On the day of Draymond Green’s suspension from Game 5 of the NBA Finals, intrepid KPIX/KCBS reporter Mike Sugerman went to Oracle Arena to search for Green — under the seats.

He did not find the banished Warrior hiding in the arena before the game, but the failure of a hunch is a necessary part of any great Sugerman report. Making himself look dumb for the sake of his story is the trademark of the TV and radio color man who will file his last report on July 28.

Sugerman has survived any number of on-air indignities, and two near-death heart malfunctions. But he could not survive the affliction that hits so many Baby Boomer parents — separation anxiety when their adult children move away. Thus Sugerman, 62, and his wife, Janice Wright, a weekend anchor for KCBS, are both quitting their jobs and moving to New York to be as close as possible to their two sons and their first grandchild, a boy born in June.

“We’re following the kids,” Sugerman says. “Family is more important than the job, even though I love my work.”

Blessed with a reassuring bass timbre, Sugerman has a voice familiar to San Francisco audiences for 35 years, since he first read the news during the Dr. Don Rose show on KFRC, the once-dominant Top 40 station.

“Now back to more music and Dr. Don Rose,” Sugerman says, still able to muster the exuberance required to wake a clock-radio audience at 6 a.m. In 1984, Sugerman advanced to KCBS all-news radio. But the full force of a Sugerman report could not be appreciated unless you could see him — balding, bespectacled and befuddled. In 1994, he started to augment his radio work with TV on KPIX, a subsidiary of CBS.

He’s been an anchor and appeared on “Evening Magazine,” and he and Wright performed as “the Sugermans,” an Andy Rooney-style sketch at the end of a newsmagazine show called “30 Minutes Bay Area.”

One sketch was promoted as “the debating duo look at the yin and yang, highs and lows, of Valentine’s Day.”

But he’s mostly been out in the field, filing one-minute reports. Counting radio reports, Sugerman estimates he has done 10,000 stories, and he’s won 17 Northern California Emmy Awards.

“They’re just run-of-the-mill assignments,” he says, “but I try to put a personal touch on them.”

At the first Giants World Series parade, sports reporter Vern Glenn, then working for KRON, looked around for his competitor, only to find him crowd-surfing.

“He kind of has this Mr. Magoo persona, and it’s a huge hit,” says Glenn. “That’s the genius of the man.”

A standard Sugerman was to follow a Bay Area sports team on a playoff road trip and infiltrate the most rabid sports bar of the opposition. He’d bravely file his report under constant threat of having a beer poured over his bald head.

But he also has a serious side. His earliest scoop was announcing draft lottery numbers during the Vietnam War on the campus radio station at UC Santa Barbara, and there was no humor in that, nor in the ensuing protests.

“We had riots and I did play-by-play on the field,” he says. “The rioters didn’t like me because I was giving away their position, and the cops didn’t like me because I was a longhair.”

One of his proudest moments in citizen journalism came at Candlestick Park, when he exposed vendors for charging a 22-ounce draft-beer price on beer that was drawn into an 18-ounce cup.

Long a commuter on the K-Ingleside line, he once challenged Muni to a race and beat it on foot.

“I’m not the smartest guy in the world,” he says, “but I do my best.”

Prone to high blood pressure, Sugerman was standing at the elevator bank at KPIX one day 15 years ago when he collapsed and had to be rushed to the emergency room with a burst aorta. The surgeon was barely able to pull him back from the brink, Sugerman says.

That put him out of work for four months. Then three years ago, the aorta became infected, requiring a six-month medical leave. His most recent episode was a mini-stroke this year.

But health is not Sugerman’s reason for leaving, and he’s too young to retire.

“We’ll both be looking for work out there,” he says.

Sugerman and Wright raised their two sons, Will and Max, west of Twin Peaks and put them through the public school system in San Francisco. Max now lives in Boston and Will in Brooklyn, which got the nod because that’s the home of the newborn Charles Bloom Sugerman, already nicknamed C.B.S. by his grandfather, who would like to re-up as a CBS employee.

They’ve rented a two-bedroom apartment near Prospect Park, Brooklyn, and rented, not sold, the family home.

“We don’t know if we’re coming back,” Sugerman says. “We’re two native Californians.” They’ll have to survive at least one winter because they have invested in season tickets for the New York Islanders hockey team.

His last broadcast on KPIX news will be a farewell tribute, accompanied by a lowlight reel, on July 27. On July 28, he will record his radio farewell to be broadcast on Aug. 1.

Between now and then he’ll be saying goodbye to all his friends on the K-Ingleside and the walk from Market Street to Broadway on his commute.

“I like to think of myself as the average guy,” he says. “It just worked out that I got into this business.”

Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Instagram: @sfchronicle_art

Mike Sugerman bids his audience farewell at http://bit.ly/28MHzgc