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Fay Vincent Jr., the eighth commissioner of baseball, died Saturday at the age of 86. Vincent, who held his position in baseball for just three years from 1989 to 1992, is often referred to as “the last commissioner,” given his attempts to serve as a neutral arbiter in the game’s many internal disputes. In the three decades since Vincent was forced out, MLB’s two commissioners have served explicitly as representatives of the owners’ interests.
Vincent is perhaps more accurately remembered as the accidental commissioner. His long friendship with the president of Yale, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was his primary qualification for the role of deputy commissioner under Giamatti. The academic, who first served as National League president, ascended to the commissionership in April 1989, only to die of a heart attack five months later. Vincent was quickly approved as his successor and almost immediately faced a crisis when the Loma Prieta earthquake interrupted the 1989 World Series. That moment, in fact, led Rob Manfred’s acknowledgement of Vincent’s death:
“Fay Vincent played a vital role in ensuring that the 1989 Bay Area World Series resumed responsibly following the earthquake prior to Game Three.”
It was after that moment that Vincent’s leadership began to grate on the 26 magnates. In 1990, with the CBA having expired at the end of 1989, the owners locked out the players from spring training. Vincent inserted himself into the negotiations, threatened to use his authority to open camps, and eventually brokered a deal that didn’t include the revenue sharing, pay for performance, and cap system the owners wanted. Vincent’s role in 1990 helped ensure that no independent commissioner would ever be involved in MLB labor disputes again.
Vincent’s term in office would bring him into constant conflict with varying owners. He suspended Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in 1990 after Steinbrenner paid Howie Spira, a gambler and hanger-on, to dig up dirt on Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield. With the NL planning to expand in 1993 and the AL teams desperate for a share of the expansion fees to help pay off the collusion settlement, Vincent stepped in to broker a solution in which the AL teams would get a slice of the money in exchange for making players available in the expansion draft. The solution pleased no one and increased the number of owners unhappy with Vincent’s leadership. Soon after, Vincent announced plans to realign the National League geographically, moving the Cardinals and Cubs to the West and the Reds and Braves to the East, decisions that only made sense to people with access to, well, maps. The Cubs sued Vincent to prevent this plan from going into effect, a suit that was rendered moot when Vincent resigned.
MLB owners no longer had the stomach for a commissioner who saw his role as promoting the best interests of baseball when those interests conflicted with the best interests of the owners. In September 1992, following a vote of no-confidence, Vincent resigned his office. Brewers owner Bud Selig, one of the architects of collusion just a few years prior, took over on an interim, and eventually permanent, basis.
Vincent had his share of battles with uniformed personnel as well. He repeatedly backed Giamatti’s decision to place Pete Rose on the permanently ineligible list for gambling on baseball, a decision he’d been a part of as Giamatti’s deputy. He issued a lifetime suspension to reliever Steve Howe after Howe repeatedly failed tests for cocaine use. In investigating Howe, Vincent bullied and threatened Yankee manager Buck Showalter. Vincent was eventually railroaded by the owners, but he was also, in many ways, a bully who lacked his predecessor’s touch with people. No amount of personality, however, would have saved him. The baseball business was changing too much for the owners to imbue any position with much independent authority.
In retrospect, Vincent represents a breakpoint in baseball history. Commissioners have always worked for the owners, but for 70 years MLB held onto the fig leaf that commissioners stood above the game and represented more than just the interests of capital. When Vincent was cashiered by Selig, Jerry Reinsdorf, and Peter O’Malley, that fig leaf dropped. We have not had a commissioner who wasn’t a representative of the owners since then, and we never will. It’s healthier in some ways, but in others, we feel the lack of leadership in a sport crying out for it.
Vincent tried to be that leader, to follow in the footsteps of his friend Giamatti. The owners, however, no longer had an interest in the kind of leadership that centered anything but their revenues, their profits, and their dominance over the players. More than 30 years later, as Vincent passes, baseball remains rudderless.
