Celebrating Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper, the ultimate teammate, on his 75th birthday

New York Times

19-06-2025

SAN FRANCISCO — Mike Krukow cannot recall the specific year but he remembers it happened at the Phoenix airport. He and his inseparable broadcast partner, Duane Kuiper, were returning home after calling a couple of Giants spring training games. They were reading at the gate when a young mother sat across from them.
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She looked exhausted. Her 2-year-old was in a state: fussy, red-faced, screaming, either hungry or wet or both.
Krukow peeked over the spine of his book at Kuiper.
'You have no chance today, pal,' Krukow said.
'You're really gonna bet against me?' Kuiper replied.
The woman had no idea that she was about to be drafted onto Duane Kuiper's team. And if there's one thing that Kuiper has done his entire life — starting with his immediate family, then during a 12-year major league career that ended in 1985, and throughout nearly four decades as the beloved play-by-play voice of the San Francisco Giants — it's taking care of his teammates.
'Took him two minutes and he worked his magic,' Krukow said. 'That kid was on his leg, calm as can be, and he held that baby for a half hour. And that was huge for mom because she was maybe 23 or 24, all by herself, and you could see she'd been through hell. She was able to go to the bathroom, get something to eat. I can't tell you the number of times he did that. And not just in airports.
'We'll be in the booth and a young family will stop in for a visit with a little one, out of sorts, not impressed at all, not having any fun. I'll say, `You met your match this time.' No. Within two minutes that 15-month-old will be on his knee laughing and giggling. It's a true gift.'
Kuiper famously hit one home run in 3,379 major league plate appearances. Yet, in his 75 years of life, which he and his family will celebrate on Thursday, the impact he has made on others is outsized.
'I really can't believe he's turning 75,' said Jeff Kuiper, Duane's brother and longtime television producer. 'Probably because he's still just a big kid at heart.'
The Giants' schedule couldn't have created a more perfect 'This is Your Life' matchup for Kuiper's birthday: home at Oracle Park with the Cleveland Guardians in town. Kuiper played seven smooth-fielding seasons at second base for Cleveland, where Hall of Famer Frank Robinson was his teammate and manager for a time. When the Giants hired Robinson in 1981, he made it a priority the following season to sign Kuiper for a bench role. Kuiper was 32 and his knee would never be the same after Butch Hobson knocked him unconscious while busting a double play in a 1980 game at Fenway Park. But Robinson knew that Kuiper's soft skills were as sharp as ever.
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'When I got there in '83, I was amazed by his ability to work the room,' Krukow said. 'He'd go to every locker and find out where each guy was at, who needed to be shown some love. He pulls people out of their shell. His people skills are almost like a sixth sense. He finds out what you need before you know you need it. And then he'll make sure you have it.'
Decades after fielding his last ground ball, Kuiper is still making sure his teammates have what they need. He's the one who lobbied the Giants to provide a motorized chair for Krukow when his advancing battle with Inclusion Body Myositis, a muscular disorder, made walking up ramps and stairs impossible.
The greatest gift for Giants fans is that Kuiper is still in the broadcast booth, still providing the crescendo calls on walk-off hits, still capturing the drama in the big moments and still finding quiet joy in all those sticky-faced, slice-of-life vignettes in the stands. Four years after a serious cancer diagnosis forced him from the booth while he underwent chemotherapy, he is grateful that his scans are clean and his enthusiasm for the game is as fully dialed up as ever.
The way Kuiper sees it, he has a lot more to give. But you don't let a 75th birthday go by without a fair amount of receiving.
So The Athletic spent the past couple weeks asking some of the people who knew him best: What makes Kuip the ultimate teammate?
Dave Flemming joined the Giants as the fourth and most junior member of their announcing team before the 2004 season. Twenty-two years later, he is … still the fourth and most junior member of their announcing team. Even so, Flemming's voice has become as synonymous with Giants baseball as Kuiper, Krukow and Hall of Famer Jon Miller. But he was once a rookie finding his way among legends.
In a lot of ways, Kuip was the one who made my transition the easiest. I've told this story to many, many young broadcasters, because I think about it every day to this day. It was literally my first game ever in the big leagues. It wasn't the pre-computer era, but I didn't have a laptop in the booth, that's for sure. It was more of a paper, analog world back then. So you get this stack of info, three inches thick, more than you could ever digest. And I think a lot of young broadcasters, they're nervous, right? You want to prove you know what you're talking about. 'I gotta read all this, I gotta take notes.'
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And so Duane walks into the booth that first game I ever did, and he picked up my pile of stats and he turned around and he dropped it all in the garbage can. At first I was like, 'What?! What did he just do?' And he laughed and we all had a chuckle and he goes, 'Look. You don't have to fool anybody. You don't have to prove anything. You don't have to tell Giants fans somehow that you know what you're talking about. Giants fans know their team. You're coming in for the first time. It's OK if you don't know as much about the team as fans do. That's OK! Just call the games, focus on what you see in front of you, keep it simple, and they will love you.' It was great advice and not just for being popular or being liked. It was great advice for what's important about this job.
He's just about the most social, emotionally aware person that I've ever met. He finds the humanity in things like when a player messes up, when a fan drops a foul ball or a kid starts crying because he drops his ice cream. It's not just poking fun. It's not having a laugh at somebody's expense. He finds a way to relate to that person, like, 'Hey, this is what happens in everyday life.' He's got incredible empathy for people. He really does.
Devers burst onto the Oracle Park scene with an RBI Double last night. Here's how it sounded from Dave Flemming on KNBR! 🎙️⬇️ pic.twitter.com/36m6TUYkmm
— KNBR (@KNBR) June 18, 2025
Jon Miller needed no breaking in when he joined the Giants' broadcast team in 1997. He already was a beloved regional voice in Baltimore after calling Orioles games for 14 seasons, and as the voice of ESPN's flagship 'Sunday Night Baseball,' his national profile was without peer among baseball announcers. But as a radio man who moved to television, Miller was always interested in honing his skills. The most important thing Miller picked up from Kuip? Sometimes the best thing a TV announcer can do is have the grace to stay out of the way.
During Matt Cain's perfect game (in 2012), he had the play where (Gregor) Blanco makes this incredible catch. As it got deeper in the outfield and you saw how far away Blanco was, you thought, 'OK, the no-hitter's over.' So Duane gave a great, dramatic call on it. Then he laid out. He did not just keep on going. He made that call with all the urgency in his voice, and then it's just the roar of the crowd and the follow-up shots of Cain and Blanco. He let the pictures tell the story. That's an under-appreciated aspect of what he does, what Vin Scully did, what all great broadcasters do who understand the essence of doing that job for television. Even the moment of the final out, it's a perfect game, and he had the call, all the drama, and then he laid out. I'm listening to my call on KNBR the next morning and I'm thinking, 'I wish I had laid out, too.'
#OTD in 2012 – Gregor Blanco's catch AND Matt Cain's perfect game. #ForeverGiant pic.twitter.com/xwoXW3utev
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) June 13, 2020
Duane loves to have a laugh on the broadcast and for him a good laugh is always collaborative. He says working with Kruk just makes it so much easier. Like, 'I just have to say who's up to bat and Kruk does the rest.' Well, he does the rest because Duane allows that. He willfully gives that up.
The baby thing? That's real! He was playing in Cleveland with Buddy Bell and he tells Buddy one day in spring training, 'I want you and your wife to take a night off. I'll be Uncle Kuip and babysit for you.' That became a regular thing, and those boys he babysat (David and Mike) became big leaguers. There's not many broadcasters in the game that can tell a story like, 'Here comes David Bell to the plate, and let me tell you about the time I was his babysitter.' But that's him as a teammate.
Amy Gutierrez is an eight-time Emmy Award-winning producer, reporter, TV host and children's book author who served as the in-game reporter on Comcast/NBC Sports Bay Area from 2008-2019. From interviewing an emotional Matt Cain after his perfect game to the three World Series championship runs to squealing as Tim Lincecum gleefully dropped an F-bomb on live TV, 'Amy G' will always be familiar to Giants fans. But if not for Kuiper and Krukow, she says she would've quit after two seasons and missed covering the most accomplished run in franchise history.
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It was a difficult time for me in my career. They put me on the broadcast and I wasn't given much direction on what the job should be. My daughter, Grace, was 5 months old. I'm a fish out of water and dealing with daily things, horrible things people were saying in chat rooms and on the radio. I made a conscious choice to only talk about it with my husband at home. I'd just go to the ballpark and keep my head up.
But I was going to hang it up after my second season. I thought, 'I know I'm a good storyteller and good producer but maybe I'm not cut out for being an in-game reporter.' Sometime around then, Duane says, 'Come up to the booth. It'll be just the three of us.' They said, 'Listen, here's the deal: we want you with us. We know what you're going through and what they say on the radio. We know this is hard on you. We have wives, sisters, daughters. We get it.' I had to hold my head back so the tears wouldn't fall. So I hugged them and went about my day and my very first hit, Duane says on air, 'Let's go down to Amy G, and we're happy about it.' It stopped me in my tracks. Duane wanted to let every (jerk) know that he and Mike wanted me there. It gave me so much levity. It turned my career around.
Duane is one of the kindest people I've ever met in my life. What really comes out in Duane is how much he values family. I saw it not only with how he was with his wife and children but how he was with my children. I didn't bring Grace to a game till she was 4 and Zachary was 7. He fell in love with Grace but part of what he does is try to get your goat. So he says to Zach, 'Here's what I'm going to teach you: You're going to pick a booger out of your nose and flick it at your sister.' I was like, 'Oh my god, Duane, can you not?' But he knew Zach was the older one and not getting as much attention. He did something to pull Zach in and make him feel special, too. That's what he always does.
Mike Krukow pitched for six seasons with the Chicago Cubs and one in Philadelphia before the 6-foot-5 right-hander joined the Giants in a trade before the 1983 season. He and Kuiper hit it off instantly. There is no recording of their first broadcasts together because they were jargon-laced, goof-off sessions on the dugout rail. Little did anyone know that those ribald commentaries would be the unofficial start of what's believed to be the longest tenured local announcing partnership in Major League Baseball history.
As a teammate? There's none better. To this day he checks in with everyone on the crew. He'll remind you to take your vitamins. He figures out what you need before you know you need it. The electric wheelchair? That was all him. He told the Giants, 'We need him back on the field. We need him in his world again.'
Part of his people skills is finding the underdog. And he does the exact opposite with the alphas. We'll do an appearance, 800 people in the audience, and he'll sit back and check everyone out and say, 'I've got my guy.' It's usually so obvious, finding the alpha. So he'll single him out and say to the audience, 'Listen, I'd really like to do my home run call for you, and if you don't mind, I want someone to take a swing like you're at Oracle Park.' And he'll point to the alpha and say, 'How about you?' It'll be, 'What's your name? John Davis? OK, get in your stance and here we go.' And Kuip will set it up, pitcher into his windup, here's the 3-2 pitch on the way, and John Davis will swing, and … 'Swiii-iiing and a miss.' And everybody will laugh and he'll say, 'Ah, just kidding, let's do it again.' And John Davis will let it rip, and .. 'Swiii-iiing and a miss, strike two.' And John Davis, you can see he's getting a little red in the face. So you think the gag's up and he'll hit the third pitch out, right? 'Swiii-iiing and a miss, and John Davis strikes out.' And everybody will be ha-ha-ha laughing except John Davis. Then he'll look for the little introverted woman in the back and he'll get her up there and go through the same thing: 'Kenley Jansen with two outs, runner at second base, checks the runner, Debbie Moore steps in the batter's box, she is 1-for-63 on the season, and here's the pitch, and THERE'S A DRIVE, LEFT FIELD, OUTTA HERE!' So in his way he's calmed the alpha down and elevated the wallflower and who knows? Maybe that'll be a moment she'll always remember.
He's been a best friend since 1983 and in that time we've lost parents, we've lost friends, we've had children. We've had life come at us. And we've used each other a lot to get through a lot of things. What greater gift is there in life than to have a friend to share the day you had your first child or the day you had your first grandchild? We're at an age now where we don't know how many more days we have to do this. We don't know how many more games we'll be able to do. But I'll say this: We don't take them for granted. Not one time do we ever take it for granted. We've been jackpot winners twice.
Dannon Kuiper Rease is the oldest of Duane's two children (along with son Cole) and the mother of Andy (5) and Kit (3) with a baby boy expected to arrive at the end of September. She and her family are taking her dad out to a birthday dinner at a hibachi restaurant Thursday night. It's the least she can do for the world's greatest grandpa.
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He waters my plants every day. He picks my kids up from school. He drops them off. He's nonstop, always grandparenting. And it's not like he's retired. He's working! If I need something from the store, he's there. It's always been that way since I was a kid. If you're on his team, he's looking out for you.
He used to send my brother and me postcards on every road trip. Now he sends them to my kids. He'll be gone for, like, two days and they'll get a postcard from LA with 'Hi Andy, I'll be home in two days. See you then.'
My brother and I like to say that in every phase of our lives from birth to adulthood, he aced it. He was great at chasing us around as kids, at imaginative play, and as teenagers he was great at being calm and stable and listening to whatever we were going through. And now as an adult he helps me with my kids, wants to go to lunch, fixes stuff around the house. He has risen to the occasion in all the phases of my life, and that goes for my mom too. (Michelle Kuiper died unexpectedly in February 2022. She was 64.)
He circles back. When he was going through chemo, he'd go every week to this place and get hooked up to all the IVs. He'd spend five hours a day there. The nurses were different every day of the week but he never forgot them. Even now and then he'll drop off a kringle or donuts for them. He circles back for the people who have been there for him and there's probably a thousand of them in his brain at any given time. He'll go pick up lunch for them or leave a note, thanking them for their service. Growing up, he'd leave every one of my teachers Giants tickets, and if it was a teacher giving me a bad grade, they probably got more Giants tickets.
Me, my mom, we were all so relieved he pulled through because he was really, really sick. He watched every game he missed (in 2021) and it pained him to not be there. He knew he needed to avoid the crowds and stay healthy. So that first game he went back was incredible. He was so excited and I don't think the best part for him was calling the game. It was seeing all his people from the parking lot attendant to the press box. It was a part of his routine and he didn't get to do that for a long time, and we all worried he wouldn't be able to do that again.
He once told me that whenever a ballplayer would complain that they were missing their kid's birthday or they felt like they weren't showing up, or they felt like a bad dad or husband, he'd say to them, 'Look, you're going to miss a lot of things. That's why when you are there with them, you have to be fully there.'
That wasn't just his advice. That's what he did. That's why I don't remember the times he was gone. I just remember all the times he was there.
(Top photo of Kuiper in April: Darren Yamashita / MLB Photos via Getty Images)