The Baseball World Says Goodbye to Fay Vincent
An IBWAA co-director eulogizes former commissioner Fay Vincent
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
. . . The first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was appointed in large part in response to the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Landis is the longest-serving commissioner, holding the role from 1920-1944. Current commissioner Rob Manfred celebrated 10 years in the role in August 2024.
. . . Before Landis, a three-person committee ruled the game, with the league presidents and a commission chairman reviewing the important decisions within the game. American League president Ban Johnson dominated that commission and his power on the commission led to the league owners deciding that the commission was ineffective and choosing to begin the role of commissioner with Landis.
Leading Off
The Baseball World Says Goodbye to Fay Vincent
By Benjamin Chase
On Sunday, the eighth commissioner of baseball, Francis T. "Fay" Vincent passed away at the age of 86.
Vincent served as the Commissioner of Major League Baseball from 1989-1992, first serving as the deputy commissioner under close friend A. Bartlett Giamatti until Giamatti's passing on Sept. 1, 1989, when Vincent took over the reins.
Background
Born on May 29, 1938, Vincent was originally from Waterbury, Conn. He received his undergraduate degree from Williams College and then received a law degree from Yale.
Vincent went on to make partner in a Washington, D.C., law firm before serving as the associate director of the Division of Corporation Finance of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He then held the position of chairman of Columbia Pictures and became the senior vice president of Coca-Cola after the company purchased Columbia, becoming executive vice president before Giamatti convinced him to join him in the commissioner's office.
Earthquake
The first challenge of Vincent's commissionership came on Oct. 17, 1989, when the earth shook before Game 3 of the World Series. No, it was not because of the presence of Will Clark and Jose Canseco on the same field. It was the Loma Prieta earthquake, centered in the Bay Area and significantly affecting both teams involved in the World Series.
Vincent was immediately tasked with coming up with an emergency plan to handle the game's championship series. He delayed the Series for 10 days and directed funds toward the rebuilding efforts - and not just in the ballparks of the A's and Giants.
Years later, the direct successor of Vincent, Bud Selig, said that Vincent's steady and measured example with the earthquake influenced how he would handle MLB's response to Sept. 11. Rob Manfred also cited Vincent's response in 1989 when weighing how MLB should handle the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lockout and Suspensions
Spring Training 1990 brought the next major challenge to Vincent's time in the role. Owners locked players out, and Vincent worked diligently to reach an agreement that would ensure no regular season games were missed. However, owners viewed Vincent's sway to be player-focused, rather than serving the owners who employed him.
Vincent also suspended Yankee owner George Steinbrenner from participating in day-to-day operations of his team after Steinbrenner paid a gambler $40,000 to dig up dirt on outfielder Dave Winfield. Steinbrenner was reinstated in 1993 after Vincent left office.
Near the end of his term, Vincent permanently suspended pitcher Steve Howe for repeated drug offenses. Vincent also passed a memo to the league that reiterated that being caught with performance enhancing drugs was a punishable offense, but owners did not agree with the Howe or PED decision, choosing not to enforce the latter and overturning the former after Vincent left office.
Expansion
Arguably, the most impactful move of Vincent's tenure began as his friend Giamatti entered office. Giamatti felt the league was primed to expand from 26 to 28 teams. Major League Baseball had last added teams to the league in 1977. Vincent organized committees to investigate and determine how the league could add two teams to the league.
In June 1991, the league announced the addition of Miami and Denver to the National League. The teams would join the league after Vincent left the office, but the addition of the two teams would lead to the implementation of interleague play and the wild card, both things that significantly altered the future of the game.
Ouster
Vincent came from the same school as Giamatti who always put the best thing for the game ahead of any particular interest group, whether that was media, players, or owners.
The latter group ended up being the death to Vincent's time in office. His work to negotiate the best solution for the game to the 1990 labor conflict as well as his bold statements regarding recreational drugs and PEDs did not win him friends among the owners, and while commissioners had been viewed as serving the best interest of baseball in the past, the owners at the time decided the role was set to serve owners' interests first and foremost. In fact, when they cast a vote of no confidence in Vincent in Sept. 1992, leading to his eventual resignation from the role, they did not fill the commissioner role until one of their own, Bud Selig, could divest himself from his team enough to step into the role of commissioner with the illusion of impartiality.
Vincent's time in the role may have been short, but it left a lasting impact on the game - and it could have done so much more. Rest in power.
Benjamin Chase is the co-director of IBWAA. He spends his days as a newspaper editor in rural South Dakota, but he loves talking baseball on his own Medium page and also on the Pallazzo Podcast prospects show. He can be found on most social media services under the username @biggentleben.
Extra Innings
IBWAA has a partnership with the Society for American Baseball Research, better known as SABR. Every year, SABR honors the top articles written about the game in the past year.
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