Alex Rodriguez Sunday Night Baseball

A trip to San Francisco to broadcast this past weekend’s Philadelphia Phillies-San Francisco Giants Sunday Night Baseball game on ESPN appears to have been a costly one for Alex Rodriguez. As per Evan Sernoffsky and Phil Matier of The San Francisco Chronicle, Rodriguez was the victim of a car burglary after the game (which ended shortly after 7:30 p.m. Pacific) that saw an estimated $500,000 worth of jewelry and electronics taken:

Rodriguez was in town broadcasting the Giants and Philadelphia Phillies game for ESPN and he left his car on the 400 block of Brannan Street, about three blocks from Oracle Park, sources said.

Sometime between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m., someone broke into a car in that location and stole a camera, a laptop, miscellaneous jewelry and a bag, said Officer Adam Lobsinger, a San Francisco police spokesman. Lobsinger said the burglary involved a private citizen and it’s against department policy to release victim information.

But numerous sources told The Chronicle the victim was Rodriguez and the thieves pilfered roughly $500,000 worth of goods. 

Update: The Chronicle has now added to their story to say that this was a car ESPN rented for the production staff, and that it was robbed during their post-game dinner:

A source told The Chronicle that ESPN had rented a black Nissan sport utility vehicle for Rodriguez and other members of the production staff. The thieves struck while Rodriguez and the other staff members were having dinner after the broadcast.

So it’s not clear that this is all Rodriguez’s own property; some could have been property of other staffers. But it does seem likely that a lot of this is his. And while that’s certainly an unfortunate loss for Rodriguez, it’s a little surprising to hear about anyone leaving $500,000 worth of goods in a rental car, especially in a city that’s had record numbers of car break-ins over the past few years. The Chronicle described car break-ins as at “epidemic levels” in a car break-in tracker they put up in February, and that tracker shows a lot of reported break-ins around Oracle Park (including five on Brannan Street near the park). But maybe Rodriguez wasn’t aware of that.

Update 2: The Chronicle story now includes quite the statement from supervisor Matt Haney, whose district includes that area. Haney said “We still have a terrible car break-in epidemic in San Francisco, and I’m sorry that it impacted Mr. Rodriguez,” and added that car break-ins are “also hurting thousands of San Franciscans every year who have to repeatedly pay for window replacements. We need stronger prevention and accountability, and we also ask that people please not leave expensive things in their car. The more profitable these crimes are, the more likely that they continue.”

At any rate, while Rodriguez was quite positive about broadcasting a game from Oracle Park Sunday (“Matty, we are the ones on vacation. This place is beautiful, the weather is perfect“), it would be understandable if he doesn’t have as many fond memories of the area after this break-in. He’s far from the first media figure to be robbed in the Bay Area (there have been plenty of other examples, including a NBA Entertainment camera crew that had $40,000 in equipment stolen from their van in Oakland in 2015), but this is certainly a hefty loss.

[The San Francisco Chronicle]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.