Pitchers who disrupted Giants Pride night ‘in for a rude awakening,’ beloved broadcaster Mike Krukow says

Ever since four San Francisco Giants pitchers sucked all the oxygen out of their team’s Pride Night celebration, our community has been waiting for anyone affiliated with the team to convey that they understand why we’re so upset.

The Giants’ official statement was profoundly lacking. No current player or member of the coaching staff has met the moment either.

So as with most things relating to the Giants, if you’re looking for eloquence and thoughtfulness, it’s best to check in with the broadcast booth.

Analyst Mike Krukow has been a mainstay with the team since 1990. Teaming with play-by-play partner Duane Kuiper in the TV booth, “Kruk and Kuip” have become a Bay Area baseball institution — beloved to the point where Giants fans campaign for them to win the Hall of Fame’s broadcasting award as a duo.

If anyone would have a sense of understanding how the Giants fanbase — and their LGBTQ fans in particular — have been repulsed by the actions of the pitchers, it would be Krukow. (On Friday, starting pitcher starting pitcher Landen Roupp and relievers JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker wore the rainbow Pride caps on Pride Night but wrote the Bible verse “Genesis 9:11-16″ next to the rainbow “SF.” Pitcher Sam Hentges did not wear the Pride cap, opting for the team’s normal hat.)

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On Wednesday, the former big league hurler appeared on flagship station KNBR and gave an impassioned five-minute speech that showed a depth of understanding how the actions of Landen Roupp and his bullpen mates deeply harmed the team’s LGBTQ fans and San Francisco’s baseball culture as a whole.

“I think that once you’ve lived in the Bay Area for a number of years, as we have, you understand that the strength of this city is its ethnicity. It’s its culture. It’s the freedom for people to be able to come to a city and be free. And that’s a powerful thing and that’s the thing about San Francisco that I love the most,” Krukow began.

His sentiment accurately described the hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ people who migrated to the Bay Area for decades in order to find a home that accepted them for who they were.

Krukow then addressed the four Giants pitchers.

“I think when you’re a player and you come into this environment, it’s your responsibility to know just how sensitive this city is in regards to that cultural freedom and religious freedom, and just the way you live your life. And I think they were in for a rude awakening with the response — and it wasn’t just from the gay community, it was from the Northern California community that supports the gay community,” he observed.

As a player who pitched for the Giants for seven years before becoming a broadcasting legend, Krukow put in the work himself to understand San Francisco’s culture, especially its embrace of its LGBTQ population.

His assertion that players have a responsibility to learn about the city’s culture is further backed up by the example of former Giants pitcher Jeremy Affeldt, who also put in the time to get to know San Francisco and its LGBTQ community. 

Because of that, Affeldt was able to overcome his initial homophobia-based fears of the city and became a beloved figure during the Giants World Championship era in the early 2010s.

Later in his monologue, Krukow expressed deep disappointment that the Giants had become homophobes’ new favorite team, especially after personally witnessing how they had stood side by side with gay fans for decades until this point.

“It hurt me because I saw in 1994 that they were the first team to ever take on the challenge of going against public opinion and the outrage of even associating with the gay community, and they openly went out and said, ‘We support the gay community. We support Until There’s a Cure Day. We are going to raise money to fight AIDS. We support the community.’ And they did it with love,” he said.

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While summing up his feelings, Krukow hedged for a brief moment, saying “I do think it’s necessary that we do look at both sides of this. We respect those that voice their opinion, even when we disagree with it, and we also applaud those that stood tall.”

That was the one moment where his otherwise eloquent speech fell a bit flat. 

When the humanity of our community is attacked by homophobes, that is not an opinion we have to respect in any way, shape, or form.

Despite that misstep, Krukow’s words overall were still a welcome piece of evidence that somebody with the Giants understands why LGBTQ fans feel betrayed and hurt by an organization that they once trusted.

As he reflected, “If I was a part of the gay community, or a minority, and there was hate directed towards me — if there was opinion that was prejudiced directed towards me, I would stand tall and I would scream as loudly as I possibly could.”

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