Joe Buck with the Vince Lombardi Trophy during an ESPN Newsmaker Luncheon Speaker Series. Joe Buck with the Vince Lombardi Trophy during an ESPN Newsmaker Luncheon Speaker Series. (Allen Kee/ESPN Images.)
By Andrew Bucholtz on

The remarkable Freddie Freeman walk-off grand slam to give the Los Angeles Dodgers a 6-3 win in Game 1 of the World Series Friday was also remarkable for its calls. In particular, Fox play-by-play announcer Joe Davis pulled off quite the tribute to Vin Scully’s famed call of Kirk Gibson’s legendary 1988 Game 1 home run, which even took place at the exact same time (8:37 p.m. Pacific). Here’s Davis’ call, and Scully’s 1988 call:

That call received a ton of praise, as did Fox’s overall presentation of the home run and the celebration of Freeman and his teammates afterwards. One particularly interesting source for some of that praise was ESPN NFL announcer Joe Buck, as he called the World Series from 1996 through 2022 while working at Fox. Buck took to X Saturday to salute Davis and director Matt Gangl (who’s worked for Fox Sports nationally since 2014):

It’s notable to see Buck pay tribute to his former Fox colleagues, and especially to see him salute the announcer who’s currently in his former role. Buck seems generally at peace no longer calling baseball following his move to ESPN (apart from calling a St. Louis Cardinals game locally alongside Chip Caray this year, which he said brought him “closure“), and he seems quite happy to be doing Monday Night Football at ESPN (and seems to be in a pretty good place even around criticism of him these days), so it’s maybe not surprising that he can be happy for his former colleagues and praise their good work here. But it’s still cool to see him do that publicly.

[Joe Buck on X]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

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