Fay Vincent, whose short term as Major League Baseball’s eighth commissioner featured him more as a crisis manager, died on Saturday in Vero Beach, Fla. He was 86.
The cause of death was complications of bladder cancer, according to multiple reports on Sunday.
Vincent served just shy of three years after replacing A. Bartlett Giamatti, who held the office only five months before dying of a heart attack on Sept. 1, 1989.
The deputy commissioner when his friend Giamatti died, Vincent was a passionate fan of the game who helped the 1989 World Series continue 10 days after the San Francisco area was hit by an earthquake shortly before Game 3 between the Giants and eventual champion Oakland Athletics.
Vincent also dealt with the owners’ lockout of the players in 1990; the expulsion and reinstatement of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner; expansion of the National League with the Rockies and Marlins; and a no-confidence vote by owners in September 1992, after which he resigned at age 54.
“Fay Vincent played a vital role in ensuring that the 1989 Bay Area World Series resumed responsibly following the earthquake prior to Game Three, and he oversaw the process that resulted in the 1993 National League expansion to Denver and Miami,” current MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement on Sunday.
“Mr. Vincent served the game during a time of many challenges, and he remained proud of his association with our National Pastime throughout his life. On behalf of Major League Baseball, I extend my deepest condolences to Fay’s family and friends.”
Francis Thomas Vincent Jr. was born on May 29, 1938, in Waterbury, Conn. The son of a former football and baseball standout at Yale who later officiated those sports, Fay Vincent was a football lineman at Williams College in 1956.
However, his athletic ambitions ended as a freshman, when he fell off an icy ledge outside his fourth-floor dormitory window after a friend locked him inside as a prank. Vincent landed on a metal railing and broke his back, paralyzing him from the chest down. After fears he would never walk again, Vincent regained the ability to walk using a cane.
He graduated from Williams and Yale Law School and went on to a career as an attorney in New York before becoming a partner in the Washington, D.C., law firm of Caplin & Drysdale. He also worked for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, became the chairman of Columbia Pictures and was the senior vice president of Coca-Cola when it purchased Columbia in 1982, eventually becoming executive vice president.
His friend Giamatti became MLB commissioner in 1986 and brought him in as his deputy. The office was dealing with the scandal of Pete Rose betting on baseball, and after the former Reds star and manager was banned, Giamatti died eight days later. Owners voted Vincent into the top job on Sept. 13, 1989.
“I don’t like the designated hitter; I don’t like aluminum bats; I do like grass,” he told reporters that day. “I do like baseball as you and I knew it growing up.”
His relationship with owners was uneasy at best and adversarial at worst, as they viewed him as working for them. Vincent drew their ire by admitting that there was collusion among teams against free agents following the 1985, 1986 and 1987 seasons.
The owners locked out the players in February 1990 in a dispute of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, delaying the start of the season. Vincent didn’t think trying to break the players’ union made sense after collusion as there was no trust left.
That July, Vincent permanently banned Steinbrenner from day-to-day management of the Yankees. Steinbrenner had been sued by star player Dave Winfield for failing to make a payment to his foundation per his contract, and the team owner paid a gambler $40,000 to try to find damaging information about him. Vincent reinstated Steinbrenner two years later.
Vincent also tried to push forward failed realignment plans in the National League. He did work on the planning and financial details on the NL expansion in 1993 of the Marlins and Rockies. Expansion fees of $190 million were divided among both leagues with the American League getting $42 million. AL teams participated equally with NL clubs in the expansion draft.
Before Vincent’s term was due as commissioner on March 31, 1994, MLB owners held a special meeting on Sept. 3, 1992 and 18 of the 28 voted “no confidence” with one abstention. Vincent instead planned to honor his contract and take legal action before resigning.
He was replaced in effect by Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig, who was made the newly created chairman of the executive council and voted commissioner in 1998. Selig retired in 2015.
“A fight based solely on principle does not justify the disruption when there is not greater support among the ownership for my views,” Vincent wrote in his resignation letter to the owners. “While I would receive personal gratification by demonstrating that the legal position set out in my August 20 letter is correct, litigation does nothing to address the serious problems of baseball. I cannot govern as commissioner without the consent of owners to be governed. I do not believe that consent is now available to me. Simply put, I’ve concluded resignation — not litigation — should be my final act as Commissioner ‘in the best interests’ of Baseball.”
–Field Level Media
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