SF Giants president says city’s bad reputation is ‘way overstated’

Advance SF’s “It All Starts Here” campaign officially began at second base at Oracle Park on Thursday, with Giants President and CEO Larry Baer serving as the emcee of the short on-field gathering. 

The $4 million campaign received the largest contributions from billionaires Bob Fisher, a chairman at Gap Inc. and the brother of Oakland A’s owner John, and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen. But Baer, a co-chair of Advance SF, made it clear Thursday how much he’s personally frustrated by the narrative about his hometown.

“Sometimes, it feels like a barrage around the issues that we face, and these are issues that other cities face as well,” Baer said to the crowd. “We don’t believe our cities should be defined by those issues.”

That perception problem is seemingly hampering the team on the field, too. Last offseason, Giants President of Baseball Operations Farhan Zaidi called San Francisco a “polarizing” market and claimed that baseball players may not want to sign with the team because of the city.

“I don’t know if we would say San Francisco is an idiosyncratic market, but … I think it’s a little bit of a polarizing place among players in terms of the desire to play there,” Zaidi said last December in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. “This is sort of totally independent of the competitive situation, but geography, politics, whatever.

“When we’re doing our research on free agents and we find that players aren’t really that happy even coming into town for a three-game series, they’re probably not going to be that excited to play there for a long time. … Even when you think you can sign a player, you’re probably not, that’s just how it works. So when you don’t think you’re going to sign a player, you’re definitely not going to sign him.” (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)

When asked if he thinks the perception of San Francisco is hurting the Giants in free agency, Baer said Thursday that he thinks it is hurting the city “on all levels.”

“To the extent that anybody thinks that’s true, if a player might think that, it’s because of this narrative that’s out there that we need to debunk and defeat,” Baer said to SFGATE. “We believe it’s false. We believe it’s way overstated. … A bunch of us said, ‘We can’t stay silent anymore.’”

The number was also only barely more than last year’s total attendance of 2.48 million. In a year that all of baseball saw a per-game attendance average increase of 2,548 fans per game, the Giants saw an increase of just 216 more fans per game, ranking 24th out of 30 in year-over-year change.

The Giants are well aware of all of this and believe the reasons for the attendance slump go beyond just the team — like, for example, a local workforce that hasn’t fully returned to in-person work. Baer unveiled one plan Thursday to try to help the team in the area he told SFGATE the Giants have suffered most post-pandemic: large-group sales.

On Tuesdays, the Giants will have discounted tickets for large groups, hoping to encourage some businesses to bring their in-person initiatives to the ballpark. Tuesday attendees will get to see the Giants wear their Nike-made City Connect jerseys; Baer even cited the Giants’ 26-10 record in the jerseys, something the fan base loves to keep track of on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The Giants plan to work with businesses to set up an evening outing, where employees could get drinks after work at a nearby bar at 5:30 p.m. before heading to the ballpark for a 6:45 p.m. first pitch.

“I think it’s kind of a win-win,” Baer said to SFGATE. “Obviously, we want people in the ballpark. But beyond that, it’s really a statement about San Francisco.”

The Giants are one of 35-plus businesses and people highlighted as part of the campaign. In the sports world, that includes the Golden State Warriors and their stars Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson; the San Francisco 49ers, their former star Jerry Rice and the NFL (notable because of the multiple planned events in SF for Super Bowl 60 in 2026); and Giants legend Willie Mays.

But even though the Giants hosted Thursday’s event, Baer said his involvement in Advance SF is far more about his civic pride for the City by the Bay than anything related to baseball. He’s hoping that campaigns like “It All Starts Here” help the public see San Francisco how he sees it.

“There are a lot of signs that we’re moving in the right direction,” Baer told the crowd. “We’re a resilient city, and you can’t really ever count us out.”