Glen Kuiper, the brother of the Giants’ longtime television play-by-play broadcaster Duane Kuiper, was on the radio broadcast of San Francisco’s Tuesday game in Philadelphia on KNBR. He joined Joe Ritzo, the Single-A San Jose Giants broadcaster who has become an increasingly frequent fill-in for the big league team for road trips. Ritzo and Kuiper are set to be on the call the entire six-game road trip through Philadelphia and Tampa Bay this week.

It was Kuiper’s first MLB game since May 5, 2023, when Oakland was visiting Kansas City. Before the game began, Kuiper discussed visiting the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum with his fellow broadcaster Dallas Braden, but Kuiper said a racial slur instead. The broadcaster apologized in the sixth inning of the game and added a second apology the next day, but NBC Sports California suspended him on that same day and fired him a few weeks later. 

Kuiper’s return to the airwaves has been expected for nearly two months now. In late February, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Kuiper would call a Giants spring training game, then added a second report that he would fill in for “10-15 games” during the regular season. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst.) 

On Tuesday night, Kuiper took on a secondary role. Just before first pitch, he introduced the lineups for both teams then ceded the microphone to Ritzo to start the game. He mostly offered commentary and did the in-game promotional reads, but he did the play-by-play work for the third, fourth and seventh innings. (It’s the pattern Jon Miller and Dave Flemming have on air, with Ritzo in Miller’s primary role and Kuiper taking Flemming’s role while he shifted to the television broadcast.) While Kuiper himself made no remark about his return during the game broadcast, Ritzo made a quick comment at the initial handoff before the first pitch. 

“Glen, great to have you on board,” Ritzo said.

All three Kuiper brothers have worked Giants broadcasts throughout their careers, with Duane, the oldest, on the play-by-play mic and middle brother Jeff working as a longtime TV producer. Glen got his start hosting pregame and postgame shows for both Giants and A’s games in 1992, occasionally filling in during games until he took over as the A’s leading play-by-play voice in 2006.

When Kuiper was suspended, a number of people came to his defense, including Braden, Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum President Bob Kendrick and former A’s star pitcher and Oakland native Dave Stewart. After he was fired, Kuiper didn’t work the rest of 2023, but rumors about his possible return to the Giants began when he appeared at the Giants’ introductory press conference for manager Bob Melvin. 

Then, during 2024 spring training, speculation went into overdrive when both Glen and Duane Kuiper appeared on a spring training audio livestream of a Giants game. The next day, Glen Kuiper did an interview on KNBR, with both he and then-host John Lund intimating the broadcaster would be on-air for Giants games that season. But the Giants and Kuiper told SFGATE that wasn’t true. 

Ever so slowly, Glen Kuiper has been doing more with the Giants and on KNBR. He’s become a regular guest on the station’s weekend baseball pregame shows. He also hosted exclusive chats with his brother Duane for Gotham Club members after Friday night Giants home games. And during the 2025 season, he started a YouTube channel where he primarily covers the Giants, garnering over 30,000 subscribers in the process. When the Chronicle first reported Glen Kuiper’s expected return, Giants chief marketing officer Rachel Heit told the newspaper, “We believe Glen took full responsibility.” 

That all set up Tuesday, when Kuiper officially returned to calling big league action. Unfortunately for him, the Giants didn’t give him much excitement to broadcast, only getting two hits in a 7-0 loss to the Phillies.