SF Giants’ Kruk and Kuip get morbid discussing their broadcasting future
If the famed San Francisco Giants broadcast duo of Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper have it their way, they’ll be on the call for games until their respective last breaths.
The two joined the Athletic’s baseball podcast “Starkville with Jayson Stark and Doug Glanville” in an episode published Wednesday to discuss the upcoming Giants season and their longevity in the broadcast booth. It was Glanville who asked the question that’s surely been on the minds of Giants fans for some time now: How long will “Kruk and Kuip” — who are 73 and 74 years old, respectively — keep going?
Neither member of arguably baseball’s greatest broadcast team gave a direct answer, but the implication was that they’re willing to go until they die. Kuiper deferred to his longtime friend, saying, “I’ll do it as long as Mike does it… as long as he goes, that’s how far I’ll go.”
So it was Krukow’s answer that revealed their desire to go the distance.
“You guys both know Harry Kalas, and you remember Richie Ashburn, and they were a great partnership,” he said. “In 1982, when I was with the Phillies, I got to know them really well. And the way they went out is how we want to go out.”
This is where the implication of till death comes in. Kalas died in 2009, just a few hours before he was set to call a Phillies game in Washington, D.C., after he collapsed in the Nationals Park press box. Ashburn died in 1997 in his hotel room, just a few hours after he called a Phillies game in New York against the Mets.
