Overview
Laurence Monroe Baer is an American businessman. He is best known as the president and chief executive officer of the San Francisco Giants of Major League Baseball. He succeeded Bill Neukom on January 1, 2012.
Early life and education
Born to a Jewish family, Baer attended Lowell High School in San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley. He served as the sports director and business manager of KALX, the student-run radio station. As a junior, he negotiated with Oakland Athletics' owner Charlie Finley to make KALX the official radio station of the Athletics for its first 16 games. Baer served as the play-by-play announcer. He graduated from Berkeley with a degree in political science in 1980.
That same year, he joined the San Francisco Giants as its marketing director. He left the Giants to attend Harvard Business School and earned his MBA in 1985. After graduating, he worked for Westinghouse Broadcasting and CBS. At CBS, Baer worked as an assistant to the network's then-CEO and chairman Laurence Tisch.
Career
Baer returned to the Giants in 1992 to help form the ownership group that kept the team in San Francisco when an attempt was made to move the franchise to Tampa, Florida. Other members of the group included Charles Bartlett Johnson, Harmon Burns, Scott Seligman, Allan Byer, David S. Wolff and Peter Magowan, the Giants' CEO from 1992 to 2007.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).