The San Francisco Giants and longtime public address announcer Renel Brooks-Moon are parting ways after the sides failed to reach an agreement on a contract extension.
The Giants said Monday there were “extensive discussions” about a new deal after Brooks-Moon’s contract ended in December, but instead, “they mutually and amicably agreed to part ways.”
Brooks-Moon, 65, was one of baseball’s first Black female PA announcers and was the voice of Oracle Park for over 2,000 games. According to a statement from the team, she announced Barry Bonds’ home run records, Matt Cain’s perfect game, Tim Lincecum’s no-hitter, and three World Series championships. She will now be the team’s “public address announcer emeritus,” representing the Giants in the community as a volunteer, activist and mentor.
The announcer booth at Oracle Park will be named in her honor.
Brooks-Moon thanked fans and wished her successor, along with new manager Bob Melvin, well as the team prepares for the 2024 season.
“As a Bay Area native, it has been the honor of my lifetime to serve on the mic and in the community for the Giants for 24 years,” Brooks-Moon said in a statement. “The job has always been bigger than me. Representation matters, and it is my great hope that my time in the booth has inspired little girls, young women and people of color to pursue their dreams even if those dreams seem impossible because impossible dreams can come true.”
Brooks-Moon, who was born in Oakland and graduated from Mills College, became the first female public address announcer for a World Series in 2002 and was the first woman to work the PA mic for a championship in any major sport.
She was previously a radio host in the Bay Area and an Emmy winner for her TV work. And in 1999, she was asked if she’d like to audition to be the new voice of the new Giants’ ballpark.
“And it happened. And I opened up Oracle Park — it was then Pac Bell Park — April 11, 2000. A day I shall never forget,” she told KQED in an interview in December 2023.
“I’ve been a Giants fan probably since in utero, actually, because my mother was pregnant with me in 1958 when the Giants moved out here from New York,” she said in that interview. “My earliest memories are of being a toddler with my family at Candlestick Park. I come from a baseball family, started with my Papa, who followed the Negro Leagues and passed his passion of the sport down to my mom, and she passed it down to me and my whole family.”
She said, in that interview with KQED, that she kept Negro League bobbleheads in the booth at the Giants’ stadium to remind her of the shoulders she stood on — and to remind her of what the announcer role meant to so many people.
Willie Mays, she said, took her hand during the dedication of the community fund in his honor. “And he said, ‘I’m really proud of you.’ And he’s been saying that ever since. And that means the world to me, coming from the greatest baseball player ever to play the game. For him to support me and to say how proud he is of me, as did Mr. McCovey, because neither of them, when they played Negro League ball, could have imagined, just like my Papa, somebody like me in the booth. It meant something. It meant something to both of them.”
Brooks-Moon is in the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame and has been honored by several organizations. Former mayor Gavin Newsom also named March 18, 2005, “Renel Brooks-Moon Day” in her honor.
“Renel has been the familiar and inspirational voice for generations of players and fans at Oracle Park,” Giants CEO Larry Baer said. “As an ambassador for the organization and a respected leader, Renel has been a Giant voice in the ballpark and in the community and will be a Forever Giant. It will be a fitting tribute to name the PA booth in her honor.”
A successor has not yet been named.