Better Way to Pick a Commissioner
And honour baseball's last true one.
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
. . . Before he became a baseball official, Fay Vincent was a Columbia Pictures chief who helped swing the deal that ended in Coca-Cola buying the studio for $750 million—twice its known stock value at the time.
. . . Before Bowie Kuhn became baseball commissioner, he’d been a longtime attorney whose clients included the National League.
. . . Only two commissioners ever served as league presidents before holding the office: Ford C. Frick (the NL) and A. Bartlett Giamatti (also the NL).
Leading Off
It’s Past Time to Change How Commissioners are Chosen
The office should not be held by any faction’s lackey
By Jeff Kallman
In 2023, for a PBS Frontline documentary produced and hosted by Ben Reiter, former commissioner Fay Vincent was asked what he would have done had Astrogate—the Houston Astros’s illegal, off-field-based, electronic sign-stealing of 2017-18—happened on his watch. He didn’t flinch.
“I would have thrown some of the ringleaders out of baseball for a considerable period of time,” said Vincent, who died at 86 this past Saturday. Granting players immunity as his successor once removed Rob Manfred did, Vincent insisted, sent the wrong message.
Baseball and Manfred decided it was better to have it be a minor event than a major event. In other words, to have it a major event, you were going to have to teach players that one of the problems of cheating is you can get caught. And if you get caught, it can cost you.
The reason we have to have compliance with rules is that if you don't have rules, you don't have a system. The rules are what make a game a game. So the question is what would I have done as commissioner? I'd have thrown them all out. I would have said they're out for the rest of their lives.
Asked why he thought Manfred “went out of his way” to make clear in his Astrogate report of 2020 that Astros owner Jim Crane had nothing to do explicitly with the Astros’s cheating, Vincent once again didn’t flinch:
Because the commissioner works for the owner[s], and the most difficult thing in the world is to be working for people in a situation where you also have to discipline them. In baseball, the commissioner has the duty, the obligation, to police the very people he works for. That's a relationship that is totally all by itself. That's a conflict. That's a challenge. That's an impossibility.
Last November, Vincent told The Athletic that you couldn’t govern a sport without taking abuse, but it was “what you get abused for that matters. And I’m going to say to you that the only thing I care about is the conclusion that Fay Vincent tried to do the right thing. Was he always correct? No. Did he make mistakes? Yes. But he stood for some things, and he stood for them very strongly.”
What did he stand for? Among other things, he stood for sensible league realignment, never mind that putting eastern teams in eastern divisions and western teams in western divisions provoked the Cubs to think about suing him.
He stood against hardline labour strategies among some owners and for purging those who thought engaging with street gamblers to exhume dirt on players was acceptable practice. He stood for fair parcelings of expansion pelf even if, as Thomas Boswell once observed, “he divided them so fairly that no one was happy.”
He also stood for the one thing he admitted to being unable to get within two home runs’ distance of getting, guiding the owners and the players toward a relationship that was mutually respectful and beneficial, not terminally adversarial.
In other words, Vincent believed the good of the game wasn’t restricted to making money for the owners. The owners believed they needed to think about ridding themselves of his pernicious influence, especially since Vincent inclined heavily toward trying to forestall what was likely to become a ruinous labour impasse.
Vincent’s worst mistake may have been the way he handled Steve Howe’s seventh relapse after going out on a very far limb and reinstating the drug-troubled relief pitcher to be signed experimentally by the Yankees. Howe’s mound comeback was brilliant; only a hyperextended pitching elbow shortened his 1991 season.
But when Howe’s offseason bust in Montana for trying to possess cocaine came to light, in June 1992, Vincent must have felt like the biggest fool on earth. He banned Howe for life promptly. Then, he tried to strong-arm three Yankee officials including manager Buck Showalter into changing their testimonies as Howe’s character witnesses.
It became headlines in New York after Showalter returned to Yankee Stadium slightly late for the day’s game against the Royals. It also lit the powder keg that blew his term of office up. Vincent resigned before he could be fired.
If you agree with me that Vincent shouldn’t have been forced out under the final impetus of one bad mistake, you might agree that commissioners as mere owners’ lackeys is a mistake even worse than trying to squeeze three Yankees over one relapsing pitcher.
Maybe you’ll agree, then, that someone needs to force a major change in how the job is filled in the first place. The next collective bargaining agreement is due to be negotiated after the 2026 season. The Major League Baseball Players Association and the Major League Umpires Association ought to think very hard about this.
There’s no reason on earth why baseball’s commissioner should be an owners’ hire alone. The owners of a century ago may have had good reason to create and fill the office in the first place, but the office has become far too important, and today’s owners can be considered even more capricious than their ancestors of the post-Black Sox scandal.
The next CBA should include language stating that no one who owns or ever owned a baseball team should be eligible for the job. This would prevent another Bud Selig from allowing the game to be stained by things such as the owners-forced 1994 strike and the Wild West era of actual/alleged performance-enhancing substances, or being allowed to hand-pick his successor as Selig did with Manfred. It might also prevent a future commissioner from deciding a future cheating scandal should go un- or mal-punished.
But in absolute fairness, the job shouldn’t be held by a former player, manager, coach, or umpire, either. Can we agree with Vincent that the good of the game isn’t the same thing as purely making money for the owners? Then we should also agree it isn’t the same thing as purely making money for the players or shielding umpires from accountability.
I’m not in that big a hurry to reach for anyone who’s worked in the front offices or systems of any teams, either. Since the death of Bart Giamatti and the forced resignation of Vincent, baseball’s self-policing ability compares most of the time to placing a squadron of jellyfish in charge of the shark tank. Whomever comes to be presented for the job after Manfred’s term expires should be someone who loves the game at least as deeply as Giamatti and Vincent did, and with the knowledge to back it up.
(I admit that that last promises some pretty pickling. Do you, Mr. or Ms. Commissioner Candidate, understand that wealthy baseball ownerships should be building and paying for their own ballparks and not strong-arming gullible municipalities into paying for half or better of them? Sit down and shut up, Mr. or Ms. Las Vegas.)
Then, that individual should be they elected by a constituency of one designated representative each from all thirty team ownerships; each player representative from each of the thirty major league teams; all major league umpiring crew chiefs; and, designated representatives of each minor league team, one player and one ownership rep each.
It may not be absolutely perfect, but it seems a long sight better than the old way. If baseball could discover that hey, the universal DH wasn’t such a terrible idea after all (fair disclosure: it was way, way, way overdue, folks), anything is possible. Including the prospect of a commissioner who’s beholden to all and lackey for none.
Jeff Kallman, an IBWAA Life Member, edits the Wednesday and Thursday editions of Here’s the Pitch.
Extra Innings
Unlike acts of impulse or violence, intended at the moment to vent frustration or abuse another, acts of cheating are intended to alter the very conditions of play to favour one person. They are secretive, covert acts that strike at and seek to undermine the basic foundation of any contest declaring the winner—that all participants play under identical rules and conditions. Acts of cheating destroy that necessary foundation and thus strike at the essence of a contest. They destroy faith in the games’ integrity and fairness; if participants and spectators alike cannot assume integrity and fairness, and proceed from there, the contest cannot in essence exist.—A. Bartlett Giamatti, as president of the National League, in 1987, upholding a ten-day suspension for Phillies pitcher Kevin Gross, who’d been caught with sandpaper on his glove.
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [gopherben@gmail.com] handles the Monday issue with Dan Freedman [dfreedman@lionsgate.com] editing Tuesday and Jeff Kallman [easyace1955@outlook.com] at the helm Wednesday and Thursday. Original editor Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com], does the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Former editor Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] is now co-director [with Benjamin Chase and Jonathan Becker] of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, which publishes this newsletter and the annual ACTA book of the same name. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HtP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.
Thanks Jeff for the reminder as to why in the back of my mind I was not all that keen on Fay Vincent's tenure. I had forgotten the Steve Howe thing! Although 7 strikes and you're finally out was hard to fathom at the time.