SF Giants' next broadcasting duo is clear if this is the end for Kruk and Kuip

SF Giants fans were already preparing for Mike Krukow’s retirement at the end of this season, but no one was prepared for the gut-punch announcement that Duane Kuiper was diagnosed with throat cancer. While the hope is he will be in the booth for Krukow’s final games, one can’t help but wonder what the future of the booth will look like when Kuiper eventually retires as well.

Obviously, one hopes he makes a full recovery and can call Giants games for many more years but at the age of 76 he’s not going to be able to do play-by-play forever, as much as we might want him to.

The next primary duo in the booth for San Francisco seems pretty obvious since they’ve both been calling Giants games for many years now, but Dave Flemming and Hunter Pence seem likely to be the ones to succeed Kruk and Kuip in the booth once they have both retired.

Flemming and Hunter have called many road Giants games together in recent years and Pence has been on the call for games broadcast on Apple TV, Netflix, and Peacock so he certainly has a lot of experience under his belt.

Not every Giants fan loves Pence’s style in the booth which is fair, but the fact that he is a beloved player who played an instrumental role in winning two World Series titles and has been a key part of the community in San Francisco earns him a lot of good will from the majority of the fanbase.

Flemming has been the play-by-play man in training for quite some time. He’s had some pretty great mentors and has learned from one of the best play-by-play men to ever do it on the radio side in Jon Miller so it’s seemed inevitable that he would one day take the mantle from Kuip. He too calls national games from time to time.

Flemming is certainly different from Kuip in that he never played baseball at a professional level and is much more of your typical play-by-play guy with a nice voice, but he’s been around long enough that most Giants fans are at least used to him.

Dave Flemming and Hunter Pence appear to be the heir to Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow

That’s probably what NBC Sports Bay Area and the Giants will prize most when deciding who to replace Kruk and Kuip: familiarity. They obviously wouldn’t want to just bring in two new random people which is why there’s clearly been a concerted effort to get Flemming and Pence a lot of time in the booth together so they have that rapport and chemistry.

It doesn’t quite feel right that we’re thinking about replacements for Kruk and Kuip because of health issues that may ultimately prevent both from being able to call games as much as they’d like, but the people who call your favorite baseball team’s games end up being a pretty big part of your life so it's only natural to speculate.

Flemming and Pence have been groomed for this so when the time comes they seem like the obvious duo to carry the torch forward into the next era of Giants baseball. 

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