SF Giants announcers Kruk and Kuip are the definition of baseball family.
A recent interview on a podcast with beloved San Francisco Giants announcers Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper may make even the most bitter of Giants fans shed a tear.
With Giants fans being starved for baseball-related content of any kind, the Inside Giants Moments podcast has been an absolute savior. Every week there has been an interview with Giants legends from J.T. Snow, Ryan Vogelsong, and even Bruce Bochy.
In the most recent edition, the interview was with the beloved Giants announcers Kruk and Kuip who have been calling Giants games together since the turn of the millennium. And it was everything that you’d expect from the two broadcast legends: great stories, funny one-liners, great baseball insight, and even some tear-jerking moments towards the end.
They recount their time as players with the Giants and the transition from the field to the broadcast booth, which was pretty seamless for both of them. Then they broke down the Barry Bonds years and how even to this day, when Bonds sees the two of them he reminds them in his classic, humble fashion, “I made you guys!” — to which Kruk and Kuip both say they don’t have a valid retort.
They relive the pain of the Game 6 loss to Angels in the 2002 World Series and Kuip talks about how he would think about that lost World Series for years even after the fact.
But then we get to the good stuff, i.e. the championship years. I found Kruk’s depiction of the 2010 World Series parade quite apt: “It was like everyone in the city of San Francisco had just gotten laid for the first time.”
The end of podcast was what had me teary-eyed. In the last two minutes, when asked what the two mean to one another, Mike Krukow says without hesitation, “I get to go to work every day with my best friend.” He goes on to recount how they talk every day about baseball, life, or whatever it is that is on their mind. Then, Kuip compares Kruk to his wife on the road and likens him to a third brother.
It’s a really beautiful moment, and if you ever doubted the fact that behind all the “Grab some pine, meat” and “He hits it high . . . he hits it deep!” calls, there was real love and friendship between the two of them, those doubts can be put to rest upon listening to this podcast.
It is well worth a listen and is a great reminder of how special it is to have two incredible broadcasters like Kruk and Kuip calling games. Let’s just hope we can hear their soothing voices again sooner rather than later, and let it be a reminder to cherish the two of them while we still have them.