John Oliver highlighted John Kruk’s ‘delightfully bizarre musings’ on ‘Last Week Tonight’

Phillies fans have listened to many of John Kruk’s stories. Since he joined play-by-play announcer Tom McCarthy in the Phillies broadcast booth in 2017, Kruk’s tangents have become a staple in lopsided games.

Even noted Mets fan John Oliver noticed and featured Kruk on Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight on HBO. As part of his weekly “And now this” transition between segments, Oliver’s team put together a montage of some of Kruk’s best “delightfully bizarre musings.”

The montage featured Kruk wondering why men’s chest hair doesn’t grow at birth and discussing why he banned his son from watching Caillou, seeing a giraffe at Animal Kingdom Lodge, playing a prison league baseball team, and almost getting shot by his friend’s girlfriend’s father.

“You know, I was thinking about this today now that we have some time,” Kruk begins. “Why aren’t we born with hair on our chest as men? … Why does it wait till like you’re 16, 17, 18, 20, whatever, and then it starts growing? Were those follicles dormant?”

The segment was just under 90 seconds, which is nowhere near enough time to feature all of Kruk’s funniest moments.

Kruk missed the London trip, saying on the broadcast that “we live in the greatest country in the world. Why would I want to see another one?”

In June, while actor Tony Hale was in the booth, Kruk admitted he only knew the Veep and Arrested Development star from his recent string of commercials and a one-episode guest appearance on Rules of Engagement — he’d just discovered Netflix ... in June 2024. Hale, by the way, was nominated for six Emmy Awards, winning twice, for his role as Gary Walsh on Veep.

Kruk’s baseball stories are just as good. During the series against the Dodgers, Kruk told the story of one of his home runs, when he was enlisted to pinch hit despite being in the “penalty box” due to “language that wasn’t conducive to a baseball environment.”

In 2021, Kruk joked that he “ain’t got no friends,” and that “no one would come here to see me.” John Oliver would beg to differ.

Before Tuesday’s game against the Marlins, Kruk was asked on the broadcast if he’d seen the clip.

“Maybe I should keep my past life to myself, seems to get me in trouble that way,” Kruk said. “Someone told me about it, I haven’t seen it. I don’t watch TV shows other than wrestling. I don’t know what goes on in the TV world besides watching Phillies games and wrestling, so I’m pretty clueless to everything else that goes on around me.”

The episode is available to stream on Max.