Go back to that class of public figure mentioned in the first paragraph. We\u2019re talking about the ones everyone can agree on, such as Dolly Parton, Steve Martin, or Danny DeVito. Ron Carter and Herbie Hancock are playing at the Monterey Jazz Festival this September, and they should have the opportunity to do it every year until 2568 if they want. Future generations should have the same opportunity to see them play from the depths of their souls with an ocean breeze at their back, just as reliably as tourists can expect to see the Northern Lights or the view at the Grand Canyon.<\/p>\n
Krukow is, of course, more of a regional treasure than an international one, but he is still in that invitation-only class of the universally beloved. The common connection and through line for everyone mentioned up there is that they radiate joy with everything they do. They somehow found exactly what they wanted to do on this planet and, guess what, it\u2019s exactly what we want them to be doing. It becomes a positive feedback loop that never ends, and there\u2019s never a downside, never a hidden cost. All they put out into the world is something that makes your life better, and in return, all they ask is for the ability to keep doing it. They should get a pass from the physical realities of the world.<\/p>\n
They do not get a pass from the physical realities of the world. The fact that Krukow wants to continue but his body won\u2019t let him makes this tougher than it already would have been. If he had retired to read three books a day and play guitar with a bluebird on his shoulder, it still would have hurt, but it would have been a bittersweet pain. Instead, you know that nobody on this planet is as crushed as Krukow himself. All he wanted to do was be the voice of every Giants\u2019 season. All you wanted to do was listen to him.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
\n Duane Kuiper (left) and Mike Krukow have been the narrative voice for Giants fans for all of the peaks and valleys of the past 36 years, including their three World Series titles. (Robert Edwards \/ USA Today)<\/p>\n
This is the one that will get folks in a way they weren\u2019t expecting. This is the one that will make fans feel something move deep inside them. You\u2019ve seen retirements before from players and managers, who gave final tips of the cap to a teary-eyed crowd, but the bond between fans and announcers is on another level. The best way to put it is this: I\u2019ve almost certainly heard Krukow\u2019s voice more in my life than my father\u2019s. That\u2019s not to put ol\u2019 Pops down \u2014 he was a very hands-on father who spent a lot of time with me. It\u2019s just a mathematical reality. My father didn\u2019t talk at me for three hours a day, 150 days out of the year, over the past several decades. And if he had tried to, I would have hit him with a mallet.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no easy way to describe the symbiotic relationship between a fan and a favorite announcer, then, because you can\u2019t reasonably grapple with just how much time you\u2019ve spent with this person in your life, in your home, in your danged head. It\u2019s a lot. It\u2019s so much more than you might have ever contemplated until this moment. This isn\u2019t just a retirement of a single person in an entertainment-related business, but a foundational shift in how you interact with the world.<\/p>\n
As always, the best response to news of what\u2019s changing is an appreciation of what existed in the first place. I get the most mileage hashing and rehashing all the different ways it didn\u2019t have to happen. If a different scout sees Krukow at Cal Poly, maybe he\u2019s drafted and sticks with a different organization. If the Giants realized that Bill Madlock was going to keep winning batting titles, maybe they don\u2019t trade him for Al Holland, who was eventually traded for Krukow. Heck, Madlock was only there because of Bobby Murcer. Which is all to say that if Bobby Bonds\u2019 parents never meet, it\u2019s possible the San Francisco Giants don\u2019t even exist. They sure would have been a lot less fun over the decades.<\/p>\n
Instead, all of those little twists and turns, the trillions-deep line of dominoes that extends into the past, led to something that was unexpectedly right instead of the chaos and uncertainty it usually leaves us with. Here\u2019s the perfect fit of person, place, role, time, space \u2026 all of it. Here was someone who was born to be where he ended up, helping everyone get through this thing called life. Krukow fully recognizes the beauty and absurdity of the sport, often at the same time, which is exactly how you get through 400 to 500 hours of talking about the same thing, year after year, without it growing tiresome. Baseball is the silliest thing in the world. It\u2019s the most important thing in the world. It\u2019s both; it\u2019s neither. It\u2019s everything until you need a break to attend to what\u2019s actually important, but it will be right where you left it. Throughout all of that, the Giants had a voice who made it all better.<\/p>\n
Krukow grew up a Dodgers fan in Southern California, but he was acquired as the broadcaster to be named later in the trade for Giants fan Vin Scully, metaphysically speaking, and everyone was better for it. There\u2019s going to be a lot to process over the next two months, and it\u2019s unfair that it has to end, especially before he wants it to.<\/p>\n
Krukow\u2019s broadcasting career will always remain a gift, though, and it\u2019s the kind that doesn\u2019t have to show up for every organization or fan base just because it\u2019s their turn. The Giants got lucky. So did their fans. So did Krukow himself. Everybody knew it the entire time it was happening, and nobody will forget about it when it\u2019s over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There exists a class of entertainer or performer who becomes so widely beloved for doing exactly what they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,2329,99],"class_list":["post-805137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}