There are few writers who know their way around Los Angeles and its history than David Davis, and fewer yet who have the full admiration of Steve Lowery and Tom Hoffarth for this longtime freelance journalist who has his hands in many things.
It has taken awhile, but we finally coordinated our schedules to have him down the Carson compound to talk about:
= His current “L.A. Baseball” photograph exhibit he curated for the downtown public library.
= His recent piece for Deadspin.com on the oral history of Muscle Beach in Venice.
= The continued success of his 2015 book “Waterman: The Life and Times of Duke Kahanamoku,” which has since been optioned (as they say in the business) and is in paperback.
We also revisited the story he did for SBNation long ago about the one Dodgers artifact that doesn’t seem to want to be found: The Kirk Gibson 1988 World Series home run ball. Davis wrote the piece in 2013 and it remains the closest anyone has ever come to date on finding whatever can be verified about its existence.
Davis’ career has spanned Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian Magazine, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, Wall Street Journal and Vice. He started his career at the L.A. Weekly; his story about boxer Jerry Quarry was anthologized in the “Best American Sportswriting” series. The series of Los Angeles Magazine pieces about the evolution of wheelchair basketball, as well as Q&As with fitness gurus over the years are ripe to also be turned into books or screenplays.
His other books:
* 2012: “Showdown at Shepherd’s Bush: The 1908 Olympic Marathon and the Three Runners Who Launched a Sporting Craze” (St. Martin’s)
* 2012: “Marathon Crasher: The Life and Times of Merry Lepper, the First American Woman to Run a Marathon” (Thomas Dunne Books)
* 2004: “Play By Play: Los Angeles Sports Photography, 1889-1989” (Angel City Press).
Enjoy this episode.