Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow have been the primary television announcers for the San Francisco Giants for more than 30 years. Looking ahead to the future, the longstanding pairing, best known as Kruk and Kuip, have no plans on leaving the booth.
Speaking to Dave Newhouse of the Oakland Tribune in the Ultimate Sports Guide Newsletter, both men made it clear that they have no plans on leaving the booth any time soon.
“That’s the plan,” Krukow said, referring to returning to the booth. “We’ll go on as long as we can.”
Kuiper agreed.
“If we can do it, we’ll do it until we can’t,” he said.
It is natural to wonder how much longer either will stay in the broadcast booth.
Kuiper is 73 while Krukow will turn 72 in January. Additionally, both men have had significant health issues in recent seasons. Kuiper missed a significant portion of the 2021 season as he went through chemotherapy after being diagnosed with cancer. Krukow, meanwhile, has inclusion body myositis (IBM), which precludes him from making road trips.
Despite that, Krukow does work a limited road schedule, calling games from the studio. That was an agreement the Giants, NBC Sports Bay Area and Krukow reached after the 2019 season, before the COVID-19 pandemic forced road broadcasts around the league to be done remotely for the 2020 and 2021 seasons. Kuiper’s health issues also limit his schedule and early in the 2023 season, many Giants road trips had neither man calling games.
Despite the issues, the work has not suffered. Awful Announcing readers ranked San Francisco’s broadcast team as MLB’s best in July. The Giants have finished first in those rankings in four out of the six seasons it’s been done and have never been below second.
Kuiper and Krukow are both former players and were teammates with the Giants from 1983-1985, when Kuiper retired. Kuiper began his broadcasting career after retiring. Krukow did the same, though his career lasted through the 1989 season. The two have been broadcast partners since Krukow’s retirement with the exception of the 1993 season, when Kuiper called games for the Colorado Rockies in their debut season.
[Ultimate Sports Guide Newsletter, Photo Credit: NBC Sports Bay Area]
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