SF Giants broadcast partners Mike Krukow, 71, and Duane Kuiper, 73, plan to ‘go on as long as we can’

Published 1:34 pm Tuesday, September 19, 2023

If there was any uncertainty about the future of the San Francisco Giants broadcast booth, it’s been dispelled.

Broadcast partners for 30 years, Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow will continue calling Giants games for the foreseeable future, they told former Oakland Tribune columnist Dave Newhouse in this week’s Ultimate Sports Guide newsletter.

“That’s the plan,” Krukow, 71, told Newhouse. “We’ll go on as long as we can.”

“If we can do it,” Kuiper, 73, added, “we’ll do it until we can’t.”

Age and health have been of concern for the pair of former Giants players who are continuously honored as being part of the best broadcast booth in baseball. Awful Announcing ranked them No. 1 again this year for the fourth time.

They’ve also been through a lot off the field.

Kuiper lost his wife of 36 years last February. He’s also suffered from undisclosed cancer that caused him to miss most of the 2021 season. He told Newhouse that he gets scanned every five months and so far everything has been good.

“The loss of his wife was devastating,” Krukow said. “We comforted him as best we can.”

Krukow no longer travels with the team due to inclusion body myositis (IBM) that requires him to use a walking stick. He told Newhouse that he no longer flies nor drives, and he now takes a scooter to get three blocks from his house to Oracle Park for home games.

For road games, he calls games from the NBC Sports Bay Area studio in San Francisco.

“The game is changing,” Krukow said. ”It’s not the game I played, but it’s still an intriguing game. Duane and I remind ourselves how hard the game is, so we treat it with fairness. It’s such a hard thing to stay relevant, but we’ve watched the game through our children’s eyes, and we’re now doing it with our grandchildren. So it never gets stale.”

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