Glen Kuiper tells Damon Bruce that he thinks about his mistake every day and talks at length about being fired by the Oakland A’s

Last May, Oakland A’s broadcaster Glen Kuiper was terminated from NBC Sports California after he used a racial slur during a live broadcast of a game. Kuiper described a visit to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, and used a derogatory term when describing the experience. He later apologized for his behavior in the game’s sixth inning and was promptly suspended from the team pending an internal investigation, which resulted in him losing his job. Kuiper was a guest of former KNBR anchor Damon Bruce Damon Bruce Plus Podcast and spoke in detail for the first time about what happened.

Within the first minute, Bruce went straight into the topic that people wanted to hear Kuiper speak. “Take us back to the moment in Kansas City when you realized you had used a word that would destroy a nearly two-decade career,” Bruce said.

“It’s something I think about every day,” Kuiper said. “Of course I wish with all my heart that it hadn’t happened, but I haven’t talked much about the nitty-gritty of what actually happened and how it came out the way it did.

“I made a mistake and wore it for a long time, and I will wear it for the rest of my life. That’s just the reality and I’m okay with it.”

“How do you think this all happened, because you obviously had no intention of saying it,” Bruce said.

Kuiper explained that, as with every game, they made a dent in the pregame show, something he said he had done 150 times a year for 20 years.

“When I answered the question about what we did that day, I said we had a great day,” Kuiper recalls. “We went to the Negro League Museum and I felt rushed. Although I felt like I was rushing to answer, I didn’t realize it came out that way. Dallas [Braden] haven’t heard it. No one in the truck heard it.”

The whole thing happens and then you’re only told after the fact that you should apologize. And that to me is the moment where social media is now getting involved, it’s being shared, and people are investigating what’s going on here.

Kuiper said the show continued as usual until the producer told him in the middle of one of their two-minute breaks that he might need to apologize. He asked what he had done and was told: “It sounded like you might have said the N-word on the pregame show. And I thought, I have no idea what you’re talking about…

“My response to the people at the studio, including the NBC executives who were on the phone with the producer and the director, was, ‘Listen, you have to show me.’ I will apologize, but I can’t do it unless I see the video, for which I apologize. They said no. And the hardest thing for me, Damon, was that there were 20 seconds left at the break. Then the bosses at NBC said, “You have to get him on camera.”

“…And within five seconds I was apologizing on camera for something I hadn’t seen yet. I didn’t say I didn’t do it because obviously something was wrong and I had made a mistake. I just hadn’t seen it.”

Bruce then asked Kuiper about the immediate consequences. Kuiper said he spoke with A’s President Dave Kaval. “He wasn’t happy,” Kuiper said. “He told me he was very disappointed in me.”

Kuiper said the next morning he asked the A’s media team if he could speak to some of the black coaches, but was told they were “not quite ready to talk to him yet.” He said he tracked down A player Tony Kemp in the hotel lobby. “I wrestled,” Kuiper said. “I won’t lie. That was a bad morning. And I got emotional and told him what happened and I said it was a coincidence. I said I’m sorry. And he got it, and we talked for maybe three to four minutes.

“And then NBC started the investigation, which lasted a few weeks. I was part of it. I did an interview. But other than that I was kind of left out and didn’t really know what was going on. No one has really contacted me.”

Bruce replied: “Victory has a thousand fathers. Defeat is an orphan.”

“The only thing I also want to say is what happened to me, and that’s something I’ve always done, it’s always disappointing. It’s my own business to deal with it, but it bothered me a lot, and it still bothers me: from the night I made that mistake in Kansas City, from that night until now, as I sit here and I’m talking to you, not one of my bosses at the A’s has ever contacted me.

“And I had good relationships with those people, and I did what they wanted me to do, and I really enjoyed working there, and I had really good relationships with those people. That’s always going to bother me a little bit because I made a mistake and, you know, just a phone call and being like, “Hey, you know what?” I’m sorry about what happened. We had to take this step.’”

Bruce asked Kuiper, “Do you think you’ll play another Major League Baseball game in your lifetime?”

Kuiper responded: “I’ll tell you what, Damon, I really hope so, because I miss calling games… I hope that someone is willing to work with me and do this, that an organization is open to it.” I believe , I’m a good announcer, but I don’t know. It’s a tough world right now. It’s not always a forgiving world and I understand all that, but I’ve been playing sports for over 30 years and would love to get back into televising it. If not, I’ll do something else in sports.”

Bruce went on to tell Kuiper that he was disappointed that the A’s didn’t include him in Oakland’s final season and appeared to try to edit him out as much as possible from the highlight montages that were played.

“Glenn, your voice has been part of the Oakland A’s tapestry for nearly 20 years,” Bruce said. “Certainly the last great successes as a great baseball team have been stories that you, as the premier play-by-play broadcaster on television, have been able to tell for all these years…To tell the whole story, let’s look at the good and the bad [in baseball]. And I think that your best interests should have been taken into account in this long, slow goodbye. And it’s a shame that wasn’t the case because you’re a big part of the story.”

Kuiper responded, “I know in my heart that I’ve been a part of some pretty cool things.”