Ambush on Memory Lane! is our ongoing series where we find the earliest Chronicle photos of Bay Area newsmakers, and post them with hindsight-aided analysis. This week’s subject: San Francisco Giants CEO Larry Baer.

I’ve interviewed Larry Baer twice, hear him on KNBR frequently, and have watched from afar like any other Giants fan. Words I would use to describe him are cordial, professional, careful, a little bit calculating and measured. I definitely wouldn’t say wacky. And I definitely can’t imagine him up late at night ironing letters on a homemade T-shirt, to market a post-college stunt to ride every Muni line in one day.

And yet there he is in 1980 at age 23, with his friend Andrew Coblentz, in a story about their successfully attempt to ride all 71 Muni lines in one day. This is like finding out that Magellan was also a minority partner in the Chicago Bulls.

Some facts about Larry Baer’s Muni stunt, according to the Aug. 30, 1980, Chronicle article:

1. It took Baer and Coblentz eight hours just to plan a route to ride every Muni bus, rail and cable car line in one day. Muni gave the pair a free all-day pass.

2. The T-shirts cost $9 each, their total investment in the project.

3. Baer and Coblentz woke up at 4:45 a.m., and finished at 6 p.m., celebrating with a drink at the Bus Stop in the Marina. (Which is still a strong Giants bar almost 35 years later.)

Perhaps most surprisingly, this was Baer’s second brush with fame in the San Francisco Chronicle. The first one is well-documented history, although the photo you’re about to see hasn’t been printed in 36 years.

For about 20 days in 1978, before he was old enough to legally buy a beer, Baer was an Oakland A’s broadcaster — covering games on the 10 Watt (that’s not a misprint) KALX station at U.C. Berkeley. His stay was less than a month; it was an apparent ploy by ultra-cheap owner Charlie O. Finley to boost his negotiating power and make a deal with a different station.

The Chronicle reported that 16 games later, when the A’s signed with KNEW, Baer was set to continue as a broadcaster. But Finley brought in a new broadcasting team at the 11th hour. Baer abandoned his plans to be the next Bill King, went to Harvard business school and worked at Westinghouse Broadcasting. He returned to the Giants in 1992 and helped form the ownership group that kept the team in San Francisco at AT&T Park.

As with all Ambush on Memory Lane! entries, I don’t warn the subject ahead of time. (The series isn’t called Ask for Permission in Advance on Memory Lane for a reason.) But I’m happy to post any response/rebuttal. In the meantime, some questions for Mr. Baer that pop immediately into my head:

* Do you still have the T-shirt from The Total Muni Experience?

* If the answer to the previous question is “yes,” will you wear it to the next MLB owners meeting?

* Do you ever ride Muni now?

* Let’s say the Giants are playing in Philadelphia and Krukow contracts laryngitis, Miller gets cheesesteak-related food poisoning and Flemming spontaneously combusts like a drummer in Spinal Tap. Is there a doomsday Giants broadcasting scenario where you would ever take the microphone — kind of like an emergency catcher?

(UPDATED! 2:07 p.m.: LOL KNBR Callers has already explored the broadcast booth doomsday scenario, in very funny/harrowing detail, in this Bay Area Sports Guy post. Please come back here when you’re done, even though the other post is more entertaining than this one.)

* Why haven’t you done a Muni Diaries Live yet?

* Would you be willing to repeat The Total Muni Experience in 2014 — or at least serve as an (unpaid) Yoda-like consultant to another party?

* What other event did we miss in your Forrest Gump-like past? A table tennis championship? Heisman Trophy? Were you on one of the Apollo missions?

This is the part of Ambush on Memory Lane! where I start to think about the butterfly effect. If Charlie Finley had just been a little more kind/cheaper, and Baer got a full season to develop, maybe he’s hosting on Comcast SportsNet Bay Area instead of running the Giants. Maybe he’s co-hosting with Tom Tolbert instead of appearing as a guest. Or, going in the other direction, maybe Baer is hurting for work, filling in odd vacation shifts on The Game or KGO radio, and wondering what would have happened if he went to business school …

I may be reading into this, but I wonder whether Baer’s past has something to do with the spare-no-expense approach to retaining good broadcasters. Even if you have specific criticisms — the “Gamer Babe” meme is an embarrassment IMO — I can’t imagine a better four broadcasters than Kruk, Kuip, Miller and Flemming exist in any other marketplace. Add Marty “The Sweatshop” Lurie doing 37 hours of post-game and pre-game (meshing nicely with Patrick Connor on weekends).

Speaking of, Giants fans might also enjoy our earlier Ambush on Memory Lane! featuring Jon Miller, who preceded Baer as an A’s broadcaster by four years. (And didn’t stay in the Athletics broadcasting seat for much longer. More Finley insanity!)

Other ambushes in the series include KGO host Ronn Owens, Gavin Newsom, Al Attles, Rose Pak, Ann Fraser and Ross McGowan and Marc Benioff.

In the meantime, one more Larry Baer photo below. (In case anyone questioned that he would be wearing floods …)