When San Francisco Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow announced on Thursday he would leave the broadcast booth at the end of this season, generations of Bay Area baseball fans had to start coming to terms with losing a familiar and beloved voice that has been at the soul of Giants telecasts for nearly four decades.Duane Kuiper had to come to terms with more than that. It’s been a couple of weeks since his best friend and broadcast partner broke the news that this season would be his last. The emotions are still so heavy that the only way Kuiper can talk about them is to lean into his disarming sense of humor.“Maybe I’m happy he’s leaving. Did you ever think of that?” said Kuiper, his voice thick with sarcasm, in a phone interview. “It’s like the A’s and Giants with the A’s leaving. Now I’ve got the whole town to myself!”It’s almost impossible to imagine Kuiper without Krukow or vice versa. The two former Giants teammates were natural fits in the booth from the first time they worked a game together in 1990. They’ve both appeared multiple times on the Ford C. Frick Award ballot and continue to pull for one another to be honored at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., although everyone knows the most fitting result would be for an exemption that allows them to be recognized together.They’ve both said half-jokingly that they’ll continue to broadcast Giants games together until they both keel over in the booth. But Krukow’s acute body myositis, a non-fatal and degenerative muscle condition, has made it more and more difficult for him to travel from his home in Reno to San Francisco to call home games from the booth and a portion of the road schedule on a split cast from NBC Sports Bay Area studios.As Krukow told his NBC Sports Bay Area colleague, Alex Pavlovic, “I don’t want to quit. Unfortunately the rules change, first from year to year and then month to month and now it’s day to day. It’s becoming unsafe. My home in Reno is much safer and it really is the determining factor in how I can’t do games anymore.”Krukow broke the news to Kuiper last month in the lunch room on the broadcast level at Oracle Park. Kuiper had to be honest: The first emotion he felt was anger.“Because I just didn’t want it to end,” Kuiper said. “But I can’t be mad at him for the reasons why he’s doing this. There isn’t anybody in this world that wants to do baseball games on TV more than he does. His body has just not cooperated. His mind has, but not his body. So I get it.“But yeah, I was mad. The last thing I said to him when I walked away from the table, I pointed at him and said, ‘I am really, really pissed at you.’ But he knew exactly how I felt. And we’ve talked a little about it every day. I certainly haven’t tried to talk him out of it. So, we move forward.”The Giants will stage a celebration for Krukow during the season finale Sept. 27 against the Los Angeles Dodgers, and it’s appropriate that San Francisco’s archrivals will be in town for his final game. Krukow grew up as a Dodgers fan in the San Gabriel Valley. Similarly, when Dodgers Hall of Fame announcer Vin Scully signed off for the last time in 2016, the team was playing in San Francisco. Scully grew up as a Giants fan in New York.Kuiper, 76, said he’s not planning to make the farewell weekend a package deal. He has dealt with health challenges in recent years but wants to continue broadcasting Giants games next season.“It’ll be different,” Kuiper said. “I’ve done games on the road without Mike but we’ve had this relationship for so long now. We could without a doubt win the Newlywed Game.“You know when something is really good and you’re happy and having fun, and you don’t want it to end? Like a good meal or a vacation or a movie? Well, that’s what it was for us. We just never wanted it to end. And when you’re together for 36 years, every year you know at some point it’s going to end. You want to prepare for it, and you … you just can’t.”Krukow reached out to his other broadcast partners, Jon Miller and Dave Flemming, on Wednesday to let them know that the news would be coming down.“I really appreciated the chance to talk with him, and also to try to talk him out of it,” said Miller, who was honored with the Frick Award in 2010. “We all know how popular he and Kuip have been for all this time. But for me, he has created a template for how to do that job of the analyst. He focuses on the game. He sets you up at the beginning of the game with not just the pitchers and what they throw, but the book on the umpire, and how they call the game. That’s groundbreaking stuff.“Kruk is a great storyteller but he does not interrupt the game to tell stories. They’re not steering away from the game for a pre-produced package or filling time just chatting about whatever. Fans are getting the game, and for anybody in this business that has done well, that’s the foundation of it.”Over the winter, when Krukow and Kuiper were both up for the Frick Award that went to longtime Fox Sports announcer Joe Buck, Krukow reflected on what is believed to be the longest broadcasting partnership in baseball history.“Every day as a player there was a black cloud over your locker knowing your career could end, knowing you could blow an elbow out or blow a knee out or get released,” Krukow said. “So you never let one day go by without enjoying every bit of it. We approach it the same way in the booth. Now that we’re both dealing with health issues, we appreciate that day more than ever. I’ve never looked back and felt the weight of time that we’ve done this together. I just know we’re proud of it.”