Beloved Bay Area Broadcaster Returns To Airwaves Amid Cancer Battle: Reports

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — This month, 49ers fans once again heard the “Voice of the 49ers” Greg Papa, who returned to the airwaves for the first time in two months since he was diagnosed with blood cancer.

Papa said that he will return intermittently while he undergoes chemotherapy treatments. He will broadcast from a home studio and won’t accompany the team on the road.

“I don’t know how long I can do this, because four hours is a long time, and by the end I’m exhausted,” Papa told The San Francisco Chronicle. “This is basically happening during a break in my chemotherapy treatments. I agreed to do it, and it worked pretty well. As for the future, I just don’t know. If I feel like working, I’ll work, and if I don’t want to, I won’t.”

Papa, who has broadcast the 49ers play-by-play since 2019 and covered several NorCal teams before that, learned that he had cancer in July. He was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia b-cell, a form of blood cancer that affects white blood cells. At one point, he had to spend 23 consecutive days in the hospital, which he told The Chronicle were like a “walk and crawl through hell.”

It was particularly hard news to get because his brother Gary died in 2009 of prostate cancer.

However, immunotherapy treatments worked, and he is currently in remission, though a long road ahead remains. Papa still has cancer cells in his body, and he will need a bone marrow transplant, likely to take place in November. The donor will be his 72-year-old brother, who turned out to be a rare 12-for-12 match.

“But with all the things they check, he turned out to be a perfect 12-for-12 to qualify. With all that’s happened in my family, and now to be facing death and could be saved by a sibling? That’s just very emotional for me,” he told The Chronicle tearfully.