On Friday around noon, long-time San Francisco Giants CEO Larry Baer got into a public altercation with his wife Pam in a plaza in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood. Just over an hour later at 1:03 p.m. Pacific, video of that was published on TMZ, which showed Baer appearing to knock his wife out of her chair and drag her to the ground while trying to pry a phone out of her hand, with her screaming “Oh my god! Stop!”
The San Francisco Chronicle also published a piece with those details at 1:05 p.m., one that mentioned “The Chronicle has viewed the video, but the witness did not grant permission for the newspaper to publish it, saying he had sold it to another media outlet.” Here’s the video:
Evan Sernoffsky, one of the Chronicle reporters on that byline (along with Matthias Gafni), later tweeted from the location of the video:
BREAKING: Video shows @SFGiants CEO Larry Baer dragging wife to ground in physical incident in plaza here at Hayes and Octavia https://t.co/EtuVuiQL9x pic.twitter.com/ivnto4bxTe
— Evan Sernoffsky (@EvanSernoffsky) March 1, 2019
The TMZ piece also includes this:
In between video clips, the person who shot the footage tells us he got involved and helped break up the altercation. Another witness corroborated that.
Witnesses tell us police were not called to the scene. Unclear if they were contacted after the altercation. We’re reaching out.
We’ve also reached out to Baer’s camp for comment. So far, no word back.
Baer later commented to Sernoffsky:
(2/2) “…the matter is resolved. It was a squabble over a cell phone. Obviously it’s embarrassing.” Baer said he’s apologized to his wife and police were not contacted.
— Evan Sernoffsky (@EvanSernoffsky) March 1, 2019
Update: The Baers have put out a statement, as has MLB.
Statement from Pam and Larry Baer
Regrettably today we had a heated argument in public over a family matter. We are deeply embarrassed by the situation and have resolved the issue.
— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) March 1, 2019
MLB statement on Giants CEO Larry Baer’s domestic incident with his wife: “Major League Baseball is aware of the incident and, just like any other situation like this, will immediately begin to gather the facts. We will have no further comment until this process is completed.”
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 1, 2019
This seems like it’s going to raise a lot of questions about Baer’s position with the Giants. He’s been involved with the team for decades and is a part owner of the franchise, and he was named chief operating officer in May 1996, team president in October 2008 and CEO on January 1, 2012. But his behavior here certainly doesn’t look good. And his explanation of “she fell off her chair” leaves something to be desired.
The more notable discussion from a media standpoint may be about how quickly this went from something that happened to something TMZ published video of, though; it’s pretty remarkable to see only an hour between incident and published video, especially with that video being published by an organization that apparently paid for it (as per the Chronicle‘s note), as that presumably involves some contracts. That speaks to not only how there are often eyes and cameras on public figures, but also how quickly video of any sort of public misdeed can spread. And it speaks to TMZ’s prominence in this space that they’re not only the outlet the video-taker went to here, but that they were able to turn it around this fast.
Update: on Monday, the Giants announced that Baer was taking “personal time away” from the team.
Official statement from the Board of Directors. #SFGiants pic.twitter.com/07IL5jDL9W
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) March 4, 2019
[TMZ]
