A Giant Hit : Sherry Davis Makes History as Major League Baseball’s First Female Stadium Announcer

SAN FRANCISCO — She tried out on a lark, really, because . . . well, because spring was approaching and she’s a baseball fanatic , and when she heard the San Francisco Giants were holding auditions for stadium announcer she thought it would be very, very neat --just once--to hear her voice sail out over the mound and home plate and right field and all those bright orange seats, including the one--in Row F, Section 9--where she has loyally sat for a dozen good and sad and always memorable seasons.

She got the job, of course. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Because there’s never been a woman at the microphone in major-league baseball. Until now. Until Sherry Davis.

It’s wild how it all happened--”surreal,” in her words, “kind of like an episode of ‘Twilight Zone.’ ”

One day, Davis was your garden-variety San Francisco legal secretary, working hard and weathering life’s gifts and punishments in anonymity like the rest of us.

The next, whammo : 36 messages on the answering machine, appearances on “Good Morning, America” and “Entertainment Tonight,” 81 other interviews, a proclamation from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and autographs--yes, lots and lots of autographs--to sign.

Suddenly, she was a celebrity. Suddenly, she needed an unlisted number.

“I was stunned by the reaction,” says the fortysomething Davis, her striking blue eyes widening at the memory. “I still am. I was the happiest person in the world when this happened, and I guess it inspired other people to see a woman break into baseball. That’s what they say in their letters.”

Some of them, at least. Others haven’t been such good sports about it.

Take the fan from San Jose who wrote the Giants in a fury and canceled his season tickets. This man said he goes to the ballpark to “escape women.” Hearing Davis over the loudspeaker clearly spoiled his fun.

Another fellow griped that Davis is just a Giants gimmick, a publicity stunt along the lines of a ridiculous former team mascot called “The Crazy Crab.”

“That one was truly insulting,” says Davis, who, like most other self-respecting Giants fans, detested the ill-fated crustacean. “Imagine, comparing me to the Crazy Crab!”

So there has been a bit of grumbling, some hate mail, some nasty calls and snide remarks. But for the most part, Sherry Davis has been welcomed warmly by the Bay Area, and the team’s owners say they couldn’t be more pleased. Hiring Davis, after all, got them almost as many headlines as hiring mega-star outfielder Barry Bonds. Bonds will gobble up $43 million of the owners’ profits over the next six years; Davis gets a parking pass, free popcorn and $75 a game.

“I wish I could say hiring Sherry was a great marketing strategy we dreamed up,” says Giants Vice President Larry Baer. “I wish I could take credit for being that smart. But the fact is, we really just liked her style.”

*

It’s 15 minutes before game time, and things are mildly chaotic in the cramped announcer’s booth. Rain is falling on Candlestick Park, so it’s unclear when--or if--the Giants will take the field against the Atlanta Braves.

A phone rings, and Davis grabs it. “P.A.!” she barks, authoritative yet cheerful. There’s a pause. “OK, I’ll do the anthem at 1:03, then the lineups, then the umpires, then first pitch and play ball. Right.”

That settled, Davis reaches for some organic low-fat cheese puffs, which she keeps--along with peppermint tea, sweetened slightly with fruit juice--at her feet. Her days in the booth are long, and there’s no time for trips to the snack bar.

Davis looks relaxed. The tools of her trade--microphone, binoculars, stop watch, walkie-talkie, score book, scripted announcements--surround her. It’s her sixth game and she hasn’t made any colossal blunders yet. She no longer grips the mike so hard her knuckles turn white. She is, by all appearances, getting the hang of it.

A stadium announcer is a team’s public signature, the voice that defines the fans’ experience at the park. Good announcers accentuate positive moments and give fans a road map through the game. They also develop a style, be it the refined enunciation of Bob Sheppard at Yankee Stadium or the guttural growl of former announcer Pat Piper at Wrigley Field.

Davis wants, more than anything else, to sound natural and “not irritate people. My job is to welcome fans and be informative,” she says. She aims to be enthusiastic but dreads being viewed as “a homer.” That, she said, would be tacky.

It is 1:03 p.m. Davis introduces the national anthem and announces the lineups, her voice clear and professional, with a tendency toward extra oomph in the pronunciation of certain names, such as “Willieeeeee McGeeeeeeeeee!!!” Just then a new squall rolls in, turning the infield into oatmeal. The cranky crowd howls; the grounds crew scurries about. Davis thanks the fans for their patience. They boo a hearty reply.

The rain delay gives Davis time to discuss her impeccable credentials as a card-carrying baseball fanatic. Her fluffy reddish-orange hair and black clothes match the Giants uniform colors, and in her best year she saw 60 games--more than two-thirds of the team’s home contests.

She is the sort of fan who would never dream of leaving until the last out, and she spent $180 to custom-paint her tiny black Mazda with orange stripes and the team’s “SF” logo. There’s a specialized license plate too--GNTSMBL, for Giants mobile.

The roots of her fanaticism, she confides, are relatively shallow. Dad was a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, but little girls growing up in Newport News, Va., in the 1950s weren’t expected to develop an interest in sports, and Davis didn’t, preferring ballet.

Indeed, she did not attend her first baseball game until 1980, shortly after moving to San Francisco. She was instantly hooked and began making up for lost time. Davis went to watch spring training eight years in a row and has even made treks to check out farm clubs in assorted obscure outposts. Several years ago, she took a two-month, cross-country train tour of America’s most storied ballparks.

Ask for highlights of her career as a fan, and her face lights up: the in-the-park grand slam she saw Junior Felix hit at Fenway Park, the 1989 Giants playoffs against the Cubs, and meeting former pitcher Vida Blue.

“Baseball is such a beautiful game, so unstructured and poetic,” Davis says, looking almost misty-eyed. “I really don’t think there’s anything more lovely than a double play. Do you?”

*

The clouds part and the game begins--two hours and 17 minutes late. Before long, Giants pitcher Trevor Wilson is in trouble, and Davis--her microphone switched off for the moment--reverts to her old role, that of the fan.

“Oh, come on, Trev, just settle down,” she implores, leaning forward as if to coax a strike out of the rattled hurler. Wilson complies and gets the batter out.

Davis, who is single, lives about an hour’s drive from the ballpark, in suburban Walnut Creek. She works for a downtown San Francisco law firm, one that has allowed her to trim her hours as needed to announce day games.

Secretarial work pays the bills, but one of Davis’ great passions is theater. Most recently, she acted with a Bay Area comedy troupe called The Screaming Memes, performing wacky routines such as “Cooking With Sherry,” in which she’d take a swig from a bottle of sherry and say, “A good cook always tests her ingredients.” She has also been a movie extra and has done voice-over work for commercials.

Given such experience, she was calm during Round One of the auditions for Giants announcer.

There were 500 hopefuls at the park that March day--only eight of them women. Davis drew No. 161, which meant she sat in the bleachers listening to her competitors for three hours before stepping up to the mike. Driving to the park, she hadn’t given a thought to what it meant to be a woman going for a job that had always been held by a man. But when she arrived and saw so few women, “I got determined. I thought, ‘I’m really going to try to do well.’ ”

Her resolve paid off, and she was called back for a second audition and then a third. This one was tricky, requiring contestants to pronounce some tricky names such as Felipe Alou and Shawon Dunston. Davis was so tense that she worried her jaw might not move.

But it did, and she got the job and suddenly somebody was offering to pay her to watch baseball.

*

As the game winds on, the announcements roll out: a lost child named Wayne, Fan of the Day, upcoming home stands, changes on the mound and at third base.

In the sixth inning, Davis gets word there’s a visitor to see her, someone named John. He says he’s her nephew.

“My nephew?” Davis says, looking puzzled. “Well, that’s not possible. I don’t have a nephew. I don’t have any brothers and sisters.”

Davis and her partner in the booth, the guy who records the balls and strikes, share a laugh. It is just another sign of Sherry Davis’ new fame, another sign that life will never be quite the same.