Harvard Club of San Francisco

Larry Baer - President & Chief Executive Officer

Fourth generation San Franciscan, Larry Baer has gained a national reputation as one of professional sports’ leading visionaries. Baer joined the team in 1992 as the Executive Vice President after he and Peter Magowan led the effort to assemble a new ownership group that kept the Giants in San Francisco. A limited partner and board member of the ownership group, Baer was named CEO on January 1, 2012. In his first year as president and CEO, the Giants won their second World Series Championship in three years. In 2014, the Giants won their third World Series title in five years. In 2021, the Giants won an all- time franchise record 107 games and the National League West title.

Baer is responsible for the overall day-to-day operations of the organization. Under his direction the Giants developed and constructed Oracle Park -- the first privately- financed Major League ballpark. Since opening in 2000, Oracle Park has been widely praised as one of the “best ballparks ever built.” In 2008, Oracle Park was named Sports Business Journal’s Sports Facility of the Year, and in 2011 the Giants received Sports Business Journal’s Professional Sports Organization of the Year award. The Giants enjoyed a National League home record sellout streak of 530 games spanning six seasons from 2011 – 2016.

Baer also serves as a key strategist and negotiator of the club’s major transactions. This includes the Barry Bonds signing in November 1992, the naming rights agreement with AT&T (then Pacific Bell) in 1996, the naming rights agreement with Oracle in 2019 and other strategic partnerships. He led the effort to host the 2007 All-Star Game in San Francisco and was the driving force behind the Giants partnership with Comcast to create the NBC Sports Bay Area regional sports network.

Baer also serves as Chairman and CEO of Giants Development Services, which currently has under construction Mission Rock – a new, mixed use urban neighborhood located on a 28-acre site across McCovey Cove from Oracle Park. Once completed, Mission Rock will include more than eight acres of parks and open space, 1,500 residential units, approximately 1.3 million square feet of office space (including the world headquarters of Visa, Inc.), a parking structure to serve ballpark and Mission Rock patrons, and 250,000 square feet of retail, restaurants, and public amenities.

In 2021, Baer helped launch and was named Co-Chair of “Advance SF”—a coalition of San Francisco CEO’s and business leaders committed to addressing community needs made more acute during the pandemic. In January 2022, Baer joined the Advisory Board of the American Journalism Project, based in New York City.

Baer has served on numerous Major League Baseball Boards including Chairing the Strategic Planning Committee, the Business and Media Board and the International Committee. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Bay Area Council, NBC Sports Bay Area and is a member of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America Pacific Region Board of Trustees. He is an immediate past governing board member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2016.

A graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Business School, Baer previously worked in the media industry for Westinghouse Broadcasting and CBS, Inc. At CBS, Baer was Special Assistant to Chairman Laurence Tisch. Baer has been the recipient of prestigious awards throughout his career with the Giants. In 2010, Baer was the named the “Person of the Year” by San Francisco Boys and Girls Clubs, and in 2012 he was honored as the Harvard Business School’s “Alumnus of the Year.” In 2014, Baer was honored by the University of California, Berkeley with its “Excellence in Achievement” award and received the Civic Leadership Award from the American Jewish Committee. Baer and his wife Pam Co-Chaired the Campaign To Rebuild San Francisco General Hospital which was successfully completed in 2016.

Baer and his wife, Pam, reside in San Francisco and have four children.
 

Pete Putila – General Manager

Pete Putila (pronounced puh-TELL-uh) enters his 1st season with the Giants as general manager. Putila, 33, spent the last 12 seasons with the Astros, rising from a baseball operations intern to an assistant GM over that span.

A native of Carmichaels, Pa., Putila graduated from West Virginia University with a bachelor’s degree in sports management and landed a baseball operations internship with the Astros in 2011. He was hired full-time later that year and continued to work his way up through the organization, earning a promotion to assistant director of Minor League operations in 2015 and director of player development in 2016. In the latter role, Putila oversaw Major and Minor League player development while assisting with the integration of scouting data and technology.
 

Bill Schlough - Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer

Since Bill Schlough’s arrival in 1999, the Giants have been recognized as one of the most innovative teams in sports, playing a pioneering role in the world of mobile connectivity, video, ticketing and payment systems. The Giants were the first team to provide free Wi-Fi to all fans beginning in 2004, and Oracle Park is currently the home of the third largest and first 4K-capable video board in MLB. Schlough’s IT team has also supported the baseball operation in implementing an array of proprietary analytic tools that helped the team secure three World Series titles in recent years.

In addition to his technological oversight responsibilities in San Francisco, Schlough was previously named Interim President of the Giants’ Class-A San Jose affiliate and has served as Board Chairman since 2012.

An Olympic enthusiast, Schlough assisted in crafting the technology vision and operations plans for San Francisco’s bids to host the 2012, 2016 and 2024 Olympic Games. His event experience includes assignments at the 1994 World Cup along with Olympics in Atlanta, Salt Lake, Torino, and PyeongChang. Previously, he worked as a consultant with Booz-Allen & Hamilton and EDS.

Schlough serves on the board of Junior Achievement of Northern California and is an avid supporter of Junior Giants, raising over $150,000 through speaking appearances and other fundraisers. Schlough was inducted into CIO.com’s CIO Hall of Fame in 2017, was named Trace3’s 2016 CIO Outlier of the Year, InformationWeek’s 2012 IT Chief of the Year, and is a Sports Business Journal’s “Forty Under 40” alumnus.

A San Francisco native and Ironman triathlete, Schlough holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from Duke University and an MBA from the Wharton School. He resides in Los Altos with his wife, Erin, and sons, Xavier, and Quinlan.