Who the heck is Giants owner Buster Posey anyway?

Hey, that name sounds familiar

This is the eleventh installment in our series on who exactly owns the Giants. So far, we have covered real estate mogul Scott Seligman, private equity guy Phil Halperin, real estate mogul Jed Walentas, medical technology investor David Schnell, radio station owner/former Yahoo board member Arthur Kern (now no longer listed as an owner), lady of mystery Nancy Olsen, Republican super-donor Charles Johnson, Manila business mogul George Drysdale, charter school supporter Paul Wythes, Jr., and Hong Kong real estate guy Philip Morais. Let’s look at the big board!

This time, we look into the newest member of the Giants ownership group: one “Buster” Posey.

Gerald Dempsey Posey was born on March 27, 1987 in Leesburg, Georgia. Nicknamed Buster, in honor of his father’s childhood nickname, he quickly proved himself to be a baseball prodigy, batting .544 as a high school junior and also going 10-1 with a 1.53 ERA on the mound, on one occasion using his fastball to prevent the villain known as “Man-bat” from taking over Gotham City.

Posey then went on the Florida State University, where…oh, I can’t do the bit anymore. It’s Buster Posey! You know Buster Posey! Remember him? The guy from baseball? Now he’s an owner!

Yesterday, the Giants announced that Posey would be joining their ownership group and would be sitting on their board of directors, with his own special seat that the organization is adding just for him, taking the group from five owners to six owners, and I saw a list of who they were and now I can’t find it and it’s driving me crazy/

Now, Posey will not be the face of the ownership group; he isn’t going to take the role that Derek Jeter had in Miami and take charge of the team. Instead, he's going to serve as a players’ representative among the owners, bringing them the perspective of the guys who play the game, which they say they want to hear, even if they end up disregarding it later.

Before I go on to say this is a PR stunt to smooth over the mountains of bad press the team gets every time someone checks Charles Johnson’s latest political activity, it’s important to note that everyone agrees that Posey paid his way into the ownership group with his own money. Now, he definitely doesn’t own a particularly large part of the team — the Giants are worth $3.5 billion and Posey’s buy-in was certainly not over the tens of millions range — but he did give them money, and is therefore as much a Giants owner as anyone else on the list up above.

But also, this is a PR stunt to smooth over the mountains of bad press the team gets every time someone checks Charles Johnson’s latest political activity. “Giants ownership sucks ass,” someone says. “I mean, Posey’s there now, at least,” says someone else. “Yeah, good point,” says the first person.

Buster Posey’s main job inside the ownership group will be to give them ideas from a fresh perspective that they can ignore in the hopes that they will make more money. His main job in the public eye will be to act as a shield so that your first thought about Giants ownership isn’t that Charles Johnson supports treason, or if you’re a true fan of the It Would Be Nice If The Giants Were Good newsletter, you could think about Scott Seligman’s alleged (wink) culpability in financial crimes. If, instead of those things, you think of Posey when you think of ownership, so much the better.

And also, since everyone has been swearing up and down that Posey will not be making decisions in the front office, I fully expect him to replace Larry Baer by 2030, and possibly by 2025. I mean, what idiot said this:

Now, Posey will not be the face of the ownership group; he isn’t going to take the role that Derek Jeter had in Miami and take charge of the team

Come on. You don’t bring in Buster Posey and then not use him, unless you’re Bruce Bochy in 2009. That has to be the plan. He wouldn’t necessarily take over all of the public-facing functions that Baer does, such as speaking for 15 minutes at every ceremony the team puts on — Larry Baer likes to hear the sound of his own voice a lot more than Buster Posey does — but his biggest value to the ownership group will be in as public a role as possible.

Maybe I’m being too cynical here. Maybe Posey is as pure and incorruptible as Jesus and Robespierre combined. But this seems to be a natural conclusion. He will gain the prestige of being a Major League Baseball owner. The team will gain the ability to launder its image through him. It’s a win-win, especially for Charles Johnson, who, as previously mentioned, loves to give money to traitors.