Longtime San Francisco Giants TV broadcaster Duane Kuiper has throat cancer and is undergoing treatment, he announced on Sunday, September 20.
“I was recently diagnosed with throat cancer and began treatment last week with my doctors at Stanford Medicine,” Kuiper, 76, said in a statement shared by the Giants. “This cancer is unrelated to the one I experienced five years ago, and I’m optimistic that it will be successfully treated.”
Kuiper dealt with a separate cancer diagnosis in 2021, causing him to miss most of the team’s road games the following season.
“I’ll miss the broadcasts [Monday] and Wednesday as I continue treatment, but I’m looking forward to returning Tuesday and this weekend to celebrate my partner, Mike Krukow, and his remarkable career as he calls his final game before retirement,” Kuiper continued. “I’m incredibly grateful for the care I’m receiving and for the tremendous support from my family, the Giants organization, my broadcast partners and so many others.”
Kuiper has been calling Giants games since 1986, the year after he retired as a player. He and broadcast partner Krukow, 74, have been calling games together for more than 30 years.
Kuiper missed the Giants’ series over the weekend against the rival Los Angeles Dodgers, with veteran play-by-play man Jon Miller filling in for him on NBC Sports Bay Area. Miller, 74, told MLB.com that he did not know of Kuiper’s diagnosis before it was announced, but figured it “wasn’t good” if it took him away from the ballpark.
“He’s a pro,” Miller said. “He’s ready to be there. He’s always prepared. When we’re at the ballpark, there’s no place we’d rather be. You can’t say that in every city, in every group of broadcasters. I’ve never heard him or Mike, [despite] all the things that both of them have been going through, I still have never heard either one of them say, ‘Can we just for God’s sake get a quick game tonight?’ Never, not even one time.”
Krukow announced in August that he would retire at the end of the season as he deals with inclusion-body myositis, a degenerative muscle disease that he says has made it increasingly difficult to get to the ballpark.
“We were in the lunchroom with him, and he just said how difficult it was that day to get to the park and to get ready,” Kuiper told MLB.com at the time. “He talked about how dangerous it was for him. He just went on to say, ‘This is it for me.’ Jeff and I were moderately shocked, but not 100% shocked. We could see this coming.”
As for Kuiper, he does not plan to let his diagnosis take him out of the broadcast booth any time soon.
“I’ll go until AI takes over,” he joked.
