Heart Transplant Could Be In Greg Papa's Near Future

Greg Papa

Greg Papa watched the 49ers’ home opener Sunday from a San Francisco hospital room, not the broadcast booth, after a heart condition flared two weeks ago and left him facing a possible heart transplant or alternative procedure.

Papa, who turns 64 on Oct. 10, said Saturday that three cardiologists at UCSF are tracking advanced heart failure around the clock. He had hoped to return to the radio booth this week.

“This one … I’ve battled hard for a long time. I was in the hospital for 11 weeks, most of it in ICU. I battled hard,” Papa said in an exclusive phone interview with the Mercury News. “My body is starting to wear down, I tell you. I’m battling as hard as I can. You feel you’re surrounded. It’s the lungs, it’s the liver, it’s the kidneys, and now the heart. I feel fatigued in trying to figure it out. I do PT every day trying to eat and trying to get strong for whatever procedure I do. It’s frustrating.”

Two weeks ago he spent three to four hours at his desk preparing his “49ers board” for a targeted comeback. After attending Cal’s Sept. 5 football game, he awoke the next night with labored breathing and said “my heart was coming through my chest.” 

He returned to UCSF on Sept. 7. Doctors are weighing three options: medication, which is somewhat stabilizing; an LVAD pump inserted next to the heart via open-chest surgery; or a heart transplant. 

“The real tough one is a heart transplant,” Papa said. “I just had a bone-marrow transplant on March 4. … We’re going through it all. This whole week has been about accruing data.”

Papa

The heart crisis follows intense treatment since July 2025, when he was diagnosed with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He received a bone marrow transplant in March, then both lungs collapsed and he spent 78 days in the hospital. In May 2023 he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy and managed it with medication through the 49ers’ Super Bowl season.

“My heart had a mutation heading into this and it was tough to protect my heart,” Papa said. “My heart couldn’t take the medicine it needed to get better because it was in contrast with the chemo and all the other things I needed to take to stay alive. It’s a mental grind. I’m back in these walls again when I thought I was out. I’m right back in it doing this step-by-step physical therapy, trying to crawl my way to the goal line again. You never quite feel like you won but you feel like you turned it around and there were better days ahead. Then all of a sudden, boom, you’re crippled again. We’ll figure it out.”

Papa was the 49ers’ play-by-play radio voice from 2019 until last season, when he returned for the regular-season finale against Seattle. His earlier stops included the Warriors (1986-97), Raiders (1997-2018), Athletics (1990-2003) and Giants (2004-08). 

KNBR announced last week that he would return after being dismissed Aug. 5.