s when they niceties came to an end as he noted the lead Fox announcer mocking the Mets.

“Joe Davis has become a clown for the Los Angeles Dodgers and we all hear it,” Roberts said. He then compared Davis to Joe Buck and said that Buck would never take sides in a national broadcast in spite of his local ties to the St. Louis Cardinals. But he gets a different vibe from Davis.

“I think he’s a Dodger fanboy. I think he wants to just make love to Shohei Ohtani every time he talks about him. I just get that from him and I don’t know, I wish it would stop. He’s a great broadcaster and I’ll admit it. But for now, I think Joe Davis is a Dodgers shill and it’s obnoxious. And I’d give him this advice, not that he cares, he doesn’t care. Don’t go to the Dodger parade and be the emcee. It’s a bad look. It just is. You’re sitting there as the national voice and now you’re pom-pom waving at the Dodger parade. Come on man,” Roberts added.

Davis did have a good reason for being at the Dodgers parade. It’s because he’s… the voice of the Dodgers. While it may seem unusual to use a relatively innocuous line about the Mets to have a go at the Fox announcer for being a Dodgers homer, Roberts wasn’t alone. Former WFAN host Sal Licata also unloaded on Joe Davis on his own show.

“What’s up with Joe Davis, by the way? You Dodger homer. ‘Oh no, the Mets,’ that’s a national unbiased broadcast? You biased Dodger blue fool. How about that? The Mets won that game that you were doing and then they won the next game. So before you ‘oh no the Mets’ which is such a clear Dodger bais, maybe you’re still bothered because of Edwin Diaz and the cockfighting and because he’s out for the year. I’m not sure what your issue is,” Licata said.

“You’re doing a national broadcast. You can’t be unbiased? ‘Oh no, the Mets,’ it wasn’t oh no, the Mets, it was a rookie making a terrible play. Get on him just like I did. That’s what you should do, not ‘oh no, the Mets.’ Get lost Joe Davis,” he continued in calling his work with John Smoltz a “snooze festival broadcast.”

At this point it’s probably worth noting that even the Mets’ own announcers have hammered them for their mistakes throughout the season. Joe Davis has gone on the record to say that he doesn’t try to engage with the criticism of being the voice of the Dodgers while calling national games on Fox because it’s a no-win situation. This is Exhibit A for why that’s probably the best way for him to approach it, especially if he’s getting hammered for being a Dodgers homer while he’s not even calling a Dodgers game.

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