Not yet, boys

I was an emotional wreck on January 17, 1961. I’d just turned five, and I was sitting on our living room floor, bawling. The reason? President Dwight D. Eisenhower was on television, giving his farewell address to the nation.

Now, I can’t pretend that I was a politically savvy five-year-old. I was crying because our President was saying goodbye, and I hate goodbyes (to this day). I can only guess that what I was seeing on that black-and-white TV was a great man, a wise man, a bald man like my grandfather, with considerable gravitas about him, and he was no longer going to be protecting all of us. My mother tried consoling me, but I would have none of it.

Is there any public figure today who would devastate me so deeply with a farewell?

Yes.

Two people, in fact. A package deal.

A married couple? politicians? musicians? comedians? journalists? religious leaders?

Henry Winkler and Ron Howard?

Nope, not even them.

I’m talking about Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper.

For those of you who aren’t Bay Area sports fans, “Kruk and Kuip” are the longtime announcers for the San Francisco Giants. They played together as Giants from 1983 to 1985, and they’ve been calling games as a duo since 1990.

When they retire, a light will go out for me. (And for much of the Bay Area.) I’ll be curled up in a corner, immobile.

***

Have you listened to radio sports talk recently? It’s insufferable. The hosts are usually two or three young dudes whom I typically deem – and I say this without judgment – “the idiots.” They’re vapid. They make inane observations. They vomit frat-boy humor. Then, to add insult to injury, they repeat themselves!

The same holds true for most television baseball announcers these days. One East Coast friend told me that her local broadcasters spend much of each game discussing the players’ attire. “Notice the brand of his socks, Andrew?” Surface-skimming. Immature.

It’s understandable that commentators often feel a need to fill the empty spaces during a ballgame. Baseball involves a lot of down-time, when there is little action on the field. That’s one of the beauties of the game, folks. It’s an unhurried sport.

But Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper are mature men, not frat boys. They fill the slower moments slowly, with restraint and meaning. They’ve been through the vicissitudes of life. They have conversations, full of humor and mutual affection, and never repeat themselves. (I’ve probably listened to them call 4,000 games, and I’ve never heard them repeat a story. How impossible is that?)

Sometimes they’ll be analytical about the unfolding ballgame; sometimes they’ll reminisce about the memorable players they’ve known and watched; and often they’ll muse about life and family.

The camera will pause on a child in the stands. The two men might speculate: Is this the toddler’s first game? First hot dog in foil? They’ll remember – with knowing affection – the joys and challenges of raising children.

A couple of weeks ago they chuckled at length about a little boy playing catch with a popcorn kernel.

They also can be really, really funny.

Jon Carroll, a former San Francisco Chronicle columnist, told this story in 2007 about one of Kuiper’s radio broadcasts.

“Duane Kuiper was asked what sport he would like to announce if he could not announce baseball. ‘Ice fishing,’ he said. Kuiper then explained that he was from Wisconsin, where there’s a lot of ice fishing. Then he did an impression of what ice-fishing announcing would sound like. It involved a lot of silence – silence on the radio can seem very long indeed – followed by Kuiper’s phlegmatic voice saying, ‘I think he’s got a nibble,’ followed by more silence.”

My own recollection of a funny Kruk and Kuip story is much more vague, but it’s one I’ll never forget. After an infielder inexplicably threw a ball into the dirt, Kuiper (or maybe it was Krukow – this was decades ago) remembered that his teammates had once been asked to milk some cows in a pre-game PR appearance at a local diary. I don’t know how many of my readers have tried cow-milking, but I have, and let me tell you, it’s not easy; it’s extremely hard on the hand/wrist tendons. Anyway, during the game after the milking stint, the team third baseman reared back and attempted a long throw to first base, not realizing that his muscles had all seized up, and he ended up slamming the ball straight down onto his own foot. Duane and Mike started giggling and then could just not stop. They were choking for air, and I, at home in my living room, laughed so hard at their unending mirth that I couldn’t see for the tears.

***

Kruk and Kuip are also dealing with some major challenges.

Mike Krukow has inclusion body myositis (IBM) – a severe, degenerative condition that gradually weakens the muscles. He falls frequently and can’t get up ramps or stairs, among other symptoms. At this point he is in a wheelchair much of the time, and he’s had to limit his announcing to a special Giants studio at the ballpark in San Francisco. It was Duane who convinced the Giants to provide Mike with a special motorized cart for commuting, and when they’re together, he often helps Mike navigate any rough terrain.

Duane Kuiper lost his wife suddenly in 2022; she was only 64 years old. That shock happened just shortly after he was diagnosed with cancer and had to endure a lengthy cycle of chemotherapy, missing a number of games during the treatments.

Before she died, and about seven weeks after Kuiper announced the start of his chemo – during which time he’d been unable to join Krukow in the broadcast booth – he surprised Mike by showing up to the booth one day without warning.

Krukow was so stunned, elated, and moved that all he could say was, “God bless ya, hey, God bless ya, oh, man.”

Krukow wiped a tear as he turned away. The camera barely caught it, but I did.

***

In May, I got tickets to see Kruk and Kuip chat together at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco. It wasn’t their usual venue, but they were being honored in an SF Sketchfest tribute. They bantered easily onstage, two sea dogs telling stories.^[1]

“During my time sharing the booth with Joe Morgan, he would take his headset off and ask someone for a hotdog,” remembered Kuiper. “I could see Joe in the reflection of the window from my seat, so every time he took a big bite, I would go ‘I thought that pitch was a little outside, Joe, what do you think?’ and he would start spitting out the dog trying to get his set back on. Then I’d say, ‘Nevermind,’ and he never caught on.”

As they told it, their broadcasting careers actually started in the dugout when they played together 40 years ago.

“He didn’t like me, and I thought he was just OK,” Kuiper jokingly remembered about first meeting Krukow.

“He was a peacock,” countered Krukow, “so I had half an attitude against him. And then when I got traded to the Giants and got to the clubhouse, it took me about five minutes to fall in love with him.”

To kill time, they’d saunter down to the far corner of the bench, away from the stern gaze of manager Frank Robinson, and pretend they were calling the game, using the saltiest language they could muster. The moderator when I saw them in May asked them to re-create those calls while their career highlights were projected on stage, and they obliged – refusing, however, to add the salt. After all, they’re grown men now, still playful, but also dignified.

At times, the night turned sober, reflective. Kuip talked about how his friendship with Krukow saved him while he was grieving his wife. “I’d been going to spring training for 48 years – always Arizona – so I needed to get to spring training. Everybody grieves differently. When I got there, I knew I was going to be OK because I was going to be able to do games with this guy and watch the team I love, and I know that’s what she would want.”

With his usual idealism, and only a pinch of wistfulness, Kruk addressed the challenge of living with inclusion body myositis. “You can’t write your own story on the way out,” he said. “You don’t know what’s going to happen and it isn’t always fair, but when I lay down at night and close my eyes, it’s September 1985 and I’m walking into Shea Stadium to face the New York Mets. I never get past the third inning, but I have that experience, and it’s a gift.”

***

Baseball is a languorous game. Its beauty lies in its pace: a pleasant passing of time punctuated by great moments of excitement.

Kruk and Kuip are our guides for those few hours. Anyone who’s had a hard day can look forward to relaxing for awhile with these two wonderful men. We can listen to them reflect on life and family and friendship while we wait for the drama, for their excited voices to rise over a clutch hit. Somehow they bring us stability, love, comfort, and joy while conducting a masterclass in baseball, explaining in fascinating detail the way an infielder should be positioned for a left-handed batter with two men on base, or the way a pitcher can outsmart a savvy hitter.

They need to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Soon. And preferably together.

Both of them have said that they want to continue broadcasting until they’re physically unable to do the job, when (they hope) they’ll eventually retire together. They recently signed a short contract extension.

I worry, though, because Kuiper doesn’t travel to many “away” games any more, and when he’s absent, so is Krukow.

All I know is that someday – and it could be soon – when their announcing days come to an end, the sounds of the city will change for me. Without their voices over the airwaves, the seagulls will stop cawing, the wind will stop whistling through the eucalyptus, the waves will stop crashing, the cable car bells won’t be ringing, and the foghorns will be silent.

Honestly, I’ll be lost.

So keep on showin’ up, boys. Don’t roll out the tarp yet. Okay, boys? Please not yet.

^[1] Note: I used a story by San Francisco Chronicle writer Zack Ruskin to quote the guys from that night.

***

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***

Due to popular demand, I am including, at the end of each blog post, the latest random diary entries that I’ve been posting on Facebook for “Throwback Thursday.” These are all taken absolutely verbatim from the lengthy diaries I kept between 1970 and 1987.

May 6, 1976 [age 20]:

“I actually talked to a man who knew Jack Kerouac! A major accomplishment! I’ve come far enough in life to be able to follow up on an interest and have it become fruitful.”

May 7, 1976 [age 20]:

“I’ve just realized what a half-assed dorm this is. There’s a party in the guys’ wing and [the dorm monitor] ordered that they have to turn their music down at 12:00. On a Friday night!” [Ed.’s note: Nowadays, by 12:00 on a Friday night I will already have been asleep for three hours!]

May 12, 1976 [age 20]:

“I’m high on codeine from cramps. I just got back from my last poetry class, so sad, so sad. It was 96° today, and it’s at least still 80° outside, warm like summer at 10:00. I walked home and nearly cried for leaving the dorms; probably I won’t come back [next year]. The sprinklers were on – three drunk students threw beer bottles across 9th Street into the bushes ahead of me – an ambulance drove by – someone from the dorms was screaming profanities at someone else – a guy was talking to himself – you know, I’ll miss all of this.”

May 14, 1976 [age 20]:

“At night it was really warm. I saw [my sort-of-boyfriend] Don downstairs at “Gallery,” our dorm talent show, and we both decided to go out to the field afterwards. An ex-Allman Brother backup man & his group & someone named Les Dudek were playing. We brought out my boda bag full of rum punch which I’d been saving in Linda’s fridge, and stood out in the toasty black air listening. Don was going crazy, super reminiscent of his Allman Brother days. A strange guy asked me for some rum and gave me a dime…”

May 28, 1976 [age 20]:

“We listened to music and played pingpong and pool, and then went to Camera One [theater] to see 200 Motels (Don likes it, and apparently it’s a Frank Zappa masterpiece). I thought it was a terrible surrealist piece of crapola.”

June 2, 1976 [age 20]:

“Mr. deFuniak called me down to show me my [teacher’s aide] evaluation today, and I was fearful, because I thought I’d been lazy this year and too talkative with the students. But it turned out that I was ‘excellent’ in every category! Such a shock! It seems that I should be proud of myself. I guess I now believe that as an adult maybe I really can amount to something.”

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